Considering that our living culture is a source of inestimable wealth of sensitivity, poetry, creativity and people of heart who carry it at arm’s length.
Considering that the people of the living arts ensure with all their strength the transmission of a word and the vibrant soul of an entire nation nestled in the foothills of an immense river with wide swirls.
Considering that we, people of the living arts, are the primary matrix from which all the merchants of the temple of culture and entertainment come happily to draw.
Considering that we, people of living culture, are underfunded, undersubsidized, underpaid, underestimated and that, consequently, the living arts become dying arts.
Seeing that within our community, many artist friends, creative champions are leaving the profession and their passion, being forced to reorient themselves to survive and that, consequently, the living arts become dying arts.
Presuming the good faith of leaders who, through their social commitment, have the common good at heart and who, despite the honesty that drives them, are trapped in their party line and fall, not without grumbling, into silence and precipitate their ideals in the quagmire of inertia, due to which the living arts become dying arts.
Knowing the rust that is creeping into the institutional body of culture, increasingly hampering its proper functioning and that considering its recovery would require heroic discernment on its overhaul, we dare the total risk of shouting it loud and clear. .
Hoping for a better sharing of our tax money for the benefit of workers in the performing arts as well as a regular downsizing of everything that is a cultural structure, a structure which is no longer able to defend the most fragile of its members, we let’s dare to take total risk.
Understanding that more than ever we must stick together and demonstrate immense solidarity and a caring understanding of each of our realities, we dare to take total risk.
Sensing that only a broad coalition of all members of the living arts, beyond misunderstandings and welcoming the entire spectrum of resistance is necessary in order to carry out this struggle for our recognition and our dignity, we dare the total risk
Understanding in our flesh that we must fight now or disappear soon.
We rise up to demand unequivocal recognition of living culture and its contribution, by all governments from now on.
We ask that the living arts, and more broadly culture, finally be supported and protected permanently and in line with its needs and challenges, by all governments from now on.
We want us to understand all the complexity of the performing arts sector and to agree to better share the resources allocated to it, so that the fragile portion of creators is no longer subject to the desires of the institution. and its subjective administrative advice.
To achieve this, we are calling for a bold overhaul of the Arts Council so that aid is better redistributed to all players in this precarious and valuable environment, so that it is no longer subject to the desires of the institution and its administrative councils. subjective.
We demand that, faced with the challenges and problems that we will have to face in the near future, we clear new avenues, we take new paths, that we show solidarity beyond possible, in order to turn away from these avenues of austerity imposed by a logic of mercantile success. Only in this way will the dying arts be the living arts again.
We immediately demand less concrete and more emotion.
We require total risk.
* Also co-signed this letter: Anne-Marie Levasseur, actress; Pascale Bussières, actress; Rachel Graton, actress; Christine Beaulieu, actress; Rebecca Vachon, actress; Mathieu Gosselin, actor; Élodie Bégin, actress; Myriam Fournier, actress; Emmanuel Bilodeau, actor; Edith Cochrane, actress; Isabelle Brouillette, actress; Benoît Côté, musical designer; Marc-André Poliquin, actor; Hugo Giroux, actor; Olivier Morin, actor; Marc Béland, actor; Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin, choreographer; Stéphane Jacques, actor; Clara Provost, actress; Jeanne Dupré, scenographer; Jean-François Pichette, actor; Stéphane Roy, scenographer; Jacinthe Racine, lighting designer; Stéphane Cocke, multidisciplinary artist; Nicolas Archambault, dancer; Pierre-Alexis St-Georges, actor; Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon, actor; Esther Augustine, actress; Gabriel-Antoine Roy, actor; Roxanne Azzaria, actress; Simon Beaulé-Bulman, actor; Lauri-Ann Lauzon, dancer; Kalliane Brémault, dancer; Geneviève Rochette, actress; Alexis Raynault, musician; Elissa Kayal, poet playwright; Marianne Lonergan Pilotto, scenographer; Jean-Luc Terriault, actor; Marie-Christine Martel, assistant director; Geneviève Jacob, designer and manager.