A year after the 2010 Games, the program director of Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad says funding cuts by the provincial government during the Olympic period were a lost opportunity.
“They really didn’t understand the opportunity that was at hand to capitalize on the great strides that we made through the Cultural Olympiad and through the community’s work,” says Robert Kerr, emphasizing that he was speaking as a private citizen (he is currently producing artistic director for the Vancouver 125 celebrations).
“It was the perfect moment, if not to maintain investment then to increase investment, because we demonstrated what was possible.”
But Kerr says despite the tension over funding, the Cultural Olympiad – which presented hundreds of works over three annual instalments – created a strong legacy, ranging from commissions to international exposure to a significant boost in confidence for local artists.
“I see people taking risks and undertaking new projects and understanding what it takes to deliver those projects in a way I haven’t seen before.”
Cultural legacies aren’t always easy to assess, but in Vancouver a year after the Olympics, some are evident. City-owned theatres have been renovated; there’s more public art. Some commissions have already found life elsewhere, and some may yet.
Just a few examples:
The Arts Club Theatre opened its 2010-2011 season with the Electric Company’s Tear the Curtain!, commissioned with Cultural Olympiad money. There’s interest in the work from other companies, according to Arts Club artistic managing director Bill Millerd.
Vancouver Opera has reached deals with two U.S. opera companies to stage its production of Nixon in China, which had its world premiere during the Cultural Olympiad.
You can draw a direct line from the Cultural Olympiad to this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, which just wrapped up. PuSh commissioned the Berlin-based collective Rimini Protokoll to create the show Best Before for last year’s Olympiad. One of the highlights of this year’s PuSh was 100 per cent Vancouver, directly inspired by Rimini Protokoll’s groundbreaking 100 Percent Berlin.
Sarah McLachlan gave Alberta Ballet’s Jean Grand-Maitre the green light to choreograph a ballet using her music after seeing The Fiddle and The Drum, his Joni Mitchell ballet at last year’s Cultural Olympiad. At the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremonies (she was performing; he was chief choreographer), McLachlan told him: “I would be honoured; go for it,” according to Grand-Maitre. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy will have its world premiere in Calgary in May.
At the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, a catalogue is in the works based on Ron Hamilton’s monumental Cultural Olympiad show, Backstory: Nuuchaanulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-Ke-In. “That will have a long reverberation,” says the Belkin’s director/curator Scott Watson.
There are personal stories from artists too.
Jared Miller, 22, had his interview with the Juilliard School the day after the closing ceremonies. He figures mentioning his Olympic-related VSO commission, 2010 Traffic Jam, helped tip the scales. “Saying you got a commission from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to perform a piece inspired by the Olympics the day after Canada wins the hockey medal, it puts you out there, it puts you on the map, they remember you,” Miller said from his dorm room at Julliard, where he’s doing his master’s degree.
Nova Scotia singer-songwriter Christina Martin, 31, believes her Olympic performances – at the New Songs, New Faces showcase and Atlantic Canada House – may have been responsible for her next gig: opening for Matt Mays at the Canada Winter Games in Halifax next Thursday.
Not everyone is convinced of the Olympics’ lasting impact on culture.
