It’s with a slightly aching heart that I need to talk about the arts-funding protest in Churchill Square last week — certainly a success as far as turnout and media attention, but a bit of an aesthetic gong show.

Highlights besides Mel Hurtig included a fantastic, succinct, and booming speech by local actor/director Jeff Page, who pointed out everything around us, including architecture and logos, is arts. But in a sense he hit on one of the major and obvious failings with the gathering. Namely, that actual brilliant evidence of this city’s visual arts (for starters) was staggeringly absent. While a bunch of signs that a Grade 5 kid could make certainly had their charm, and I loved the “Stephen Harper and kitten” with a Ghostbusters no-smoking circle, it might have been a good idea — you know, what with the news cameras rolling — to have something quietly concrete for people to look at and connect with. Enticing or dazzling art on placards held high, you know? And as much as I do like Maria Dunn, who slipped in a reference to gay marriage in her song, the oozing, out-to-get-laid soul of Vernacular Crackers or whatever the hell they’re called just ain’t gonna pull anyone on board the ol’ funding train. I imagined Harper’s Joe Supercan sitting in his living room again, shaking his head at all the hippie dancers. What we needed was some balls-out rock from one of the dozens of grant-travel-funded bands around town who largely showed up as nothing but white space — I’m sure in many cases with legitimate reasons like having to be at work elsewhere, as most artists do. A visit from the ESO wouldn’t have killed us, either, with some whistling Shumka dancers. See where I’m going? This instead of chanting awkward, complex sentences about what we want.

But while the idea that a rally should need careful curation may go against the cliché that artists want all your money and none of your negative feedback, very few of us actually feel that way. Margaret Atwood, who showed up for a few minutes, told us right off that we all knew why we were there. I hope so. Because like it or not, times they are a-changin’, as the rambler mumbles to this day.

Speaking of money, it struck me as optically unfair that in the upcoming WCMA Festival (Oct. 16-19), most of the dozens of showcase bands endure cover at the door, but don’t actually get paid to play. The idea that they’d be paid in “exposure” by being one of 50 bands nightly playing a 40-minute set seemed a bit weak. So I called up WCMA executive director Rick Fenton in Winnipeg and asked him about it. His answers were solid. “We wouldn’t be able to put on anything like the WCMAs if we did. There are an awful lot of showcase events now that actually charge bands to play, and we really don’t want to do that. We also help the bands who do apply to get in touch with FACTOR to get travel grants, we walk them through that process.

“We’re non-profit. We only have two full-time staff and a lot of people working on a volunteer basis. If we ever reach a point where our funding is there, I’d be the first one to do it. I’d love to pay $100 a head. We make a deal with the musicians’ union — and I know that’s going to raise a lot of sighs, but we contribute to an overall pension fund. When it comes to the awards show, we do pay scale to the artists. We’re trying to create sustainable careers in the West, based on a model of running a small business — we work for the artists. The way that cuts to arts funding have been in the last couple months...” — and here Fenton laughs with a little terror — “...it sure as hell isn’t helping me in the coming year.

“We still think it’s valuable to bring as many industry professionals and fans to see those artists. We put as much money as we can to get the fans out, the best venues, the best backline, decent technical. It’s a $10 cover or $20 to get into everything for the entire weekend. I think you can see that’s not exactly a land grab.”