Comment 73677

By Imperial (anonymous) | Posted February 02, 2012 at 19:12:56

Love the reverse tax idea Sean, that bloody vacancy incentive has driven me up the wall for years.

My biggest opposition to the new castle model is that it is USING culture - not creating it or harnessing it. In the new castle model creative, engaging and often financially marginalized artistic tenants are encouraged to put their 'creativity' to use to revitalize a space. Knowing that the term of their stay is a maximum of 30 days or whatever means the owner of the building is gaining all the benefit.

They have vacant space and are too cheap/stupid to renovate or market it effectively. Instead they give to an artists dirt cheap for a month so it has some life.

30 days later the artist is back to having no stable space to practice their art, engage the public, and the building owner has attracted a new tenant. Yeah for the private sector - booo for the artist.

The only place I see this being potentially beneficial for the arts/broader community for targeted and time sensitive community arts projects - creating a short-term space for free music classes in a low income neighbourhood, injecting a photo exhibit about a social issue into a neighbourhood,launching a bunch of spaces for a "30 days festival" of some sort.

So me to support this kind of idea there needs to be greater investment and opportunity for the artist in the process. Otherwise they should be paid to occupy the space and bring creativity to a private sector developers space.


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