Are Black, Asian, and other racialized workers well represented among professional artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers in Canada?

My analysis shows that there are more than 38,000 racialized artists in Canada, including nearly 25,000 Asian artists and 6,400 Black artists

Today’s post examines the representation of racialized individuals within 4 broad groupings of occupations: professional artists, arts leaders, workers in cultural occupations, and all Canadian workers, based on data from the 2021 census. The post examines the representation of racialized artists, not their incomes. I am planning to create and release a comparison of median incomes in two weeks.

In this post, I generally use the term racialized to refer to what Statistics Canada has called the visible minority population. According to the Employment Equity Act, visible minority people include “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." National statistics indicate that the racialized population consists mainly of the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese.

Experiences of discrimination and racism are common in Canada, as is shown in statistics on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous discrimination, race-based harassment and attacks during COVID-19, the recent rise in anti-Asian racism, as well as a summary article on anti-Black racism. However, each racialized person has unique history and experiences.

The statistics in this post cannot capture the full range of those experiences. In fact, to enable a focus on artists – a relatively small population group – it has been necessary to combine some groups of racialized people into summary categories to ensure data reliability and clarity of analysis. The summary categories in this post are: Black people, Asian people, people with multiple racialized identities, people from other racialized groups, and non-racialized people.

Details of the census questions and other notes regarding methods are provided at the end of this post.

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All artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers in Canada

There are 202,900 professional artists who reside in Canada, representing 1.0% of the overall labour force. A finer analysis shows that 1 in every 102 Canadian workers is an artist. (A full article related to Canadian artists is available, including a list of the 10 artist occupation groups.)

56,200 Canadians work in five occupation groups that are classified as arts leaders. For more information on the occupation groups included as arts leaders, please see this Canada-wide article. Readers should note that two arts leadership occupations (conductors / composers and producers / directors / choreographers) are also included as artists. As such, the number of arts leaders should not be added to the number of artists.

The broadest analysis relates to the 914,000 Canadians who work in arts, culture, and heritage occupations. These workers represent 4.4% of the Canadian labour force. One in every 23 Canadian workers has a cultural occupation. The 52 occupation groups in this category 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).

Interested in a deeper profile of Black, Asian, or racialized artists? Subscribe now at the sponsor / shareable level (just $750) to get a custom post with intersectional breakdowns (gender, education, age, occupation). Bonus: you’ll receive access to every other subscribers-only post for the next 12 months.

Racialized artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers in Canada

Of Canada’s 202,900 artists, 38,300 are racialized, including:

• 24,600 Asian artists

• 6,400 Black artists

• 2,000 artists with multiple racialized identities

• 5,300 artists with another racialized identity (including, for example, Arab people, Latino/a/x people)