Publicly owned cultural spaces in Canada
Types, condition, age, and (mostly) local ownership of arts, culture, and heritage facilities in Canada in 2022
According to a recently released Statistics Canada survey, there are 5,376 arts, culture, and heritage spaces in Canada that are owned by municipal, provincial, and federal governments. Today’s post examines the types of cultural spaces, their age, condition, and ownership (by level of government) for Canada as a whole. Next week, I’ll examine statistics for each province.
Libraries are the most common publicly owned arts, culture, and heritage spaces in Canada, followed by museums and archives, performing arts facilities, art galleries, and Indigenous culture facilities. The vast majority of these cultural spaces are municipally owned. Over one-third of some types of venues are in poor or fair condition.
While the data cover Indigenous culture facilities owned by municipal, provincial, and federal governments, the survey excludes spaces owned by First Nations and other Indigenous governments.
Types of facilities
As presented in the graph below, the 5,376 arts, culture, and heritage spaces in Canada include 2,825 libraries (53% of all cultural spaces), 1,496 museums and archives (28%), 628 performing arts facilities (12%), 343 art galleries (6%), and 84 Indigenous culture facilities (2%).
Because of the small number of Indigenous culture facilities covered by the survey, they are excluded from some of the breakdowns in the remainder of this post.