BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage highlights key priorities for the new year
Steering-committee member Rainbow Robert says the coalition is working toward funding increases for the sector, plus the implementation of a strategic action plan
Rainbow Robert. Photo by Massimiliano Iachini
THE BC COALITION of Arts, Culture, and Heritage has outlined three key priorities that may prove integral to the sustainability of the local arts, culture, and heritage community in the coming years.
According to a 2023 report by Hill Strategies Research, B.C. is the only province in Canada whose arts, culture, and heritage sector has shown positive economic growth since 2019. But in contrast to that success, it remains the only province without a strategic action plan to ensure it receives continued support into the future.
Rainbow Robert, executive director of the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture and a steering-committee member of the BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage, says that the coalition is working to change that disparity. Speaking to Stir by phone, she shares that its members—which span thousands of arts, culture, and heritage organizations from more than 180 communities in B.C.—are calling upon the provincial government to implement a strategic action plan, increase the annual BC Arts Council budget to $55 million, and maintain COVID-era resilience funding of approximately $34.5 million annually.
“What we’re aiming to do is really lead some transformational change for the sector by bringing together many voices to speak with a shared message,” Robert says. “We’re hoping to provide messaging that complements the goals that are already being communicated by individual practitioners and arts organizations. We find that it’s really important to undertake a dialogue where we can work together to formulate messages and to provide tools to make it easier for people to reach out to their MLAs and develop those relationships, because not everybody has the same level of comfort or proficiency with building those relationships. So the coalition really is looking to support people’s ability to have tools at their fingertips that can help them to build these relationships, and ultimately benefit a greater number of layers of the arts and culture ecology in a meaningful way.”
Alongside the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture, steering-committee members of the BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage include 221A, Arts BC, the BC Museums Association, the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, and the Media Arts Alliance of the Pacific.
Following the 2024 provincial election, the coalition drafted an email template for organizations and members of the arts community to reach out to the MLAs in their riding. It allows those involved in the sector to connect with government officials and share about the work they do on a personal level while emphasizing the importance of the coalition’s key priorities.
Though there isn’t a concrete timeline yet as to when the coalition’s strategic requests might come to fruition, Robert says its members have had several meaningful conversations over the past year-and-a-half with Lana Popham, former B.C. NDP minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport.
“I have to applaud her willingness to really have a dialogue with us around the importance of this work,” Robert says. “Certainly we had a lot of opportunities to discuss the potential approaches to this work and to underscore the reasons why it’s important.”
Now that Spencer Chandra Herbert has assumed Popham’s old ministerial role, communication regarding the strategic requests has continued. Robert notes that the coalition is hoping to see the NDP follow through on its 2024 election promises to inject stable, year-over-year funding into the B.C. Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund, and to invest in an expanded arts and culture infrastructure fund.
Back in 2017, the B.C. NDP promised to double the BC Arts Council’s annual budget, which would have meant a raise to $48 million. That promise has yet to be fulfilled—and the BC Museums Association estimated in 2024 that inflation has now brought that figure above $59 million. For context, the provincial government allocated $38.97 million to the BC Arts Council’s budget during the 2024-25 fiscal year.
The coalition’s proposed arts, culture, and heritage action plan consists of five key components: health and wellness (mobilizing the sector to address urgent health challenges); housing and infrastructure (protecting, growing, and leveraging cultural spaces); innovative and green economy (creating sustainable jobs for British Columbians); reconciliation and equity (transforming policies for a more inclusive future); and emergency preparedness and climate mitigation (establishing resilience and recovery strategies).
“We’re really looking to develop cross-ministerial strategies to support all of these areas,” Robert says, “and to underscore the fact that arts, culture, and heritage have so many proactive and inspiring solutions that make our society—and communities across B.C.—more vibrant, sustainable, and equitable. We’re really just wishing to stimulate conversation, collaboration, mutual respect, and interdependence.”
Vancouver-based nonprofit organization 221A, another steering-committee member of the BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage, is working toward the establishment of a Cultural Land Trust to grow housing and infrastructure stability within the sector. Operating as an independent nonprofit entity, the trust would be capable of purchasing and managing land for artists and arts organizations in order to offer them stable rent, long-term leases, and pathways to ownership.
The Cultural Land Trust’s goal is to secure 30 properties across B.C. by 2050. When Stir spoke to 221A’s cofounder and executive director Brian McBay last April, he shared that an estimated $80 million to $120 million in funding would be needed over the course of 10 years to meet that goal (but those figures, based on property costs from 2021, have since risen). Seed funding of $15 million from government contributions is needed to kickstart the project.
While there is still much to be accomplished by the coalition and its steering-committee members in collaboration with the provincial government, Robert is hopeful that the three key priorities they’ve outlined will be planned for accordingly in the coming months.
“We still have an urgent need for a new vision for arts and culture that builds an action plan to respond to these regional, national, and global challenges,” Robert says. “So we’re really looking to collaborate with the sector to develop the plan through multiple layers of deep and meaningful community consultation. This is really just the beginning of a conversation, and what it’s intended to do is to supercharge an equitable approach to economic, social, and community impact for the sector.” 
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