You Say you want to Fund the Revolution? Oh Yeah…

You Say you want to Fund the Revolution?
Oh Yeah…

(Published in Fuse Magazine, June 2001.)

Mother may I go for a swim?
Yes my darling daughter,
Hang your clothes upon a limb,
But don’t go near the water!

In a right wing climate, the labour movement feeding on its own entrails, the left having long ago eaten its young, the boards of public institutions stacked sky high with Tories — where are we to find the call for social justice, the will to foster real social change?

Why, in the work of private foundations, haven’t you heard?

Based on huge reserves of private capital (from lumber, from liquor), family foundations such as the Laidlaw Foundation, The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation and The Atkinson Charitable Foundation, to name a few, are accountable to no one but their hand picked boards and federal laws governing charitable foundations. While most of them do use advisory panels to award grants, they are not bound by the rules of transparency, peer review, confidentiality and arms length that are the sacred cows of the public arts funding world. They are free to participate in the projects they fund as “partners” and they are free to withdraw or withhold funds if the fundee doesn’t meet certain “benchmarks”.

The upside is that they are also free to fund projects with a “social justice agenda”. They can initiate innovative programmes, and if they don’t like them after a year or three, they can disMANTLE them and try something else. They can fund research and evaluation to determine “successful outcomes” on which to model further funding programmes. Through their funding, they can encourage social inclusivity and civic responsibility on the part of youth, immigrant groups and other marginalized or grassroots populations.

These and other Canadian foundations are part of a North America-wide trend in private philanthropy which intends to influence public policy where public institutions are too weakened, scared or hogtied to do so. They have long ago tried to transcend their role as charities, giving handouts to the poor, to become players in the public sphere, “fostering change”, promoting “civic participation” and “cultural democracy”.

Speaking as someone with firsthand experience designing and implementing just such an innovative programme (for the Laidlaw Foundation), I can attest to the genuine sincerity and progressive social conscience of many in the field. At the same time, this experience enables me to unpack some of the ironies and contradictions of private capital attempting to underwrite social change.

First, the phrase “social justice” itself. In recent years this phrase has become a kind of shorthand code, a euphemism for all those words and phrases that have become infra dig to say out loud in public: words like Marxism, class struggle, radical, revolution, left wing, progressive and socialism. When one friend says to another “so-and-so has a social justice agenda”, she means that, like us, this person is a progressive, a leftie. By the same token, however , “social justice” can mean a kind of whitebread liberalism, a token of mainstream democracy, of social inclusion, of the mosaic. It’s a phrase used by Jean Chrétien, Bob White, and the anarchists and radicals in Seattle, WINDSOR AND QUEBEC. It’s one of those portmanteau terms that, in carrying different meanings, can both unite people and confuse or even fool them. So when a Foundation or its spokespeople claim to be interested in funding the social justice agenda, they may not mean what you think they mean.

And of course, although they may espouse one or another version of social justice, they are structured on a strictly corporate, hierarchical model with virtually total power wielded by the executive director.

Another critical term is “partnership”. Funders, both private and public, increasingly want evidence of partnerships, of groups combining resources. Yet their own individual funding cultures are so particular that the idea of their pooling funds, of becoming partners themselves, is daunting at best. Furthermore, many foundations want to participate in a project and see themselves as one of the partner organizations. Yet the partner with the purse strings is hardly an equal one, and arts groups used to arms length public funders react in horror at what they perceive as possible interference in the artistic process. Beware of foundations bearing gifts!

It all comes down to change, and how you believe change happens. On the one hand, there is the will to influence public policy around social issues such as the environment, child poverty, the disaffection of youth or art education. The idea seems to be that if you put a study funded by a foundation on the desks of the right people in the civil service, people who have the ear of the right politician, then progressive legislation will follow. On the other hand, by funding projects that encourage or promote civic engagement among disenfranchised populations (youth, immigrants, etc.) you will effect change from below. So far, we are still in the land of neo-liberalism, where social change means increasing social involvement in what currently passes for democracy.

Yet even here, problems and contradictions arise. The Bronfman Foundation, for example, is currently funding a major national study on art education. They aim to demonstrate that children who make art do better in school. (Why they don’t study children who get extra math tutoring to see if it makes them better artists is another question). Given the drastic cutting of art education in Ontario (the sole access to art FOR the majority of students in the province) and thus the exclusion of a whole generation of Ontarians, we can only applaud the motives of such an endeavour. What’s not to like?

