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| Petra O'Toole, Ben Irvine, Claire Hage and Mara Zigler walked from the Dal Arts Centre to join the rally at Grand Parade. (Bruce Bottomley Photo) |
The rally began with the sounds of salsa music and the crowd grooved to the rhythms. Participants carried banners and signs, and even walked on stilts.
But for all their apparent joy, they were outraged by Harper’s claims that arts issues don’t resonate with “ordinary people.”
Approximately 500 actors, writers, artists, dancers, teachers, arts students and others showed up Friday at noon in Grand Parade, Halifax to rally against Stephen Harper’s cuts to arts programs in Canada and protest his disparaging comments.
A group of art students from Dalhousie University walked to the rally together sporting black attire and carrying broad signs that read: “Vote Arts.” They departed from the Dalhousie Arts Centre and marched down Spring Garden Road toward Grand Parade to show their support. To these students, the arts are a home away from home. Laura Achenbach, a second-year student in the acting program, said “without arts, we have no individuality.”
Several members of the art community spoke for the cause at the podium in Grand Parade. Edmund McLean, a fine arts specialist at Halifax West School, described Harper’s cuts as “barbaric.”
Playwright Charlie Rhindress quoted from on the back of a $20 dollar bill, reading, “How could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” The use of legal tender to back up the importance of the arts struck a powerful chord with the audience as their excited cheers were heard throughout the streets of Halifax.
Emily Turner, a third-year student studying psychology and theatre, baked cookies shaped into theatrical designs for the rally and handed them out to arts supporters as her own way of promoting the arts.
“Art is everywhere and everything,” says Ms. Turner, an Alberta native. “Clothing is art. Music is art. Television is art. It’s such a fundamental part of our lives that people don’t even know it’s there … If art goes out the window, so do our own personalities.”
READ: Atwood blasts Harper's dismissal of the arts in The National Post