The District of Sechelt has arts and culture on its budget radar as funding has shown an exponential increase over the past few years from $74,000 in 2010 to a proposed budget amount of $129,000 in 2011.
"They want to be leaders in the community of arts," said Linda Williams of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council and Coast Cultural Alliance. "Kudos to them."
The Arts, Culture and Heritage Committee, a group appointed by the District, will receive funding in the amount of $26,000 for honorariums, supplies for arts events and programs such as art acquisition.
The Sechelt Festival of the Arts, now in its eighth year, will also receive $66,000 that has been earmarked for costs associated with the festival: salary for festival co-ordinator Nancy Cottingham Powell and an increase of payment for performers, with other monies slated for marketing and workshop co-ordination. However, revenues from the Festival are expectedto offset that amount.
Some assistance for the Festival has come from an organization struggling with its own funding problems. Frances Wasserlein, executive director of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council, applied for a BC Arts Council grant of $7,500 to be put towards the Sechelt Festival of the Arts. The Festival itself could not apply for such a grant, she explained, since the District is not eligible for provincial funding.
"It was a neighbourly thing to do," Wasserlein said.
The BC Arts Council has given the SC Arts Council the amount of $6,665 for this year, about half its former funding level.
The District has also allocated $25,000 for the contract position of arts co-ordinator and a successful applicant will be announced soon.
The position is a trial balloon, said Coun. Keith Thirkell. One of the things that the arts co-ordinator could do, he suggests, is to identify which groups give the public the best benefit.
Coun. Ann Kershaw confirmed that at the end of budget discussions, the District allocated $12,000 towards a feasibility study for a cultural complex. Members of the arts community have expressed widely differing opinions ever since the proposed multi-million-dollar project was made public during an open house Feb. 2.
The complex includes a performance centre, library, gallery and archives. Some artists have expressed the hope that the dollars could go towards current arts programs and facilities that have struggled under funding cuts.
For example, the Arts Centre has shown a loss of about $50,000 to its funding over the past two years. Wasserlein reported that the organization was forced to cut two half-time staff people and they have had difficulty paying for essentials such as the utilities bill.
In a letter to the District, artist and Arts Centre volunteer Sheila Page expressed the views of many when she urged the community and mayor and council to increase support to the currently underfunded Sunshine Coast Arts Council and the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre.
"We must sustain what we have already as well as investing in planning for the future," she said.
But as Thirkell points out, the Arts Centre already receives a grant-in-aid, free rent and permissive tax exemption in the District-owned building. Sechelt is also responsible for the maintenance of several facilities used for arts programs.
"It costs an estimated $200,000 year to maintain facilities like Rockwood and the Arts Centre," he said.
