Professional artists in rural Saskatchewan
Over 800 of the nearly 4,000 artists in the province reside in rural areas
This article offers a statistical profile of rural artists in Saskatchewan and provides summary information about rural arts leaders and rural workers in cultural occupations (a category that includes both artists and arts leaders). The article is based on custom data that Hill Strategies requested from Statistics Canada’s 2021 long-form census.
The article is made possible with the support of the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance.
Hill Strategies Research retained full editorial control of the content.
Methods
The census relies on a very specific concept of professional workers, one that includes people who worked more hours as an artist than at any other occupation between May 1 and 8, 2021, plus those who were not in the labour force at that time but had worked more as an artist than at another occupation between January of 2020 and May of 2021. Part-time artists who spent more time at another occupation in May of 2021 would be classified in the other occupation. (The same would be true of workers in cultural occupations and arts leadership occupations.)
The occupational perspective counts people who work across the economy, as long as they are classified into one of the 10 artist occupation groups, 5 arts leadership occupation groups, or 52 cultural occupation groups.
The 52 cultural occupation groups include the 10 artist occupation groups as well as the 5 arts leadership occupation groups, other cultural occupations (e.g., graphic designers, print operators, editors, translators, architects, and professionals in fundraising, advertising, marketing, and public relations), and heritage occupations (e.g., librarians, curators, and archivists).
More details about the occupation groups included in each of the categories is available in a recent article, which also outlined the methods behind choosing the 52 cultural occupation groups, Another article highlighted some strengths and limitations of the census for counting artists and cultural workers.
For census data, Statistics Canada defines rural “as an area with less than 1,000 inhabitants and a population density less than 400 people per square kilometre”. This is a fairly restrictive definition of rural life: many communities with more than 1,000 residents might also be considered rural.
To ensure confidentiality and data reliability, no estimates of fewer than 40 people are presented in this article.
The challenging context of the pandemic in the spring of 2021 is important to keep in mind when interpreting census data on artists, which were collected in May of 2021. Income data from the census relate to the 2020 calendar year.
Context: All artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers in Saskatchewan
A previous article, sponsored by SK Arts, outlined the situation of all artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers in Saskatchewan. The article showed that there are 3,900 professional artists in Saskatchewan, representing 1.9% of Canada's artists. Within the province, artists account for 0.6% of all 615,800 workers, a percentage that is below the national average of 1.0%. One in every 158 workers in Saskatchewan is an artist.
An interesting finding of the article is that women represent a higher proportion of artists in Saskatchewan than in any other province.
The median personal income (from all sources) of Saskatchewan’s artists was $27,800 in 2020, 45% lower than that of all Saskatchewan workers ($50,400) and below the median of all Canadian artists ($30,200).
The article also found that 21% of Saskatchewan’s artists reside in rural areas, the highest percentage outside of the Atlantic provinces. The Saskatchewan Arts Alliance, through its sponsor-level subscription to the Statistical insights on the arts series, requested a profile of these rural artists.
In Saskatchewan, there are 820 workers in five occupation groups that are classified as arts leaders and 16,300 workers in all 52 arts, culture, and heritage occupations.
830 of the 3,900 artists in Saskatchewan reside in rural areas
Of the 3,900 artists in Saskatchewan, 830 reside in rural areas (21% of the total).
In comparison, 63% of Saskatchewan’s artists reside in the Saskatoon and Regina areas, while 4% reside in the Prince Albert and Moose Jaw areas and 13% reside in areas with populations under 30,000 (but that are not considered rural).
Artists represent 0.4% of all workers in rural Saskatchewan, slightly below the proportion for the province as a whole (0.6%) and well below the proportion in the Saskatoon and Regina areas (0.9%).
In rural Saskatchewan, 1 in every 225 workers is an artist.
Rural Saskatchewan’s professional artists are more likely than artists in urban areas to be women, Indigenous, self-employed, and 55 years of age or over. They are less likely to have a bachelor’s degree. More specifically:
79% are women (including some transgender and non-binary people). This is much higher than the percentage of all Saskatchewan artists (65%), which itself is the highest percentage among the provinces.
17% are Indigenous, much higher than the proportion of all Saskatchewan artists (10%).
Very few (<40) are members of racialized groups.
Because of the structure of the data request, the following statistics were calculated for all areas of the province except for Saskatoon and Regina, i.e., all areas with populations under 100,000. Rural artists account for 57% of this broader group of artists. Among artists outside of Saskatoon and Regina:
77% are self-employed, higher than the proportion of all Saskatchewan artists (69%).
34% are 55 years of age or older, which is higher than the proportion of all Saskatchewan artists (29%).
26% have a bachelor’s degree or higher, lower than the percentage of all Saskatchewan artists (38%).
Many craftspeople reside in rural areas
Craftspeople are the largest artist occupation group in rural Saskatchewan, accounting for one in every four artists. This is different from the province as a whole, where musicians are the largest artist occupation.
In rural areas, the largest artist occupation groups are:
Artisans & craftspeople: 210 (25% of Saskatchewan’s rural artists)
Musicians: 150 (18%)
Painters, sculptors & other visual artists: 150 (18%)
Photographers: 120 (15%)
Dancers: 80 (10%)
Writers (except technical writers): 60 (8%)
In terms of the share of all Saskatchewan artists in each occupation group, craftspeople and visual artists are most likely to reside in rural areas (representing 39% and 32% of all workers in their occupation groups, respectively).
There are fewer than 40 rural residents in four artist occupation groups. (Forty people is the threshold of reliability for these statistics.) These occupation groups are:
Producers, directors, choreographers & related occupations
Actors, comedians & circus performers
Conductors, composers & arrangers
Other performers
Incomes of rural artists are even lower than other Saskatchewan artists
This article focuses on median incomes, which are believed to provide a better indication of the typical situation of professional artists than the average (i.e., the “mean”), which is more strongly affected by a few individuals with very high incomes.
Readers should keep in mind that the income statistics from the 2021 census relate to the 2020 calendar year, which included many pandemic related lockdowns and significant slowdowns in artistic activity.
The median employment income of rural Saskatchewan artists was just $7,500 in 2020, almost five times lower than the median employment income of all workers in rural Saskatchewan in the same year ($34,800). The median employment income of rural artists is 29% lower than the median of all Saskatchewan artists ($10,500).
The median personal income of rural artists (from all sources) was $24,400 in 2020, 49% lower than the median income of all workers in rural Saskatchewan ($48,000) and below the median of all Saskatchewan artists ($27,800).
The rural-urban difference in median incomes is larger for artists than other workers. The difference between rural artists and all Saskatchewan artists is 12%, compared with a difference of just 5% between all rural workers and all Saskatchewan workers.
The graph below shows the median personal incomes of artists and all workers in rural Saskatchewan and the province as a whole.
In 2020, the median household income of rural artists was $96,000, only slightly lower than that of all Saskatchewan artists ($98,000) but 10% below the median of all rural households ($117,000).
Over 100 rural arts leaders
In rural Saskatchewan, there are 110 workers in five occupation groups that are classified as arts leaders, representing 13% of the 820 arts leaders in the province. In 2020, the median personal income of rural Saskatchewan’s arts leaders was $47,600, 8% less than the median for all arts leaders in the province ($51,600).
3,300 workers in arts, culture, and heritage occupations
The 3,300 workers in arts, culture, and heritage occupations in rural Saskatchewan account for 20% of the 16,300 cultural workers in the province. The median personal income of cultural workers in rural Saskatchewan was $37,600 in 2020, 15% lower than the median for all cultural workers in the province ($44,000). As noted above, the difference between rural workers and all Saskatchewan workers is just 5%.