Making culture

	Mural on building, Sherbrooke, Que. Photo: Doreen Farrell

Professionals who contribute to culture are grouped under the broad category of 'culture workers,' each of them adding to the collective body of our culture. This category comprises 21 distinct occupations; the label 'culture occupation' is applied to workers who are involved in creative and artistic production, or heritage collection and preservation occupations, including writers, editors, journalists, musicians, dancers, actors, painters, sculptors, artisans and craftspersons, photographers, architects and designers, as well as librarians, museologists, conservators and archivists.

Working Canadians numbered 15.4 million in 2002. Of those, close to 4%—or 577,000 people—were workers in the culture sector. Since the late 1980s, the Canadian work force has experienced some shape-shifting, with significant overall rises in part-time workers and self-employment, and the workers in the culture sector more than reflected this trend. From 1991 to 2002, part-time employment of workers in the culture sector climbed 63%, compared with 23% for the work force as a whole, and self-employment leapt a full 102%, compared with 24% for all workers.

In 2002, the ensemble of designers (including industrial, and graphic designers, illustrating artists, interior designers, and theatre, fashion and exhibit designers) formed the largest segment of cultural occupations, at 54,200, and the categories of dancers, photographers, and conductors, composers and arrangers were among the smallest—each under 2,000. The biggest increases between 1991 and 2002 were among artisans, and craftspersons and dancers. The only groups that declined were architects, librarians, and archivists, whose ranks were whittled away by 70%, 33% and 39%, respectively.

The history of the arts is the history of their eccentricities. It is those artists who challenge the established boundaries that move an art forward as, for example, the Quebec theatre director, Robert Lepage, has done. Where the next breakthrough will come is not known, but someone, somewhere, in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, or Prince Rupert, British Columbia, is working toward it. Happily, more of the country's artists are having their innovative ways recognized. In March 2000, seven Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, the first ever, were handed out.