Workforce Development in Arts & Culture Roundtable
Executive Summary
In an effort to more accurately reflect the diversity of the population, there is a great demand for equity-deserving artists across the arts and culture sector. However, careers in arts and culture most often involve non-traditional employment, with professionals taking up multiple employment opportunities, including self-employment, entrepreneurship and contract jobs within a range of organizations. Traditional career pathway models that result in a full-time, long-term role need to be re-imagined for Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ early-career creatives to be successful in the arts and culture sector.
This project sought to connect Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ early-career creatives with clients in need of creative talent (including several City of Toronto departments), creating a talent pipeline that offered inclusive, supportive, accredited and work-integrated learning experiences.
Despite being challenged to pivot in-person offerings to virtual delivery, the project arranged paid creative contracts with project partners, including several City of Toronto departments, alongside learning opportunities that included portfolio and proposal development workshops, one-on-one coaching, core skills training and accredited courses in media production, design and business skills for creative professionals.
Over its two-year delivery, 61 participants – 100% of whom were Indigenous, Black, or a Person of Colour, and more than half of whom were also gender- and sexually diverse (2SLGBTQIA+) – worked with 19 partners in paid contracts.
This project offers lessons for decision-makers with an interest in supporting workforce development across the arts and culture sector, as the widely successful career pathway models require reimagining to be successful where non-standard employment is the norm.
Key Insights
Nineteen distinct partners hosted 61 total contracts resulting in 75 distinct projects comprising digital illustration, digital video, graphic design, photography and social media marketing campaigns.
Collectively, participants completed more than 200 OCAD University continuing studies courses.
More positive outcomes may have been possible if partners hosting paid contracts had undergone equity, diversity, inclusion and Reconciliation training to better support program participants in their roles.
The Issue
Pathways to employment in the arts and culture sector are non-linear and complex, and take time and sustainable investment to cultivate. Unlike workforce development programs with training requirements leading to specific job roles or categories, media arts professionals rely on multiple employment opportunities, including self-employment, entrepreneurship and jobs within a range of organizations. Creative industries offer significant employment opportunities within in-demand sectors, yet they do so in non-traditional employment contracts. There is even greater demand for equity-deserving artists, where there is a demonstrated need for greater representation in the sector.
Since the creative sector is often project- and contract-based rather than full-time and salaried, and because it is so dependent upon networks to find employment opportunities, employment and professional development pathways must be reimagined to be applicable in this sector.
Other jurisdictions have developed models with promise, including in British Columbia, the United States and the United Kingdom. These models work with a variety of cross-sector stakeholders to respond to both the unique needs of equity-deserving creatives and the recurring creative challenges experienced by sector employers.

What We Investigated
The project’s primary objective was to enhance access for early-career creatives into the media arts and creative industries labour force, particularly for young people who are Indigenous, Black, a Person of Colour, and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ early-career creatives. The project intended to connect motivated, job-ready, early-career creatives with clients in need of creative talent, creating a talent pipeline that offered inclusive, supportive, accredited and work-integrated learning experiences. Clients included
- divisions of the City of Toronto (including city planning, the city clerk’s office and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation);
- core partners and their affiliates (such as OCAD University, the Toronto Arts Foundation and Mass Culture);
- local, creative small businesses (such as Corex Creative Inc., LOOP: Design for Social Good Inc. and Xvxy Photo).
The project arranged paid creative contracts with project partners alongside learning opportunities that included portfolio and proposal development workshops, one-on-one coaching, core skills training and accredited courses in media production, design and business skills for creative professionals.
The project also hosted an event called Workforce Development in Arts and Culture Roundtable: Skills for a Creative Future in September 2022.
What We’re Learning
The project enrolled 61 participants over its two-year delivery, 100% of whom were Indigenous, Black, or a Person of Colour, and more than half of whom were also gender- and sexually diverse (2SLGBTQIA+). Collectively, participants completed more than 200 OCAD University continuing studies courses, which led to 14 certificates in business skills for creative professionals being awarded and an additional 23 awarded by the end of 2022. Over $244,000 in contract funding was directly awarded to participants. Nineteen distinct partners hosted 61 total contracts resulting in 75 distinct media assets, deliverables, and creative campaigns, which were developed in formats such as digital
illustration, digital video, graphic design, photography and social media marketing campaigns.
