Posts Tagged ‘Artists’

With Exit Through the Gift Shop now screening in cities across North America the elusive street artist Banksy seems to be making his mark right here in Toronto. Sightings of his work (the first in Canada) started popping up on Sunday and are quickly being painted over around the city. I sighted some on my way to the shop this morning just off Richmond, so here I am thinking about art and public space and what it takes to not only make a statement but to get people out and interested.

sighted on the streets of our city

(Torontoist has a running list of sightings and pictures if you’re in need of some adventure this evening.)

Shopgirls was thrilled to read recently that Parkdale has been found to be one of ten neighbourhoods in Canada with a high concentration of artists in the local workforce. Awesome!

Click here for the full article, where you can actually read about neighbourhoods with decreasing artist populations, mean salaries for artists by neighbourhood and even stats for female artists in certain area. And of course, here’s a snippet of the article, along with a list of the other neighbourhoods:

This study, prepared for the City of Vancouver, the City of Calgary, the City of Toronto, the City of Ottawa and the Ville de Montréal, shows that, collectively, the 53,500 artists in these five large cities represent 38% of all artists in Canada, a proportion that is much higher than the five cities’ share of the overall Canadian labour force (21%).

The report provides an analysis of artists residing in various postal regions – “neighbourhoods” – in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver in 2006. The report provides lists of the ten neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of artists in each city. Nearly 22,000 artists live in the 50 neighbourhoods in the five cities’ top ten lists. This represents 41% of the artists in the five cities and 16% of all artists in Canada.

Each of the five cities has areas with above-average concentrations of artists. However, among all Canadian neighbourhoods, certain Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver neighbourhoods have the highest concentration of artists.

1. Montreal’s H2T neighbourhood has 7.8% of the local labour force in the arts. H2T extends northward from avenue du Mont-Royal to avenue Van Horne (and the railway tracks) between St-Denis and Jeanne-Mance. This is the “most artistic neighbourhood” in Canada, with an artistic concentration that is nearly ten times the Canadian average (0.8%).
2. Montreal’s H2W neighbourhood, directly south of H2T, has an artistic concentration of 7.5%.
T3. Toronto’s M6R neighbourhood (Parkdale west to Parkside Drive) has 6.0% of its labour force in arts occupations.
T3. Montreal’s H2Y neighbourhood (the Old Montreal and Old Port areas) also has an artistic concentration of 6.0%.
5. Toronto’s M6J neighbourhood (West Queen West, centered on Trinity-Bellwoods Park) has 5.5% of its labour force in arts occupations.
T6. Toronto’s M6G neighbourhood (north of M6J, extending from College Avenue to St. Clair between Bathurst and Ossington) has 5.3% of the local labour force in arts occupations.
T6. Montreal’s H2J neighbourhood, which extends east of H2T (from St-Denis to Papineau between the railway tracks and Rachel) has an artistic concentration of 5.3%.
T8. Montreal’s H2V neighbourhood (Outremont) has 5.2% of its labour force in the nine arts occupations.
T8. Toronto’s M5R neighbourhood (the Annex and Yorkville areas) has 835 artists out of 15,910 total workers, for an artistic concentration of 5.2%.
10. Vancouver’s V5L neighbourhood (centered on Commercial Drive and extending from Burrard Inlet to East 1st Avenue between Clark Drive and Nanaimo Street) has 5.1% of the local labour force in arts occupations.

Below: Ten Toronto Neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of artists, 2006.