The Bronfman Foundation provided start up funding FOR the School of Social Work at McGill to design the study. Seven community based art groups across the country were selected. The first problem arose, however, when some of these groups subject to the usual vicissitudes of funding for small non-profits, either ceased to exist or couldn’t guarantee they’d survive the duration of the study. Bronfman will fund the projects which the School of Social Work will then study, but the old familiar problem of how to get operating funds doesn’t go away.

Bronfman’s further funding is contingent on matching funds. Well, it seems that the other institution interested in working with children and youth, and willing to come in on the project, was the RCMP. The Mounties made their participation subject to two conditions: first, that the study could only be of “youth at risk”, and second, that there had to be a guaranteed number of volunteers for the projects (originally the projects were supposed to be open to all children). So the participants are now labelled and the artists are once again being asked to work for free. The study itself involves children taking workshops for three month periods with their parents and teachers being asked such questions as “Now that Johnny’s taken this art class, is he relating better to his peers? Have his marks improved?”

Now we have an art and education research project, the intent of which at least is commendable, looking like something else altogether on the ground: surveillance. There’s a disjuncture between the intent of the foundations (usually looking down from the 15th or 20th floor) and the resulting project on the ground. While there is nothing wrong with the Bronfman foundation leveraging other funding through it’s good name and good will, what does seem questionable, is the failure to imagine how the study will be perceived by those meant to benefit from it.

It’s just such a failure of the imagination that fuelled the controversy surrounding the Laidlaw Foundation’s funding of a pilot community art project known as The Garbage Collection.

Last summer a team of environmentalists from TEA (Toronto Environmental Alliance), sanitation workers from CUPE Local 416 and three artists painted murals with a recycling message on the side of garbage trucks. The project was funded by Laidlaw and had the enthusiastic participation of the city’s Culture Office and the full approval of the Works Department. The trucks were painted around the same time as the City’s controversial decision to ship Toronto’s garbage to Kirkland Lake. At the media launch, the press spun the story as an anti-Kirkland Lake protest. Councillor Bill Saundercook, chair of the Works Committee, demanded that the trucks be recalled and the murals painted out. In the end, one mural on the side of one truck was indeed painted over. The mural depicted a train full of garbage leaving Toronto, while three porcine looking men in suits clutched fistfuls of dollars. The group who painted the mural meant to suggest that there was money to be made in the contracting out of garbage. Saundercook thought it meant politicians were on the take and that the artists had defaced city property.

Surprisingly, the Toronto arts community HARDLY RAISED a single voice in protest over this blatant act of censorship. To its credit, the Laidlaw Foundation supported the mural group and felt that the controversy had furthered their goal of fostering “cultural democracy” and “resistance”. They authorized funds for the group to repaint the censored mural and plans went ahead to paint it on the side of the Bamboo last October. At the same time, municipal elections were underway and the major, really the only, election issue was Toronto’s garbage. Mayor Mel Lastman was endorsing Saundercook against David Miller who had opposed the Kirkland Lake proposal. The Toronto Environmental Alliance declared Saundercook to be “Public Environmental Enemy No. 1”. A few days before the mural was to be painted, the Laidlaw Foundation informed THE Garbage Collection project that it would not release funds until after the election.

There were several reasons given for this decision. The funds had been authorized contingent on the development of a communications strategy. There were rather different opinions about just what such a strategy would mean, ranging from an agreed upon press release to something involving months of work and thus justifying the Foundation’s decision to postpone the funding. The issue of whether a Foundation can be seen to be involved in electoral politics in any way was first proffered and then withdrawn as a justification. The Foundation didn’t want the artwork once again to be highjacked by the Kirkland Lake issue when the mural was intended to be about recycling in general.

The consensus in the community, however, was that the situation was too controversial, too political, and Laidlaw basically choked. They said they wanted to fund resistance and social change, but drew the line when those possibilities became realities. Hang your clothes upon a limb, but don’t go near the water. Not surprisingly, the mural group felt that this was a second act of censorship, a view that the Foundation heatedly denied. In spite of a meeting called by Laidlaw some weeks later to discuss the issues, the two sides remained unreconciled.

