Simon Brault, vice chair of the Canada Council, discusses his book No Culture, No Future
When Simon Brault writes, “We cannot survive without a minimum of cultural expression,” he’s not spinning metaphor. The CEO of the National Theatre School and vice chair of the Canada Council is referring to the (often) ephemeral arts — song, dance, oral narrative — that have been produced in concentration and refugee camps. He’s paraphrasing a point made repeatedly by history: that human beings are compelled to create, even in conditions of absolute “chaos and… misery.”
Cultural expression is a need, Brault believes — one deemed fundamental enough to be declared a universal right in 1948. Yet sixty years later, this need is unmet among most Canadians. According to Brault, only 30 percent of us are actively “interested in or reached by” the arts. And, he continues, the cultivation of culturally engaged citizens remains a fledgling project in this country.
Like the excesses of our food system, allowed to spoil on shelves and in restaurant dumpsters, the talents of our artists and the potential for cultural creation “will be wasted,” according to Brault, “if the majority… are not interested in them or cannot access them.” He argues that larger segments of the Canadian population must be equipped with the tools to “decode” what is produced on our stages, in our museums, in the pages of our novels.
Brault’s concerns, and his belief that a thriving arts and culture sector is critical to the health of national and municipal identities, are shared by powerful stakeholders. And yet, there remains a disconnect between our ideological attachment to the concept “art for all,” and our ability to shift the theory into practice.
The stumbling blocks are many. We struggle to find common ground: artists’ voices are stratified across unions (and we continue to remunerate them poorly); interest groups get stuck in terminology. Words like “democratization” generate anxiety among those attached to “excellence,” and those fearful of regulation; hallmark issues like literacy and a lack of economic resources perpetuate exclusion.
With the publication of his book No Future, No Culture — translated by Jonathan Kaplansky from the original French, Le Facteur C — Brault makes a public plea for art’s return to the streets. He calls for an end to exclusion by asking policy makers and citizens at large to take interest, to talk, to act. Together.
It’s from the vantage of a veteran administrator that Brault threads visceral human need into a discussion that tends to favour policy over people. And it’s with No Future, No Culture that he invites the entire country into the conversation.
Hilary Fair: Your book frames cultural expression as a human need and a human right. But it’s a human right that is under-exercised in Canada. Why we aren’t taking advantage of our cultural bounty?
Simon Brault: We know that there is a portion of artistic expression that would not survive or thrive without the support of governments – and that support is completely legitimate. But we need to admit that what is supported doesn’t reach a very large audience. Some of the reasons are clearly linked with a lack of resources, a lack of education, the difficulty to transmit the codes to people. And sometimes, there is a lack of willingness to reach a large audience.
This “non-audience” factor — or reality — has been, for years and years, an obsession for anyone who wants to support the idea that we should count on the public purse to support the arts. The difference now, from, let’s say, after WWII when the Declaration of Human Rights had been written, is that a big, big, big portion of the population, especially out of the major cities, had no access to any kind of culture. It’s not true anymore: the mainstream culture is present everywhere. Even if you go to Bombay, you will find in the markets DVDs of Disney films. Everybody has some kind of cultural life.
So, it’s a non-audience for the arts, more than a pure non-audience for culture. It needs to be qualified when we say that, but it’s the same today. If we want to make sure that there will be a diversity of cultural expression, if we want to make sure that the arts will be present and protected and play their role in society, we need to find ways to reach a larger audience. And not for economic reasons, but because we think it’s a way to enrich the life of people. This notion of cultural democratization should still be a top priority on the public agenda.
The fact that we have access to all kinds of cultural products, all the time, but in a way that allows us to totally disconnect from one another — that is antithetical to what you’re calling for, which is collective spaces for people to engage with the arts together.
I use the expression, “the illusion of access.” We have the illusion right now that everybody can access everything, and so we have equal access to everything. But it’s not true. We are guided by what we know. We are guided by values; we are influenced by publicity, by marketing, by branding. Even if we think we have access, we will not go. We won’t imagine we have the need, or that it could be interesting.
Cultural participation is getting attention from our academics and our media; it’s been popularized by Richard Florida and it’s made its way into political platforms. But, as you write, it’s not materializing in terms of actual cultural policy. It sounds like we’re riffing on the concept, but the conversation is not evolving into anything concrete.
