Cultural spending in Ontario, Canada: trends in public and private funding

Abstract

Governments around the world have accepted the idea that spending on culture can have economic side‐effects such as attracting high technology industry, regenerating urban economies, or increasing a country’s status in the global economy. As governments increased their cultural spending, however, critics charged that their interest reflected an instrumental approach to funding the arts that prioritized large cultural organizations and iconic building projects with the potential to attract tourists over more mundane matters such as operating funding. This study examines flows of government and private funding to cultural organizations in the province of Ontario, Canada on the basis of the size of these organizations. The data show that in real terms, government operating grants to organizations that have received large infrastructural grants for building projects were lower in 2006 than in the pre‐spending cut era of 1990. When a larger group of arts organizations is examined by size, the reality is more complicated than either advocates or critics of the instrumental approach claim. One universal pattern across all size categories is the increase in private funding to cultural organizations in Ontario.

Keywords:

• state funding
• cultural policy
• cultural tourism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Laura McDonald for her research assistance and Nichole Anderson of Business for the Arts for access to the data used in this study.