Words We Use

We must reconfigure our terminology, and at the same time redefine the sector that it describes, in order to encompass an arena of human activity that is just as important as healthcare, the environment and (non-arts) education. —  Bill Ivey

Cultural Bill of Rights:

1. The right to our heritage — the right to explore music, literature, drama, painting, and dance that define both our nation’s collective experience and our individual and community traditions.
2. The right to the prominent presence of artists in public life — through their art and the incorporation of their voices and artistic visions into democratic debate.
3. The right to an artistic life — the right to the knowledge and skills needed to play a musical instrument, draw, dance, compose, design, or otherwise live a life of active creativity.
4. The right to be represented to the rest of the world by art that fairly and honestly communicates America’s democratic values and ideals.
5. The right to know about and explore art of the highest quality and to the lasting truths embedded in those forms of expression that have survived, in many lands, through the ages.
6. The right to healthy arts enterprises that can take risks and invest in innovation while serving communities and the public interest.

Cultural Policy

The decisions, practices, regulations, and laws that nurture or constrain creative work and that facilitate or restrict the availability of art and artistry.

Engaging Art

Rather than “bringing great art to the people,” the defacto arts policy for the last 40 years, arts leaders will increasingly need to think about how to “unleash the creative capacity of citizens.”  It is a fundamental change in how we think about art in this country.

Expressive Life

Denotes a realm of knowledge and creative practice that, framed properly is as distinct and robust as family life or work life. While the arts are at its centre, expressive life includes much more: ethnic and community traditions, family holiday events, historical art, photographs, political speech, social dancing, amateur music making, and arts education in and out of school.

Expressive life divides into those that draw on the past (heritage) and those that emphasize individual achievement (voice). The two exist in a state of interaction.

Heritage

Constitutes one half of expressive life: the part that is about belonging, continuity, community and history; it is expressed through art and ideas grounded in family, neighborhood, ethnicity, nationality and the many linkages that provide securing knowledge that we come from a specific place and are not alone.

Voice

The other half of our expressive life — a  realm of individual expression where we can be autonomous, personally accomplished, and cosmopolitan — a space in which we can, at times, even challenge the conventions of community or family heritage.

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