Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 05

November/December 2020 // Canadian Government Executive / 7 COVID-19 Culture: The cautious re-opening is fragile, and it could be reversed at any time. It’s better than being in full lockdown, but it’s not normal. Perhaps it is the “new normal”, but it’s hard to adjust to. Probably like you, I am frustrated and antsy. But if as consumers of culture we feel a bit frustrated, think of the impact on art- ists and cultural industries of all stripes. The impact is both economic and “spiri- tual”. COVID not only affects their liveli- hoods, but it also threatens to stifle creativ- ity and inspiration, although the degree of impact depends on the genre. Artists can still create, musicians perform and compose, and authors write, but without outlets for their work, the creative spirit is dampened (in addition to the problem of paying the bills). There is still the online world of course, and while it provides an alternative platform which works better for some forms of creativity than others, it is not a substitute for the human inter- action that participation in a live cultural event brings to both audiences and per- formers, consumers and artists. And let’s not diminish the economic im- pact. This is significant. A recent study pro- duced by Brookings, “Lost art: Measuring COVID-19’s devastating impact on America’s creative economy” , estimated the loss to the US economy for just the four-month period of April through July to be 2.7 million jobs and $150 billion in lost goods and services for creative industries. The hardest-hit sub- sector was fine and performing arts, losing 1.4 million jobs (50 per cent of the jobs in the sector) and $42 billion in sales as con- certs, theatres and galleries suspended operations. Design and advertising lost 13 per cent of jobs, publishing nine per cent, film and TV seven per cent with smaller losses among other categories such as architecture and fashion. Among specific occupations in the creative industries, the hardest hit were photographers, who saw a decline in jobs of almost 17 per cent with a 21 per cent decline in income, but many other occupations were also hit—musi- cians, actors, writers, artists, and so on. And this is in a diversified and sophisti- cated economy where digital penetration is high. Can you imagine the impact in countries less well endowed? In fact, UNESCO (United Nations Edu- cational, Scientific and Cultural Organi- zation) has surveyed the impact across A recent study estimated the loss to the US economy for just the four-month period of April through July to be 2.7 million jobs and $150 billion in lost goods and services for creative industries.