A Degrowth Future for the Arts?

In this digital residency in collaboration with Érudit, Sophie Dubeau Chicoine explores the potential of degrowth as a practice in the arts, focusing on the ways in which degrowth can contribute to the well-being of local and artistic communities. The digital residencies were made possible with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.


In the spring of 2024, hundreds of artists and cultural workers gathered in the streets of Montréal to demand better provincial funding for the arts. Without adequate funding, the cultural sector has no choice but to intensify its efforts to maintain its programming, further exhausting members of the profession. In its press release of May 3, 2024, the Grande Mobilisation des artistes du Québec reiterated the urgent need for an additional $100 million in financial aid “to absorb rising costs, maintain our resources and skills, hold on to our staff, and allow us to grow.”1 1  - Grande Mobilisation des artistes du Québec, “La grande manifestation pour les arts #2,” Réseau Art actuel (May 3, 2024), reseauartactuel.org/grande-manifestation-pour-les-arts-2-le-jeudi-16-mai-a-15h/ (our translation).  In perpetual anticipation of this government support,2 2  - In mid-May, the minister of culture and communications, Mathieu Lacombe, announced an increase of $15 million for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec’s mission support program, an amount that fell well short of the requested $100 million.  it seems fitting to reflect on what we collectively mean by “grow.” Do we wish to increase our financial resources in order to generate still more material and energy resources in return? Not only does this strategy hinder our environmental goals but it offers no relief to our already exhausted colleagues and collaborators. On the other hand, what if the increase in our financial resources served, at last , to radically transform our working practices? During this digital residency, I took on the mission of imagining an alternate future for the arts, one based on degrowth. While going through the digital archives of both Esse and Érudit, I came to realize that hints of degrowth already exist in the Québec landscape, in the productions of artists, cultural practitioners, and ephemeral exhibition venues.

The Call for Degrowth

Western capitalist imaginary assumes the possibility of infinite production and consumption in a world in which resources—human, material, energy—are in fact finite. In contrast, degrowth proposes a relational economy aimed toward collective wellbeing, within planetary limits. On a policy level, some of the most publicized of these demands concern the establishment of a universal basic income and a shorter work week. At a community level, many initiatives participate in the creation and maintenance of networks of care, inspired by certain feminist groups and mutual aid services. These various engagements are intended to imagine what our professional and social lives might look like beyond the options given by the public and private sectors. I believe this affective and speculative dimension makes degrowth a fertile and transformative terrain for the arts sector.