Bleeding Hearts for the Arts

Over on Facebook many of my Friends currently feature a 'Faceless for the Arts' profile picture. I do not, and feel that free-floating guilt that occurs in an online community when you don't act on an invite and don't say why. So I figured I'd address this here, where the chances are less of getting skewered for my opinion.
Firstly, I live in Canada, and currently live in one of the top three poorest and most Federally neglected provinces, Nova Scotia.

I was a member of the Arts Community here for a decade, a decade in which the provincial Arts Council was shut down, the locks changed, and subsumed into the 'Tourism and Culture' Division. That's the sort of view the local government takes here. There's some fixin' to do. Someday.

The 'Faceless for the Arts' thing is in reference mainly to a Federal Election that's been recently called. I support this fully- Federally. As far as this province goes, however- no way. Our local politicians should be thinking about the Arts, that's for damned sure, but there's more, much, much more to be squared away beforehand. This was a massive moral quandary for me over the last ten years, as I did fight for Art while trying to produce it. Yet at the same time I saw what a state Education, Agriculture, and many more divisions were in, and began to feel more and more guilty, and selfish for demanding the government support my lifestyle choice and line of work.

How are things to continue and evolve if the economic backbone (Agriculture) of this province is as ignored and ghettoized as arts and culture? My mother runs, all by herself, a far-reaching agricultural organization that represents hundreds of farmers, and faces the exact same amount of opposition by politicians that the individually run office of the Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre does, a group which represents the regions' dramatists. They both scramble for money, get threatened with arbitrary closure, and stress themselves into fits annually.

While I'll support PARC continually, in a general sense I cannot condone more spending on art when the rest of the province is in this invisible turmoil. Demand that people go to some $60 play in downtown Halifax while rural Nova Scotia dies? I can't do it. Expect the populace to understand the importance of theatre to a society via a bleeding-heart press release when the majority can't afford the education to instill this sophistication in them naturally? No way.

This is a young, young country. This province is still a frontier in many ways. I give all the grace in the world to those who are bringing the Arts to the forefront of politicians' agendas, and I' m thankful those people exist. Because at this point in Canada & Nova Scotia's history, I can't ethically do it myself.