Success Stories
Cultural Resilience: Using Innovation to Stabilize in Times of Crisis
The Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC), in partnership with the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) and Les Arts et la Ville (LAV), is embarking on a $368,000 two-phase project that aims to discover dynamic examples of cultural innovation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Organizations and artists who created, distributed, and monetized cultural content despite the challenges of public safety measures will be put in the spotlight and their approaches will become the foundation for a new tool aimed at building resilience within the sector.
Prior to the devastating impacts of COVID-19, Canada’s culture sector contributed roughly $53B to the national GDP, more than 3% of the total. The sector, which encompasses arts, culture, heritage, events and festivals, film, and more, saw its economic contribution drop by 17% between the first and second quarter of 2020 with little recovery since.
While CCNC believes in the importance of understanding how the pandemic has incapacitated theatres, tours, festivals, individual artists, and more, the Network sees incredible value in seeking out the lesser told success stories and learning from them.
Phase One, focused on mining stories of innovation and stabilization, will be led by Hill Strategies Research.
The data will be invaluable for every level of government looking to develop programs and policy that supports innovation in the cultural sector.
For more information or to submit a story, visit culturalresilience.ca.
A report on the findings of Phase One will be delivered in the fall of 2021. In Phase Two, new professional development tools for cultural and creative industries will be created in collaboration with CHRC and LAV and distributed in English and French to arts and culture leadership throughout Canada. The Creative City Network of Canada, whose membership is primarily comprised of municipal governmental departments concerned with culture work, is especially well positioned to ensure that broad and deep penetration into the cultural sector is achieved at the local level, for both the gathering of information and the dissemination of it.
About the Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC)
The Creative City Network of Canada is a national, non-profit organization that facilitates collaboration, knowledge sharing, research, and professional development for the cultural sector at the local level through the development of cultural policy, planning, and professional practice.
For more information, visit creativecity.ca.
