Kelly Hill has made a name for himself as Canada’s foremost economic researcher on arts and culture. He founded his Hamilton-based company, Hill Strategies, in 2002. Twenty years later, he launched a Substack newsletter, Statistical Insights on the Arts, to provide in-depth analysis to subscribers.
In today’s newsletter, Hill revealed that arts products generated $38 billion in revenue across Canada last year.
“The measurement of arts products in this article is imperfect and partial – a measurement of convenience rather than one that was specifically designed to capture all facets of the arts,” Hill acknowledges in Statistical Insights on the Arts. “It’s my combination, not one created by Statistics Canada.”
He describes the $38-billion figure as a “minimum measurement of the revenues, GDP impact, and jobs related to arts products”. That’s because it doesn’t account for government-owned arts venues, funding, and support organizations. Nor does it cover education and training.
Hill makes use of Statistics Canada’s categories for art products. They include live performance, visual arts (not including architecture, advertising, and design), books, film and video (not counting broadcasting and interactive media), and sound recording and music publishing.
In first place was film and video at $14.3 billion, followed by visual arts at $12.4 billion. These two categories accounted for 71 percent of all revenue for arts products in 2024, not counting the exceptions listed above.
Live performance ranked third at $7.6 billion, with books at $2.3 billion and sound recording and music publishing at $1.5 billion.
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