Manitoba Election: Liberals on Arts and Culture

Today our candidate Ludolf Grolle participated in the ArtsVote Forum at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, speaking on my behalf and on behalf of the Manitoba Liberal Party. I want to specifically thank Ludolf Grolle.  I am summarizing  below our approach to Arts and Culture in Manitoba. 

First we know the vital importance of the arts and creative industries in Winnipeg for 6.5% of Winnipeg's work force or about 25,000 people are employed by Winnipeg's arts and creative industries.
Second we know that arts and culture play an incredibly important role in attracting people to a community, and we believe in supporting the arts and the creative industries because they are so important to ensuring we have the people in Winnipeg to build our metropolis into the future.  In short, arts and culture nurture our human spirit, and also help our economy.   I know I am biased as the husband of an artist, but as a politician I also know how important arts and culture are to all of us.

Manitoba Liberals are dedicated to working with Arts & Culture organisations to build a very strong future in Winnipeg and in Manitoba for the arts and for creative industries. With these considerations in mind, Manitoba Liberals commit to a comprehensive, all-stakeholder cultural policy review in order to ensure that our commitment to the arts and creative industries is commensurate with the huge return on investment that Manitoba's collective talent provides.  Our commitment to this review is matched by our commitment to support sustainable increases in culture and heritage funding and to ensure that adequate funding is in place to implement the measures recommended in the review and to include the application of new technology within the Arts & Culture arena.  Further, I want to note that our plan is broad and inclusive, and we wish ensure that our cultural endeavours do not stop at the Perimeter Highway.

Fundamental to this plan is attention to the quality of education in our schools as this is well known to be enhanced by promoting music, theatre, dance, the visual arts as well as sports and recreation in addition to ensuring strong academic programs to provide a balanced and broad foundation for learning the skills needed for life.

The wealth of talented Artists over a variety of disciplines, and the synergy of technology with the Arts and the quantum effect of applying new and innovative developments and combining them provides this Province with a viable economic value proposition and the Manitoba Liberals stand behind applying every available resource in promoting Manitoba Talent further afield and would certainly ensure their Arts & Culture approach includes a market strategy which embraces preserving, promoting and perpetuating Manitoban Arts, Culture and Heritage as an essential part of our infrastructure and our lives.