The arts-festival portion of the 2010 Olympics risks sliding into a squabble over free speech, as artists who signed on to be part of the Cultural Olympiad learn of a clause in their contracts that prohibits negative comments about the Games and its corporate sponsors.

Some artists contacted by The Globe and Mail, along with organizers of other Olympic and Commonwealth Games cultural events, called the requirement unusual and disturbing. Several artists didn't realize they had signed such an undertaking.

"This is Canada. I can't believe that we're being asked to limit our comments to the press," said Andrew Laurenson, artistic director of Vancouver's Radix Theatre, whose critical comments about arts funding and the Olympics have drawn the attention of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

Laurenson's Radix Theatre group is to be part of HIVE, an innovative theatrical event involving 12 local companies performing in a single, huge location as audience members move from show to show.

He sent out a newsletter in September that decried cuts in British Columbia government funding for arts and culture and addressed the perception that "massive overrides in Olympic expenditures" were at least partly to blame.

"Good news: HIVE 3 is coming," he wrote. "Bad news: It involves Olympic money."

A VANOC representative called HIVE's producer after the newsletter was sent out, and the producer subsequently sent an e-mail titled Gentle Reminder to everyone involved in HIVE about the need to keep commentary separate from the logo of the Cultural Olympiad. A HIVE 3 image - including the Cultural Olympiad logo - had been sandwiched between Laurenson's good-news/bad-news comments.

The controversial clause in the VANOC contract signed by artists involved in the three-year, $20-million Cultural Olympiad festival reads: "The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC."

The Olympics have previously faced criticism over possible restrictions on public demonstrations during the Games and the police questioning of Olympic critics.

Other VANOC contracts contain similar clauses, and the Cultural Olympiad's program director, Robert Kerr, says it is standard practice for an event of this scale.

Artists say otherwise and appear to have backing from organizers of similar events. "There was nothing from Salt Lake in which we in any way censored or shackled [our artists] through their work of art or in anything they wanted to say about the Olympics," said Ray Grant, artistic director for the Cultural Olympiad at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.

"If this is a trend, it's a bit of a dangerous trend for the arts."

Nor was there any such language for artists participating in the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

"I cannot recall anything which forbade artists from saying anything negative about the Games," Andrew Bleby, executive producer of performing arts for Melbourne's Cultural Program, wrote in an e-mail. "Our artists certainly signed no such thing."

One HIVE participant interpreted the VANOC response to Laurenson's letter this way: "Are you in or are you out? Don't be in [the Cultural Olympiad] and then stab us in the back, basically."

Kerr said the newsletter did raise eyebrows at VANOC. "We were a little surprised, but we didn't put any handcuffs on anybody. It was more a question of, is the artist still comfortable being a part of it," he said.

Kerr insists VANOC is not interested in controlling artistic content and points out that many of the works involved in the Cultural Olympiad have dealt with difficult subjects.

Indeed, a visual-art exhibition that was part of the 2008 Cultural Olympiad featured a restaging of an infamous anti-Olympic protest photo. When asked about the photograph in a January, 2008, interview, Kerr was emphatic.

"These are artists expressing their views and observations and I think we have to embrace that," he told The Globe. "We can't shy away and try to put a lid on things."

In an interview last week, Kerr again stressed his belief in artistic freedom, but said there has to be some control.

"If someone were to get up in the middle of a production and all of a sudden start coming off on an anti-Olympic rant, well that would be completely antithetical to the context of the work and the Games and the presenter," he said, later adding: "We're not asking anyone to promote our sponsors, but that they not come out and disrespect our sponsors."