The problem is and was that politicians and economists, including a lot of people in the media, are more interested in the “side effect” of culture at the city or community level. They are more interested in direct economic impact, or this vague notion of “quality of life.” In fact, Richard Florida is not an expert on culture. He was more observing that when you have a vibrant cultural life — and he never came up with a very clear definition of what that means — you have a more vibrant civic life. I completely agree, but think we need to go beyond that realization.
You’re right: we need to realize that real engagement with arts and culture is a form of co-creation. When people really engage with the arts, it’s because they bring something to the experience that comes from them. They go to another level — of joy or sadness or another emotion.
I believe that if we would see cultural policy with a less top-down approach and [in] a less self-serving way — you know, cultural policy to serve the cultural organizations and artists — we could achieve much more at the city level. And for any society or community that is facing change — of population, generation, economy — it’s clear that arts and culture are a powerful tool that gives people the notion of sharing, a certain control on their own destiny.
Self-interest is a stumbling block you return to a number of times. Some people get their backs up with terms like “democratization” and “accessibility” and “regulation” and “elitism.” You write about your own project, Culture Montreal, as an example of the problems that can arise in trying to bring multiple interest groups together and have them speak in a useful way.
In Canada, the professionalization of the arts sector is quite recent. It has been built, mainly, through arguing our very right to exist and be supported and have an economic model that is sustainable… Those arguments are needed, those battles are absolutely essential. I will never deny that. But by concentrating on that discourse only, we are cutting ourselves from the vast majority of the population. We need to reconnect with the reasons why we decided to do what we do in the first place.
You will never convince your neighbours to attend a concert because it’s good for the economy or because it’s good to pay the salary of the musicians. You will convince your neighbours to attend a concert because they may like it — because they may find something in that moment that will enrich their human experience.
How do we connect with our neighbours to inspire that primal interest?
By having a conversation about the content of the arts and culture, and not only a conversation about the numbers, the economics, the money… When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.
The conversations people are [currently] having about culture are very technical. There is a very low level of emotion, a very low level of appreciation of the value. The conversations are about numbers and jobs and how much money to produce or distribute. They are not about the more humanistic parts of what culture is.
One of the most beautiful parts of your book is this continual return to the emotional — to the humanity of, and within, art. How do readers connect with this part of the text? Who are you targeting with No Culture, No Future?
Different people have different reactions. It depends on [the reader’s] role in the cultural sector or where they are in terms of the conversation. I was very struck, for instance, when I went to libraries to present the book and met readers I would never have met otherwise. In Montreal, a lot of people said, “We enjoyed the book because we felt so far from those discussions, so excluded from the conversation, and now we realize why it’s important and why we have something to say.” Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.
When you write about expanding the conversation into a broader discussion of visceral responses to art, among more people, what forums are you thinking of: newspapers, magazines, broadcast journalism?
All of them… I know that if I speak to the Winnipeg Free Press it won’t be covered the way it would be by The Walrus, for instance, because every [publication has its] own angle. I pay a lot of attention to having access to a variety of media, if I can, and I also insist on having something of a public moment. In Calgary, I was invited by a community foundation to a big event in a church. There were 500 people there. It was completely fulfilling, because I find it’s useless to talk only to the converted or only to the cultural sector.
Everybody is looking for a new vocabulary, or a new way to connect, to talk. And because I’m wearing all these hats – being at the same time an arts funder, a trainer, an accountant, and a lawyer – I feel that one thing I can do is bring all of these people under the same tent and try to organize the conversation.
You close No Future, No Culture with the chapter “Culture Cannot Save the World But Can Help Change It” — you end with optimism. Can we close our discussion by talking about the developments you do see happening, despite the challenges?
I would not have written the book if I was not optimistic. I am. One element sustaining that optimism is the fact that I’ve been at the head of the National Theatre School for so many years. I am constantly surrounded by people who are always twenty [years old]. And they are passionate. When they enter the school, they really want to perform. They want to share, they want to explore, they want to express themselves. Some of them are coming here because they are following a model; some of them are coming from very small communities where they never had the chance to speak up. They have things to do, things to say, things to draw — because some of them are visual artists. That energy is very, very powerful.
I am also optimistic because I have been in that sector for almost thirty years, and I’ve observed that you can change things. In fact, between the lines of my book is a call to action. I get a lot of emails and testimonies from young (and not so young) people saying: “We read that and we feel that we can also become some kind of activist — to make things happen instead just complaining.”
I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… While you are changing things, you meet fantastic people. We have more interesting lives if we are on the side of action and change, than if we just protect what already exists and apply rules.
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