The pandemic necessitated the introduction of a youth liaison
The pandemic forced the project team to virtualize in-person delivery, which had a negative impact on the mental load for program staff and on participants. As a result of these challenges, the project team created a dedicated liaison role to provide coaching and outreach services to support participant success and replace the continual, informal check-ins that in-class and on-site attendance would normally offer. While the pandemic strained the capacity of the partnerships and impacted the performance of participants, the regular contact with the youth liaison was instrumental in achieving positive outcomes for participants.
International injustices deepened the project’s commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and Reconciliation
The project was implemented amid the global protests following the deaths of George Floyd in the United States and Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto. These events and the subsequent protests deeply impacted program partners and participants and led to changes that signalled the project’s commitment to advancing inclusion and belonging. Participant-directed and community-led feedback resulted in the following changes:
- making explicit reference to Indigenous, Black, and/or Persons of Colour (rather than IBPOC or BIPOC, previously);
- listing Two-Spirit at the beginning of the acronym commonly used to refer to gender and sexual diversity (2SLGBTQ+ rather than LGBTQ2S+);
- referring to program individuals as “being” rather than “identifying as” in program materials, including internal and external communications, to assert a more unambiguous support of the legitimacy of identity claims (particularly among 2SLGBTQIA+ participants);
- referring to communities as “equity deserving” and “equity-denied” (rather than as “equity seeking”);
- preferring terms such as “early-career creatives,” “early-career professionals,” or “emerging professionals” to “youth creatives” in order to challenge ageist misperceptions of professional experience and technical expertise assumed about youth.
Investing in relationship development and partner support would lead to better outcomes
The project would have benefitted from planning for more time to do deliberate partnership building among core partners at the outset of the project, such as through a leadership retreat, as well as more time for partners to collaborate on program design and development, including in-person design brainstorming workshops, committee development, and co-authoring of program policy and operations manuals. More positive outcomes may have also been possible if partners hosting paid contracts had undergone equity, diversity, inclusion and Reconciliation training to better support program participants in their roles.
Why It Matters
This project offers lessons for decision-makers with an interest in supporting workforce development across the arts and culture sector. While career pathway models have been shown to be successful across a range of sectors, they require reimagining to be applicable in sectors where non-standard employment is the norm.
This project also offers lessons in how to develop and implement workforce development programs for Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the early stages of their careers. Inclusion must be built into program terminology and communications, and into the selection of mentors/presenters and employers. Workforce development initiatives serving these groups that have not deliberately included equity, diversity, inclusion and Reconciliation considerations into planning are less likely to be successful in helping these groups overcome the additional barriers they face.

State of Skills:
Leveraging the Skills of Newcomers
The path from newcomer selection to arrival in Canada, and workplace integration and career development, is far from straightforward and one that entails numerous touch points with different immigrant partners, associations and government entities.
What’s Next
In the future, ArtWorksTO is seeking to expand its programming with funds from the City of Toronto, the Directors Guild of Canada and Desjardins Inc. The expansion will focus on cultivating an alumni network that will offer past participants opportunities for networking, professional development and employment contracts. Partners in the alumni network include Warner Music Canada Co., Wealthsimple Foundation, SmartSimple Software Inc. and York University’s Social Procurement Vendor Portal Directory.
In addition, ArtWorksTO program leads will be involved in the development of the City of Toronto’s 10-year culture plan to prioritize workforce development in arts and culture.
Have questions about our work? Do you need access to a report in English or French? Please contact communications@fsc-ccf.ca.
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How to Cite This Report
McDonough, L. (2024) Project Insights Report: ArtworksTO. Toronto: Future Skills Centre. https://fsc-ccf.ca/projects/a-program-for-young-moms-in-northern-manitoba/
ArtWorksTO is funded by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Program. The opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.