As chaos roils south of the border, we Canadians find ourselves asking, again and again, what it means to be who we are.
In her thoughtful Substack essay, Shannon Litzenberger writes, “Sovereignty isn’t just a legal state of nationhood. It’s an imagination of what holds us together.” I couldn’t agree more.
But to imagine ourselves collectively, we need more than polite tolerance and hockey metaphors. We need art. We need artists. Not just for entertainment or “content,” but as civic agents. Building our capacity for complexity, meaning, and connection.
Yet the cultural sector is being hollowed out alongside every other piece of our social infrastructure. Fair wages, housing, healthcare, and journalism are all under strain. And still we ask artists to be mirrors, mentors, therapists, and visionaries. With what support?
Canada cannot sustain its cultural sovereignty if we treat culture as a luxury add-on.
We cannot outsource our identity to algorithms, foreign media giants, or market logic.
We cannot “Buy Canadian” our way out of this.
We need to invest in the conditions that make art possible.
We need to engage in shared cultural life, not just consume it.
This isn’t just about supporting artists. It’s about protecting our collective imagination, one of the few public processes still capable of holding nuance, of saying: we are not a brand, we are a people. And that means we’re still becoming.
Thank you to Patricia (Blakney) Huntsman, MBA, BA(She/Her/Hers) for this article showing up in my feed.
Direct link: https://lnkd.in/g59h63W9
hashtag#CulturalSovereignty hashtag#CanadianIdentity hashtag#ArtsFunding hashtag#CulturalCommons hashtag#PublicImagination hashtag#Reconciliation hashtag#CanadaIsNotAContentStrategy
Cultural Sovereignty Is a Creative Act
shannonlitzenberger.substack.com
Disclaimer: Featured image generated through WordPress AI tools. EMC3 Consulting is committed to the responsible use of AI as a tool and not a replacement for the work of artists and creatives.
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