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5.2 THE SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC PRESENCE OF
THE CULTURAL SECTOR
This section reviews a selection of data
on the scale of culture-based activities
in Canada.
5.2.A DEMAND
Studies of the national “market” for
culture have existed for over 30 years.
The first leisure-time use survey conducted
by Statistics Canada in the early
1970s demonstrated that significant
numbers of Canadians attended cultural
events. For such specialized areas as
going to the performing arts or attending
museums, the numbers equaled
those going to sporting events (around
30%–50%). Millions of Canadians
attend or visit arts and heritage activities
in Canada. Furthermore, millions
themselves actively participate in performing
and visual arts activities,
belong to heritage societies, and take
courses in photography, writing and
new media for both personal and professional
development. For those
involved with the ‘cultural industries’
— going to films, watching TV, listening
to music — the proportions are
60%–90% — touching virtually every
Canadian Household. These figures
remain true into the 1990s. 9
This participation is supported by data on household expenditures
which show families committing over $1,000 of their
discretionary spending on arts, heritage, audio-visual and
print-based activity, totaling $14 billion of consumer spending
for 1996. An important social aspect of this figure is that the
relative culture and recreation spending is independent of
income: both the lowest and highest income households
spend almost the same percentage of total household spending
in this area. 10
Recent data on these activities as measured by Statistics
Canada indicate that overall participation and expenditures
on some culture-based activities have stabilized (e.g. reported
attendance at performing arts, or museums, or reading books,
and listening to recorded music). However, in the face of radical
changes in technology (the multi-channel universe, the
Internet) and societal norms (e.g. percentage of women who
work, longer work weeks), the stability of culture involvement
in the “old” cultural expressions over the past quarter century
is a statement by itself.
Furthermore, data on the new e-culture presence is scarce,
but public attention to such things as downloading music
from the Internet, and accessing museums via virtual museums,
suggests the presence of cultural products is in fact dramatically
increasing although this increase is not yet reflected
in the data collected by Statistics Canada.
A complete picture of all culture-based activity in the work
place and at home is not available.
5.2.B INFRASTRUCTURE
From an “industrial” point of view, data gathered by Statistics
Canada have documented the presence and change in such
things as the numbers of museums, number of Canadian
books published, and so on.
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BUILDING ON SUCCESS — A HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR THE CULTURAL SECTOR — 2004