Savvy home buyers and astute business people, who are searching for a new neighbourhood in which to live or work, increasingly investigate artistic activity to determine the strength and vibrancy of a community.

The Canada Council for the Arts, in acknowledgment of the importance of this community-based creativity, transformed a temporary initiative to foster artistic community collaboration into a permanent, fully-funded program. As of April 1, 2007, the Council pilot project, designed to bring professional artists and the broader community together across the wide spectrum of artistic disciplines, will be renamed the Artist and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP) and will become permanently integrated into the Council's regular funding programs.

ACCP offers opportunities for all regions of the country:

• to find expression through creative collaborations with leading professional artists, and
• to gain financial support for projects that connect professional artists and communities.

"Between 1991 and 2001, the number of artists in Canada grew significantly—by 29%," said Donna Balkan, Senior Communications Manager for the Canada Council. "In 1957, there were 4 or 5 professional theatre companies. Now, there are several hundred. Canadian artists are winning international awards. The level of artistic education in Canadian universities has risen significantly."

Interest in creativity promises to grow as many Baby Boomers and their parents join a popular trend toward second careers and lifestyles with an artistic bent. This may, in part, explain continued growth in Canada's artistic communities. Not only are there more professional artists—painters, actors, writers etc.—they are involving larger groups of "non artists" in their artistic endeavours through courses, cooperatives, festivals and other community events.

According to a report commissioned by the Canada Council to make recommendations about artistic trends and funding patterns, "Communities are actively engaging with artists and with each other, creating public art and performance, infusing their neighbourhoods and their lives with meaning and beauty and integrating art into everyday life."

Since 2002, the Council has funded over 400 collaborative projects, including:

• A film and new media training program for youth in Toronto's Regent Park, which is currently the site of massive urban redevelopment.
• Seven months of multi-disciplinary artistic and organizational workshops which led to a harvest fair, parade and festival coinciding with Vancouver's Asian Mid-Autumn Festival and involving more than 2,000 participants.

"The arts are important economically," said Balkan, explaining that art establishes discussion and brings social cohesion. "We live in a time when attracting intelligent, well-educated workers is important. A lot of studies have shown that workers are attracted to areas with high quality of life."

Artists have long been seen as the harbingers of gentrification—see PJ's earlier column "Square Feet Helps Canadian Artists Buy and Lease." They move into under-utilized, affordable commercial or industrial space and transform the area into vibrant residential and commercial neighbourhoods, raising real estate values in the process.

Kelly Hill, President of Ontario-based Hill Strategies Research Inc., has combined his formal training in economics and political science with an interest in the arts to provide statistical insights into Canada's "creative communities." He admits that his personal search for a neighbourhood to settle in was swayed by the arts: "I did not have hard data to go on, but I looked at a number of areas and this one had a lot of artists and a lot of creative [evidence]."