The culture sector in Atlantic Canada

The absence of a coherent set of statistics on the size and economic value of the culture sector in Atlantic Canada as a whole and in each province is a serious obstacle for art- ists, cultural entrepreneurs, professional organizations, and civil servants at all three levels of government interested in determining the relative contribution of cultural activi- ties to the provincial and regional ec [...] A SITUATION REPORT Configuration of the Culture Sector and Recent Trends Delimitation of the Sector The first problem in establishing the methodology of an economic study of the culture sector is setting definitions. [...] The size of the culture sector necessarily varies depending on the definition used; the broader the definition, the larger the sector. [...] Among recent examples are the following: New England Council, The Creative Economy Initiative: The Role of the Arts and Culture in New England’s Economic Competitiveness (Boston, MA: New England Council, 2000); Moore School of Enterprise, Division of Research, The Economic Impact of the Cultural Industry on the State of South Carolina (Columbia, SC: prepared for the SC Arts Commission, 2002); and [...] Some feel that these economic changes — notably the globalization of markets, digitization, the rise of the knowledge worker, the strength- ening of intellectual property, and changes in consumption habits — have had a cat- alyzing effect on the culture sector and have shot it to the centre of economic life.34 What can we say then about the impact of information technologies on the production and