While pooping puffins and sweater vests have made headlines during this year's election campaign, Canada's arts community says one important issue has been conspicuously absent: arts funding.
So, frustrated with a lack of accountability over $45 million in recent arts cuts and a low profile for the arts so far in the campaign, theatre organizer Keith Barker decided to do something.
Last week, the veteran Toronto actor started a asking for people "who believe in arts" to leave their photos blank.
"Within 48 hours, we had 2,000 members," said Barker in a telephone interview with CTV.ca, adding he wants to "mobilize people" and make arts funding an election issue.
If all the world's a stage, then Facebook is a perfect platform for the protest. As of Monday afternoon, more than 9,000 people had joined up and photos were vanishing from profiles across the country.
"I think it just gets people talking about arts and culture," said Barker, who also works with Toronto's Native Earth Performing Arts theatre group.
"It's one of the things that needs to be spoken about during the election. Where do the leaders stand on funding arts and culture?"
While he concedes that a silent Facebook protest isn't exactly an incendiary statement, Barker notes that it's a simple, fast and easy way for regular Canadians to voice their concerns.
Meanwhile, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has defended the recent arts cuts, which were made to programs like PromArt and Trade Routes, and said the marketplace should take a greater role in deciding what is produced and promoted.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail last week, Harper added that net spending under his government has actually increased.
Shortly after the cuts were announced, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion vowed to restore the funding if he were elected prime minister.
Dion added that the cuts were part of an "ideological vendetta" on the part of the Conservatives.
Feeling the sting
John Van Burek, founder and artistic director with Toronto's Pleiades Theatre, said some of his colleagues are already feeling the sting.
"There are some theatre companies that were planning to go abroad to tour, and the funding was cut," he said in a telephone interview.
"For something like this to happen, it's inevitable that some people are going to be left short," he said.
Van Burek, who has worked in theatre since 1971, said culture is this country's calling card.
According to Naomi Campbell, a producer with Toronto's Nightswimming theatre group, the cuts to Canadian arts programs like PromArt and Trade Routes are already hurting Canadian theatre tours abroad.
She pointed to the planned Rwandan staging of the play "Goodness," which explores genocide in an unnamed country, as a prime victim.
The celebrated play, based on Canadian author Michael Redhill's book, has been shown around the world and recently won top honours at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.
But a possible performance planned for Rwanda next year, which would commemorate 15 years since the country's brutal genocide, will likely be scrapped because of cuts, said Campbell.
"They would clearly need some government support" to take the play to Rwanda, she said.
"Given the relationship we have with Rwanda, through people like Gen. Romeo Dallaire, to have the opportunity to take part in a commemoration like that would have been a huge honour."