The idea that Laidlaw was a partner in this whole affair is problematic. Their decision was sudden, unilateral and non-negotiable, hardly the m.o. one expects of a partner. They seemed not to realize the simple fact that their controlling the funds gave them power none of the other players had. They also seemed unable to imagine how their decision was received on the ground. Since community art projects typically involve several different groups (schools, community groups, libraries, politicians, works departments, etc.) their success always depends on everyone’s ability to imagine how things look from where other people are sitting. Harder than it sounds, perhaps, but nonetheless essential.
In fact, I would argue that this “act of the imagination” is the essential ingredient in cultural democracy.

To give Laidlaw its due, there is nothing in the mission statement that is inconsistent with a liberal idea of social justice—it’s Trudeau style liberalism four square. The program which funded THE Garbage Collection was its radical baby, and when things got too spicy, THE BABY HAD TO BE SILENCED.

The mandate of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, established by Joseph E. Atkinson, former publisher of the Toronto Star, is more explicit. According to the guidelines posted on their website, they “look for projects that…are radical and innovative…ideas and projects that challenge current attitudes, policies and approaches, and that not only identify but attempt to address the systemic reasons for economic and social injustice.”

When I asked the Executive Director, Charles Pascal, what he meant by “social justice”, he replied, “Fairness. Canada used to be about fairness, now it’s something that floats in the wind—nice if we can afford it. We wouldn’t call ourselves left-wing because that’s ideological and we are a charity. But if someone from the National Post calls us left-wing (and they mean it as an insult), we don’t care.”

Atkinson definitely views itself as a partner with its grantees in two distinct ways. First, they “link up resources in a timely and transparent manner, to play the role of honest broker”. For example, they might provide a communications expert to a group to help them write their proposal. In one instance, the Board offered to increase the salary of a group’s employee. They felt they couldn’t justify someone getting an unfairly low salary when their project was about promoting fairness. Secondly, they feel they have a responsibility to make groups accountable and definitely want to influence outcomes. “We’re not just, ‘Here’s the cheque, see you later'”.

They have recently funded a chair at the University of Toronto in early childhood development and education. According to Pascal, “We wanted a lot of say. We are the strategic investor”. They wanted to ensure that this would not be simply a research position, but would bring “doers and thinkers” more closely together. “We say that’s what this chair’s about and we set it up that way. If they don’t like it—say they just want the research side—we wouldn’t fund it. If you want $1 million from us, we have to co-determine it.” Pascal feels that in influencing events on the ground, they are practicing due diligence as a funder. “There’s lots of organizations out there who don’t know themselves as well as they might, and if they don’t want our due diligence in pointing it out, they won’t get our funding.”

At the same time, Pascal is sensitive to the issue of a power imbalance between the partner dispensing the funds and the partner receiving them. “With money comes huge responsibility. Number one, recognize it. To be effective you have to acknowledge power imbalance. It takes unusual respect.” Aktinson plans a third party evaluation of their own role as a funding partner where grant recipients will be able to respond anonymously. Pascal LOOKS FORWARD TO this critical response which will help them improve their role in the future.

I tried to ascertain where the limits were, when something had become too controversial or too political, and where the point was for Atkinson that Laidlaw had obviously reached. Each year Atkinson funds a major journalistic study. I asked how they would respond if, for example, someone doing a study of “the systemic reasons for economic and social injustice” (to quote again from their mission statement) came to the conclusion that capitalism is the systemic cause of poverty and that the way to address it is to advocate the violent overthrow of the state. “We wouldn’t fund that person” was the response. But say you already funded them and they reached that conclusion in the middle of their research.

“You’re painting a picture I can’t imagine.”

As Pascal says, “There is very little progressive money in Canada”. In spite of problems at Laidlaw, the program continues and is funding some exciting initiatives in cultural democracy with Mayworks, with Myths and Mirrors in Sudbury, and with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 75. The Atkinson Foundation has funded some excellent exposes generally published as a series of articles in the Toronto Star, and the Bronfman Foundation’s Urban Issues programme, under the guidance of Gisele Rucker, continues to fund outstanding Canadian community art projects over a three year period. These Foundations often attract individuals as directors or programme officers who have a somewhat maverick approach, who are on the left side of the “social justice agenda” and are sincerely motivated. They generally have transparent procedures of one kind or another. It’s just important to be aware that there are definite limits to the kind of political change they will fund, and in the end, because their money is private money, they can do whatever they want.