The State of the Arts or The Arts at Stake.
The article was first published in the Toronto Art Newspaper, The Artist and The Viewer, Issue 7 (and last), on February 2020.
Written by Alejandro Reyes-Andreu under the pen name of Andrew King.
The year 2020 has just begun and is a new decade. Humanity, as well as our planet, continues on the same trajectory. But where are we headed? How will our story unfold? We don’t know, but down the same path we go, we are apparently OK with that.
For us, artists and art workers in Toronto, the year started with un-fortunate yet unsurprising news. Despite 2019 bringing us new and exciting adventures in the realm of the visual arts, 73% of artists and art workers surveyed by the Toronto Arts Foundation in 2019 are considering leaving the city. Will the reactions to the stats in the report, published online, fade away with time, leading to no change? More recently, the Toronto Star will shut down the StarMetro national free newspaper and is now downsizing its entire arts and entertainment department. Rumours have it that only a few writers will be left dedicated to reporting on the arts.
But as we said earlier, 2019 saw some positive developments in visual arts. Foreign-born artists and creative workers met with staff from art organizations. The meeting was organized in partnership between Myseum, the City of Toronto, Intergovernmental Committee for Economic and Labour Force Development in Toronto (the ICE Committee), and The Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence. A full article titled New-comers Discuss Creative Industry Barriers in Canada covered this meeting and was published by Canadian Art on December 17, 2019. These encounters are headed in the right direction and ask the right questions. Will they bring on positive change or nothing at all?
The status quo is rising discontent, with almost 3 out of 4 artists and art workers considering leaving Toronto. People I have spoken with are thinking along the same lines; others are already gone, while the rest sticks around. Are we on the verge of a crisis? I sometimes believe we are reaching a point of no return. The situation will blow up in our faces with irreversible consequences. What else must we know, see and go through to act accordingly?
We can’t wait for others to solve our problems. One possible approach to a definitive solution could be that the city and our community begin to see and believe in the real value of the Visual Arts.
Artists and Torontonians who want to continue living here must be given the opportunity of helping make Toronto the place we once dreamed of.
Note: The Toronto Art Newspaper ceased operations during Covid-19 first wave. A year after this article, I moved out of Toronto and Ontario to the Gatineau-Ottawa area with my family.