The Creative City Network of Canada commissioned a series of reports on Developing and Revitalizing Rural Communities through Arts and Creativity. The summary overview of these reports sets the context: “As rural communities re-envision and reposition themselves, they are seeking to revitalize, diversity their economic base, enhance their quality of life, and reinvent themselves for new functions and roles.”
This report summarizes the results of three forums in Ontario (Brockville, Chatham and Minett / Muskoka) about municipal cultural planning. The forums were designed to “build awareness of the value and economic development opportunity” presented by cultural planning, to demonstrate community examples and success stories, as well as to identify tools and barriers in implementing municipal cultural planning.
The literature review in the Creative City Network of Canada series of reports on Developing and Revitalizing Rural Communities through Arts and Creativity examines the nature of cultural activity in rural communities, the community context for arts development, the role of the arts in economic development, and governance strategies.
This report provides an analysis of artists residing in small and rural municipalities in Canada. One-quarter of the 140,000 artists in Canada reside in small and rural municipalities (36,500 artists, or 26%). West Bolton (in Quebec’s Eastern Townships) is the only municipality in Canada with over 10% of its labour force in arts occupations.
The International Forum on the Creative Economy, a two-day forum in Gatineau, Quebec in March 2008, provides “evidence on the current and future economic forces and trends impacting the innovation, creative, and knowledge-based economies”.
For Ontario to become a “world leader in the creative age”, this report argues that building prosperity for all Ontarians will require “drawing more broadly on the creative skills of our people and workforce, developing stronger clustered industries, and harnessing the creative potential of current and future generations”.
This report outlines the nature of the emerging creative economy, where “human creativity is a defining feature of contemporary life”. The report identifies four “critical success factors in building a successful creative economy”: (1) leadership and participation; (2) infrastructure; (3) awareness and education; and (4) investment and policy.
The key goal of the report is to examine cultural occupations in non-cultural sectors of the economy. The report finds that 40% of culture workers are employed in non-cultural sectors, especially four sectors: manufacturing, business services, educational services and retail trade. Between 1991 and 2001, there were two particularly significant growth sectors for creative workers: the manufacturing sector and the business services sector.
The report provides a scan of 20 countries’ policies related to creative workers and artists, including education and training policies, awards and contests, business support and entrepreneurial development, as well as tax and social security policies. “Despite the general assumption that the knowledge economy will produce a labour force which resembles the cultural sector in its core characteristics, most countries have not yet introduced comprehensive creative labour policies to accommodate a more flexible, mobile workforce, and one which is increasingly self-employed.”
This study provides information about professional development practices in Ontario’s cultural sector, including data about “how much training is pursued, the types of training, and who is paying for it”.
