Urban Arts Forum

Vancouver, Thursday, January 24, 2008

Good evening,

I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to experience the critical cultural space you are forging for yourself in Vancouver. As my wife and I are privileged to observe creators, decision-makers, researchers and the general public from one end of this country to the other, we are seeing how culture as a practice and endeavour is really sustaining the vitality and dynamism of the country.

And what you are doing in the Downtown Eastside and elsewhere in Vancouver is demonstrating that the arts and culture have a vital role to play in the polis, as the Greeks once said. Cities like Vancouver are dealing with huge challenges tied to demographic transformations. This is particularly true as the growing ethnic and linguistic diversity in our country is leading to the emergence of new hybridized forms of creativity that would have been unthinkable just fifty years ago.

Cultural métissage, as my wife likes to say, is helping us perceive and understand beauty and truth in ways that are no longer dependent upon the aesthetic standards of the Western canon or cannons.  The challenge you have posed for yourselves and for the wider society is to allow for the development of new and more dynamic forms of expression based not on conflict or violence, but on a more inclusive and democratic understanding of public space.

What you have accomplished here tonight is really to actualize the democratic potential inherent in all of us. You have deliberated, explored options, and provided concrete recommendations. And this is the very essence of democracy.

This approach is quite similar to Art Matters, an initiative I inaugurated to explore the role and social function of those who create and of creation in society, and give those who champion culture on a daily basis an opportunity to be heard.

I hope you will continue the work you are accomplishing here, and I look forward to following the discussion you have provoked on Citizen Voices.

Thank you.