Thank you,  Elizabeth Renzetti, for your column in yesterday’s Globe and Mail If the artists starve, we’ll all go hungry.  

In her usual intelligent, somewhat irreverent style, she asks, “Do we value the role of artists (and their handmaidens) enough to ensure that they can actually continue to create?  Or do we just want to be left with the American Idol winners, and the trust fund babies?”

She quotes the American journalist, Scott Timberg:  “We produce and export creativity around the world.  So why aren’t we lamenting the plight of its practitioners?”

CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation) has produced buttons, t-shirts etc. which ask “has the artist been paid?”

All good questions for a time when many people think that if it’s on the internet, it should be free, and accessible….whether it’s music, or photography or visual art.  All good questions for a time when writers, musicians, dancers, actors and visual artists are scrambling to make a living…..and often not succeeding.