by Kallee Lins
The Creative City Summit, hosted by the Creative City Network of Canada, took place in Kingston, Ontario, on October 7 to 9, 2025. Most delegates to the annual summit are municipal workers from towns and cities of all sizes eager to better support artists, cultural workers, and cultural event attendees in their communities. While I’m certainly in the minority as a non-profit worker (I’m the Executive Director of the West Kootenay Regional Arts Council), the summit is an unparalleled opportunity to learn how my organization can better align its regional research and advocacy work with the goals of municipalities—all to support and advance the good work of our local arts colleagues across the Columbia Basin.
A concept that ran through the gathering was that of art as infrastructure. Just as roads connect us, culture also connects us—as individuals holding our own unique stories, members of neighbourhoods and representatives of our cultural heritage. This framing opened the door to concrete discussions about ways to measure and map what local culture looks like, making physical spaces available for cultural use and communicating the value of cultural creation and participation, both at economic and social levels.
The first conversation I took part in, and one of the most stimulating, was a panel discussion titled How Consultants and Cities Shape Culture. It explored the ways in which municipalities and consultants work together in the context of cultural planning. There was an optimism amongst the moderator and panellists—some of Canada’s top arts consultants: Christina Bagatavicius, Bridget MacIntosh, Analee Adair and Megan Lynch (with Kristen Bettiol providing insights from the municipal side of the equation)—about the level of maturity and respect that cultural planning has reached, but also an acknowledgement that its support lags behind other aspects of municipal planning. One of the consultants mentioned that cultural planning is where recreation was 30 years ago; we’ve come a long way as cultural advocates, but there are still hills to climb.
The relationship of artists and cultural organizations to these municipal plans is complicated. One of the consultants noted that the cultural community often feels that these plans are “theirs,” but they primarily serve the interests of the city. There can be an uneasy tension between community input and the trade-offs that need to be made for a city to adopt these plans as planning blueprints.
With that in mind, I asked the group about how planning processes can support artists and the cultural community in their own local advocacy. The planning process inevitably ends, but hopefully the relationships to individual artists and cultural organizations do not. How can these plans help to further the community’s ongoing efforts?
Analee Adair took the lead in recommending that any planning process create a baseline of where the sector is at now. It’s imperative to create a baseline of how much activity is happening and what it looks like. Over time, the cultural community can demonstrate what change there has been, to “keep council on their toes” about where local arts and culture is going. Impact assessments, repeated over time, should be a cultural worker’s best friend.
That may sound daunting, but resources surfaced throughout the conference to help tell the story of arts and culture’s local impact. On my list to access is the Culture Statistics Strategy data provided by the Creative Cities Network. Network members can opt in to receive two datasets each year: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and culture-sector employment for the year, and total GDP and employment from 2010 through present.
However, data alone won’t change hearts and minds. We need a narrative of impact and urgency that supports necessary investment in arts and culture. The conference keynote by Michelle Chawla, CEO of the Canada Council, was a masterclass in just that. She reminded attendees that arts and culture creates healthier and better-connected communities and sustains jobs that support families and revitalize neighbourhoods. The arts generate creative solutions to complex challenges and, at this critical time, artists are responding to questions about Canada’s identity and sovereignty.
Rooted in the belief that the arts are for everyone, she emphasized the conclusion of a report by the World Bank that stated that “cities must become cultural and creative ecosystems to succeed.” The World Bank certainly isn’t interested in arts for arts’ sake: it knows the economic case for the arts is clear. The cultural sector contributed $65 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2024, and every dollar of federal investment in arts and culture generates $29 in economic activity. (Read the artworks report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.)
As we talk about the social and economic impact of the arts, we don’t want to lose sight of the reality that one’s connection to culture is incredibly personal. I was inspired by the cultural mapping work completed recently in Kamloops. Thompson Rivers University and the City of Kamloops, with the support of consultant Patricia Huntsman, led a community-based cultural mapping process at the Kamloops Museum and Archives. This process invited Kamloops residents to draw a map of culture in Kamloops that went far beyond traditional mapping of arts facilities. These maps were used to understand natural heritage (e.g. parks, gardens), festivals and events, intangible cultural assets (e.g. place names, ceremonies), community cultural organizations and more. A rigorous data-coding process allowed all of this community-based experience to feed into You Are Here: Kamloops Cultural Strategic Plan 2024–2034.
By the end of this conference, I felt increased confidence in our communities’ abilities to share the unique local values that arts and culture provides. We have data at our disposal, but more importantly, we have hundreds and thousands of community members with a map in their hearts of what culture means to them. If we can start fitting them together, we’re well on our way to positioning arts and culture as critical infrastructure.
