Culture

Canadian members go “faceless” on Facebook to protest arts funding cuts

by Yuliya Talmazan | September 15, 2008 at 03:47 pm

332 views | 4 Recommendations | 5 comments

Arts and culture tend to be ignored issues in Canadian politics, unless it comes to funding cuts. Conservatives announced a $45 million cut in arts spending just a week ago, generating a lot of controversy and anger from arts professionals. In response to the cut, a veteran actor Keith Barker started a Facebook group called “Faceless.” The group calls for everyone who supports arts to leave their Facebook profile picture blank on Monday, September 15th, “as a symbol of the loss of identity Canadians will experience if funding to the arts is cut.”

The group was started just a week ago but it attracted closer to 9,500 members already.

Here are a few posts from the group’s wall:

We should do this longer than a day so that it can spread and grow. Can we do this for at least a week? 30 days, or until the election????

Faceless. This is fantastic guys, great work being done! :D

face free for funding!

another faceless protester!

faceless and fierce !!

There were some negative reactions as well:

ok I have a questuion regarding art, a while back a man in Montreal I think it was took a bucket of urine and placed a crucix in and called it piss Chri##.
Now is my taxes suppsoed to support that? What about other degrading or questionable art forms.
I have a face and it is the person behind this face that is proudly voting Harper!

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Jarrett Martineau

at 15:54 on September 15th, 2008

Yeah, I understand the sentiment, but feel like we should be promoting the faces of Canadian artists, not hiding them.

Check out this Montreal art project -- http://www.laculturesenflamme.ca -- to see a different kind of artist response to the funding cuts.

Yuliya Talmazan

at 16:02 on September 15th, 2008

I agree. But I think the idea behind "faceless" is that underfunded arts diminish people's identity and originality by restricting self-expression and arts appreciation. Monteal's art project is indeed interesting.

rumana husain

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:28 on September 16th, 2008

yuls.source, I like this story. It's good stuff. a good way of protest. however, some of the 'faces' have violated and are showing! :-) its a pity i cannot understand french but i am sure jarret's montreal project site has something interesting to offer.