Canadian Cultural Policy and the Performing Arts

This course starts with exploring individual artistic identity, and ways to build an online community and network around personal artistic practice. It further explores the ways that arts funding works in Canada, the forces that shape public cultural policy and the principal arts funding bodies. It examines the role and status of the artist in contemporary Canadian society and beyond, establishing the emerging Canadian artist as a global citizen, forging their practice in an ever more interconnected and interdependent post-Covid world. Diversity and inclusion, social justice and anti-racist activism as well as Indigenous people's movements for decolonization are impacting policy and opportunity for diverse artists, and this course helps students from all backgrounds to gain insight into how to access public, foundation and private funding in order to sustain their own arts practice.