Culture Becoming A Cottage Industry

City Hall: Developing Toronto’s reputation as a city of culture?????????

June 12th, 2007

Dale Duncan

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In yesterday’s Toronto Star, Christopher Hume pointed out that investing in culture means much more than inviting artists to create fancy light shows by the lake or hanging big black balls in the atrium of a downtown office building for a 10-day festival. His argument is similar to one I’ve made a couple times before. Writes Hume:

Civic politicians and bureaucrats stand by while developers buy up the old warehouses, factories and buildings that house artists, but pat themselves on the back for the great work they did in organizing Luminato in record time.

I often think that if Toronto wants to become famous world wide as a “city of culture,” what it really needs to do is nurture the great artists, musicians, film makers and writers that are already creating a scene here. Nuit Blache seemed to be successful because it did just that, but Luminato? Says Hume, “Luminato was more a businessperson’s notion of what an arts festival should be than the thing itself.”

The vision behind Luminato needs to be more organic, authentic and plugged in to local reality. It must be more specific and less an omnibus. And it needs to be better marketed. Luminato ended up being everywhere and nowhere. It became hard to distinguish what was included and what wasn’t.

Even after 10 days of non-stop activity, few if any could say what was unique about Luminato. What was its signature event?