Study: Culture occupations across the Canadian rural-urban divide

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Canada's largest cities are the country's arts and culture hubs, with the size of an area's cultural workforce depending largely on the area's total workforce. Despite this reality, a number of rural areas and small cities, particularly in British Columbia, Nunavut and Quebec, show unusually high proportions of cultural workers, according to a new study.

The study, "Towards a Geography of Culture: Culture Occupations Across the Canadian Urban-Rural Divide," used 2001 Census data. The Canadian Framework for Culture Statistics was used to define the culture sector in the workforce and to examine the proportion of cultural workers in the overall workforce in Canadian cities and rural areas, as well as the diversity of cultural occupations in those areas. While certain rural areas boasted a high proportion of cultural employment, those occupations tended to be specialized, the study found, with the largest cities showing the biggest variety of cultural occupations.

Relative to its overall workforce, the highest proportion of cultural workers was found in British Columbia's Capital Regional District, near Victoria. Of the four rural British Columbia areas that had very high shares of visual arts and design workers, three were on Vancouver Island, with the nearby Sunshine Coast completing the cultural "supercluster."

Another supercluster exists in the vicinity of Montréal, including two small cities and three rural areas with high cultural employment. Montréal had both the highest proportion of cultural workers among Canadian cities and the most diverse cultural workforce, with a large number of occupations in literary arts, performance arts, culture management, and technical as well as culture-related manufacturing occupations.

Nunavut, and particularly its Baffin Island region, had a high proportion of visual arts and design employment, the result of the production of Inuit carvings, tapestries, weavings and other artwork made for shipment elsewhere. In a few other rural areas, particularly in Quebec, cultural employment was dominated by manufacturing, with a limited range of manufactured culture products shipped to larger markets in Canada and abroad.

Among small cities that showed higher-than-average cultural employment, some, like Owen Sound, Ontario, and Magog, Quebec, also relied on shipments of manufactured culture products elsewhere. Others featured a greater presence of cultural venues, such as libraries, museums and theatres. Small-city clusters tend to have a more diverse cultural workforce than rural areas, implying that the range of cultural goods and services available for local consumption is greater.

For rural regions and small cities with high cultural employment, exports or proximity to a large urban centre were important, since local markets were generally too small to support the industry; Stratford, Ontario, for example, attracts audiences from nearby Toronto, Hamilton and Detroit to its theatre festival. In Canada's largest cities, on the other hand, cultural employment levels depended strongly on changes in the overall workforce size, indicating the importance of local demand.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 3901.

The research paper, "Towards a Geography of Culture: Culture Occupations Across the Canadian Urban-Rural Divide", as part of the Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics - Research Papers (81-595-MIE2007053, free), is now available from the Publications module of our website.

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Client Services (toll-free 1-800-307-3382; 613-951-5418; fax: 613-951-1333; culture@statcan.gc.ca), Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics.