Blog | A New Project on Precarity and Sustainability from the Hub

In our October 2024 newsletter, we talked about the Hub’s three priority policy areas for the coming year. The first of these is the precarity/sustainability of not-for-profit arts, culture and heritage organizations.

Recent media conversation around precarity in the arts and culture sector has been focused on venue closures, cancelled events and declining revenues.^[1] There is no question that many arts and cultural institutions are feeling the pressure of inflation and the post-pandemic reality on their finances, and on the well-being of the artists and workers they employ. While these financial challenges are real, they are not new. And discussions about precarity should not focus solely on funding.

Within this narrative of sector or organizational precarity, artists and organizations are creating. They are engaging with the public by providing opportunities to entertain, connect with others and make meaning of these times. Digital technologies have led to an explosion in content creation and new opportunities for dissemination. At the same time, artists and cultural workers remain some of the most underpaid and highly-educated members of our society.

How do we make sense of this precarity and abundance at this pivotal time, and how can this understanding inform our policy decisions and systems of support for the arts and culture?

We struggle in the arts and culture to take a systems view of impact or change. Often, when we do take a systems view, it is of the arts and culture—or of an artistic discipline—as a closed system or sector whose primary raison d’être is the creation and production of art or the safeguarding of cultural heritage. And yet, the arts and culture are in constant dialogue with people’s experiences, changing needs and expectations. They are integrated into community life, into physical and virtual spaces, into the way people live and how they express their identity.

We also struggle to collaborate and share resources to make change, in part because the system of support has long required each organization to maintain a professionalized, individualized approach to its work. Success of arts and heritage organizations has been measured primarily by the perceived merit (artistic or otherwise) of their offerings, the scale of their productions and the volume of their attendance. It is a colonial, Euro-centric system in which those who have been allowed inside it the longest continue to benefit from it the most. Equitable access to resources remains difficult for those who have experienced systemic barriers and exclusion from this system, including Indigenous-led organizations as well as those lead by or reflecting the practices of equity-deserving communities, including racialized and Deaf and disability communities.

This system of support—and the policies that underpin it, including what I’ve referred to previously as a “mixed model” of financial support from public, private and earned revenue sources—were under pressure long before the pandemic started. Today, it is over pressurized, and the system is cracking. To address this, we need to understand exactly where the cracks are forming. We need to look closely at the data at our disposal to put together a holistic picture of what is happening. And from there, we can begin to understand where we go from here.

Many artists, writers and researchers are deeply engaged in this conversation, asking provocative and sometimes difficult questions about identity, relevance and the public value that our current ways of working provide. To name just a few: Tanya Talaga in her lectures and recent book The Knowing; Alex Sarian in his book The Audacity of Relevance; Owais Lightwalla and SGS in their Manifesto for Now; David Maggs’ writing as a Metcalf Foundation Fellow on Arts and Society and concept of “cultural needs”; the work of the Public Imagination Network of artists and cultural workers engaged in making change outside of institutional systems; and Claude Schyer’s conscient podcast that features conversations on the arts and the climate emergency. There are many more.

Over the next two years, the Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD U is undertaking a project focused on data mapping and organizational transformation. Titled Mapping Drivers of Change Across Arts Organization, the goal of the project is to support an evidence-based national policy conversation to address precarity in the arts and cultural sector, and explore the shift to a more sustainable, resilient and equitable system of practice and support for the arts and heritage.

To do that, a better understanding of the data and root causes of precarity of arts, culture and heritage organizations in Canada is needed. The project will include analysis of this data, and will explore, share and learn from actions that have been taken to address precarity so far, both successful and unsuccessful.

The work examines four dimensions of precarity that impact cultural organizations across Canada:

• Organizational finances and sustainability;
• Labour and the cultural workforce;
• Organizational governance and leadership;
• And the availability and sustainability of cultural and heritage space.

The project’s activities over two years will include:

1. Aggregating the most up-to-date data from existing data sources (CADAC; MassCulture Arts Data Platform; Hill Strategies; Cultural Satellite Account; l’Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec, and others) on the four dimensions of precarity outlined above, and publishing reports on each dimension;
2. Examining trends, gaps and root causes of precarity in the arts and heritage with leaders and researchers, leading to a report on the reality behind the numbers, and the gaps in what we know;
3. Developing learning tools (case studies, webinars, etc.) that highlight organizational approaches to each dimension of precarity from which others can learn;
4. Engage in conversations throughout with those who are asking these questions in their policy, academic or creative work to inform policy decisions at all levels.

Ultimately, it is the fourth activity that will help us to ensure this work, alongside that of others having similar conversations, has an impact on future policy and practice.

The four dimensions of precarity are divided into the above categories in part because data sources already exist for each that can be drawn upon and studied. But there are gaps in that data. For one, the sector lacks data sets that can reliably show its broad social and cultural value. Finding ways to articulate this impact has been the work of many researchers and policymakers for the past decade or more. In Canada, the most often cited evidence is public opinion research that shows that when Canadians are asked if the arts and culture contribute positively to their quality of life or sense of belonging, the majority say yes.

In addition, there is little data that addresses how climate emergency impacts precarity in the arts, culture and heritage sector. This question will be part of the conversations with others who are working in the field, particularly those who have been directly affected by climate disasters or who are working on systems change to build capacity to work towards greater environmental responsibility and sustainability.

Like with all the Hub’s work, we will engage with our partners at every stage of the process. If we have not reached out to you and you’d like to be involved, please get in touch by writing to us at culturalpolicyhub@ocadu.ca.

This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada.