CCA Bulletin 13/09 - Waging Culture, Canadian Visual Artists In Focus

Michael Miranda and his colleagues at the York University Art Gallery had had enough. Following the public discussion of arts funding during the last federal election, the lack of credible data on the state of the visual arts had to be addressed.

No comprehensive data on the socio-economic state of visual artists had been produced since the 1993 Canadian Cultural Labour Force Survey. Intent on redressing this lacuna, Michael embarked on an ambitious study to unearth fresh data on the Canadian visual arts sector.

The study presents a wide range of information about the visual artist in Canada, from home ownership to spousal support and time allocation. It presents the most comprehensive examination of how visual artists in Canada are faring, where they live, where they were born and languages spoken.

The study should help debunk those who believe that artists subsist solely on government hand-outs. Indeed, the evidence in Waging Culture suggests that visual artists pursue several forms of income generation simultaneously. The image of champagne swilling artists at swanky galas should be replaced with the gritty reality of working several jobs and pursuing an artistic practice at the same time.

Waging Culture is a major survey of Canadian visual artists which provides a very complete portrait of their life. Some of what the authors found is not surprising to those of us who have been working in the arts and culture sector, namely:

in 2007 the typical visual artist in Canada earned $ 20,000.00 from all sources of income ( practice income, secondary employment and non-work sources);

the national median income in 2007 was $ 26,850.00 which does not include non-work income;

the majority of gross studio income is from sales not from grants or artists fees;

75.6% of visual artists applied for a grant from a public agency or private foundation;

The primary funder of artistic practices in Canada is the artists themselves, an affirmation that nothing has changed since the Applebaum-Hebert Report of 1980;

Women outnumber men in the visual arts 56.9% to 43.1%;

Visual artists have higher educational achievements than the general labour force, 44.9% have a Graduate degree vs. 6.9% in the general labour force, 39.2% have a undergraduate degree vs. 16.0% in the general labour force;

37.6% of visual artists surveyed donated work to a certified regional institution qualifying for Revenue Canada tax credit.

Waging Culture used the Canada Council for the Arts definition of a professional artist which reads as,

“someone who has specialized training in the field (not necessarily in academic institutions), who is recognized as such by her or his peers (artists working in the same artistic tradition) and who has a history of public presentation or publication.”

The data for the Waging Culture study was collected online, using Respondent Driven Sampling, from July through December of 2008 and covers the 2007 calendar year. Through this methodology potential participants referred the names of other professional artists and the pattern replicated itself as the survey progressed. Demographic information is accurate within ±3.96%, 19 times out of 20. Financial information is accurate within ±5.83%, 19 times out of 20.

It would seem that the negative comments about funding of the arts at the time of survey stimulated a healthy response rate to the survey. For the first phase of the study over 3,700 invitations to participate were sent resulting in an over all response rate of 37%. The second half of the study generated a net response rate of 46%.

The CCA would like to congratulate Michael Miranda and his colleagues at the York University Art Gallery for their dedication and their clear determination that cultural policy should not be developed in a vacuum. This study provides important insights into the challenges and achievements of Canada’s visual artists.

The full text of Waging Culture is available digitally from the York University Art Gallery by following this link.