Dear Editor:
The recent release of the Meaford Hall & Culture Foundation's Study for 'The Academy' raises questions regarding the management and direction of cultural activities in the Municipality of Meaford.
Quoting from the feasibility study:
"The Academy will be an umbrella organization to facilitate and enable a wide range of learning programs in arts and culture for people of all ages. It will be a distinct program of the Meaford Hall & Culture Foundation, and would coordinate, support, enable and promote the activities of a large number of active arts & culture and community groups."
In other words the Academy will be under the control of the Foundation and the two combined will constitute something like an Arts Council or a Ministry of Culture for the municipality.
On page three it states that: "the managing and running of the Foundation is assumed (none of them have been elected) by a six member volunteer Board of Directors accountable solely to our donors and to the Canada Revenue Agency."
To my knowledge cultural institutions strive to have large memberships, which in turn elect the board members, often annually as the Blue Mountains Foundation for the Arts does. As publicly responsible institutions they are structured to undergo checks and balances by producing annual reports.
Even though the Foundation has been supported by taxpayers through funding from Meaford Council, and occupies office space in Meaford Hall free of charge (thus taxpayer-subsidized), it claims not to be accountable to the municipality's taxpayers. All the citizens get is the Foundation's praises of itself and confusing press releases regarding amounts of monies that have been raised.
Without transparency and fair reportage the public is forced to make judgments based on gossip, rumours and speculation. Fear of openness and debate in Meaford throws control of public ideas and debate into very few hands and rarely amplifies the most interesting voices.
The feeling amongst the local "old timers" is that the Hall has been taken over by recent, well to do new-comers, who have little understanding of local aspirations. And then there is the still unresolved, still severely suppressed problem of the status of Georgian Theatre Festival. The infamous lawsuit is still in limbo, choking the life out of the long standing cultural institution and its board members and there is still smoldering resentment with many of the theatre supporters regarding the way the theatre was dealt with.
Sure, we are being urged to go forward and not to mention the past as if that will make it go away. This is, however, the most self-defeating and unhealthy way, like dealing with symptoms using a bandaid over the mouth.
The Council and taxpayers should be evaluating the desirability of an unelected and unaccountable Foundation to gain the power of being an umbrella organization, controlling the cultural life in our municipality. They should look at how well-established arts institutes are organized and operated.
If they did, they would find out that a cultural foundation does fundraising (from primarily corporate and private sources) and not programming, that hall management writes publicly funded grants and does the programming, which must include educational outreach activities such as the proposed 'Academy'.
Communities function on the basis of how they imagine themselves. Are we going to have a participatory democracy with the input of public debate and public opinion or are we going to be led by elites who don't appear to want citizenry at large to think or participate seriously? We still have a choice!
Gita Kikauka, Meaford
