News
Artists’ group wants NAC to drop Enbridge as corporate sponsor of Prairie Scene festival
Jan 27, 2011, Ottawa Citizen (Read article on originating site site)
By Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — Artists from Manitoba and Saskatchewan want the National Arts Centre to reconsider Enbridge’s sponsorship of an upcoming festival meant to showcase art and music from the Prairies.
Prairie Artists Against Enbridge sent an e-mail this week to the NAC protesting the company’s role as a major partner of Prairie Scene.
The festival will bring 500 artists from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, representing all disciplines, to the capital for 80 events to be held over two weeks in April and May. Since 2005, the biennial Scene events have showcased emerging and established artists from different provinces or regions.
“As Canada’s foremost showcase for the performing arts, the National Arts Centre should choose sponsors that help to promote its values as an innovator in community programming. Partnering with Enbridge tarnishes that image with the company’s disastrous environmental record,” says the letter, signed by dozens of people including Governor General’s Literary Award-winning novelist Miriam Toews, alt-rockers The Weakerthans, and Winnipeg Blue Bomber Troy Westwood.
They’re backed up by a number of NGOs, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, Sierra Club Prairie, the Rainforest Action Network, the Dogwood Initiative, Corporate Ethics International and the Polaris Institute.
The artists criticize Enbridge for its role in an oil spill last summer that saw millions of litres of oil pour out of an Enbridge pipeline into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. They also note the Calgary-based company is seeking approval of a new 1,200-kilometre pipeline that would carry crude from Edmonton to Kitimat, British Columbia, despite opposition from some First Nations and businesses along the route.
“By associating with Enbridge, the National Arts Centre associates itself with the company’s irresponsible corporate behaviour. For the sake of the centre’s good reputation and for the sake of our environment, we urge you to reconsider.”
But turning away private donors in an era of fiscal restraint just isn’t possible, says an NAC spokeswoman.
“It’s impossible to mount a festival of this kind of scope and scale without both public and private donations,” said Rosemary Thompson.
“We have to go to the private sector to make these things a reality. We have to look at what’s going on all across the country — we’re in a period of austerity and it’s hard for anybody to give money to the arts, so we’re very thankful to all our partners, be they public sector or private sector.”
When the artist group first raised its concerns about Enbridge last summer, Thompson said, the NAC responded that the company has been a “valued partner” at four previous Scene festivals.
Jennifer Varey, an Enbridge spokeswoman, said in a written statement that it’s unfortunate “well-funded and well-organized environmental groups are behind a targeted movement by a small group of artists that seek to undermine the funding that supports hundreds of Canadian artists in communities across Canada.”
Over the past decade, Enbridge has given millions of dollars to art galleries, orchestras and theatre companies across the country, Varey wrote.
“Our sponsorships are rooted in our strongly held belief that arts and culture are critical to the health and vitality of communities.”
The two-week Prairie Scene festival has a $2.8-million budget — one-third from the federal and provincial governments, one-third from the NAC and ticket sales and the rest from the private sector. Manitoba telephone company MTS Allstream and Saskatchewan’s Potash Corporation are co-presenting sponsors; Enbridge is listed in third position as a major sponsor.
Four musical groups have backed out of the festival, while hundreds of others have said yes, Thompson said. She admitted some of the signatories on the letter are among the artists invited, but wouldn’t say who or how many and she wouldn’t speculate what those artists might choose to do given Enbridge’s role as a sponsor won’t change anytime soon.
“I don’t want to predict what people are going to do or not going to do,” she said. “We obviously hope everybody comes.”
Buffy Sainte-Marie, Randy Bachman, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra are among the high-profile artists scheduled to perform. None signed the letter.
The full roster of Prairie Scene performers is to be released Feb. 28.