Cheeky art of cutting a budget
Living in Toronto requires a certain skill with numbers. You are busy. I will save you some time. Here is a useful formula: {A+P} x W=C In plain language: Art plus Politics times Wit equals Cheek. Now meet Maggie Hutcheson and Elinor Whidden. They represent Art in the equation. They decided, during the last city budget, to document the impact of the cuts on the lives of the people of the city. The budget, of course, is Politics. Maggie and Elinor call themselves The Department of Public Memory, and there is your Wit.
What, exactly, does the department do?
Maggie said, “We gather people’s memories of the services that were cut and we put them on our street signs. We want to show the people of the city what their services mean. It’s a way to have a conversation.” Their job qualifications? Maggie: “I have a theatre background. I’ve studied activist art.” Elinor: “I have a fine arts background, but my work has moved towards performance.”
Elinor also said, “We wear blue coveralls with safety straps. We carry rags and mops and brooms. We’re building on the idea that city services themselves need care and maintenance.” That’s Cheeky. How did they meet? Maggie, who is 35 years old said, “We met in Grade 7. We’ve done a lot of things together.” Elinor, who is 36, laughed at that.
Maggie said, “We started the Department of Public Memory in June of 2011, when the budget was unclear. There seemed to be huge cuts coming. We thought we’d get enough information for 12 specific signs by September. That didn’t happen.”
It didn’t happen because the people of the city rose up and fought to save as much as they could. They have posted one sign, however, at the Ralph Thornton Community Centre, where the Lewis Pearsall Computer Resource Centre used to be.
Why not more? Elinor said, “We have material for more signs; it’s an unbelievable amount of work.” How many more signs? Maggie: “We have enough for six.” Elinor: “The Gladstone Library is one of them; the Scarborough Rocket is another. The Toronto Reference Library; an art program for street youth that was going to be cut; and the Dufferin bus.” Hard work? Maggie said, “It takes a lot of time. We ask if people would feel threatened if we came. There was some fear of engagement, especially among smaller groups.”
And there is a patent sorrow: those who would be hurt the most are the people with the least amount of power, and they are, as a result, the most afraid to speak up for their rights.
Okay, so Maggie and Elinor, armed with clipboards, ask people why the loss of a particular service matters; what have their witnesses told them? Elinor said, “There was one person in front of this library who said, ‘Bringing my kid here, I meet all these different people, I don’t feel threatened talking to strangers.’ ” That’s immeasurably important in a city such as this.
A rider of the Dufferin bus said, “I need to get to work on this bus.” Somebody should have made this sort of record back when Slasher Harris was in charge.
Yes, and somebody should step up and give Maggie and Elinor a grant so that they can finish the job. Lest, as it were, we forget.