Government abandoning culture
I know it’s tough for governments at the moment. They have a lot of financial pressures to deal with and they have to find money from somewhere to pay for vital services like healthcare, education and law enforcement. But the idea that they can sacrifice important cultural and artistic projects is very disheartening. After all, a world without paintings, poetry or Puccini operas would be a very sad world indeed. What would we talk about at dinner parties? Sports teams? The best way to get red wine stains out of carpets? Breast implant prices?
One of the first signs of these changes that we’re seeing is a reduction in the subsidies paid to independent magazines and journals by the government’s cultural department. A lot of these niche publications rely on this subsidy to be able to continue operating and there are real fears that some magazines will have to either reduce their distribution and cut the number of issues or face closure completely. Considering that some of these publications are the only ones that cater to their particular speciality, then this could end up being a real loss to Canadian culture.
Often journals are the only way that new artists can get their work to a wider audience, especially writers who are yet to secure a publishing deal. Literary magazines are likely to be especially hard hit by these budget cuts, with politicians arguing that there is no need to have such a wide range of publications covering a wide range of subjects. That’s not true. Magazines featuring unpublished poetry are very different from publications featuring literary criticism and reviews, which are different again from journals including amateur horror fiction. Who’s to say which one is more important than the other?
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