Social Cohesion

Social cohesion is key to life in Canada. In general, social cohesion refers to a sense of:

• belonging 
• trust
• inclusion 
• care for one another
• togetherness

Regions with a larger sense of social cohesion see greater levels of civic and political participation. While social cohesion is a result of celebrating diversity and community, it simultaneously fosters those same feelings of solidarity. 

Evidence suggests that social cohesion is declining around the world, including in Canada. At the same time, research shows 75% of Canadians believe that attending arts and culture events positively impacts their sense of belonging in Canada, demonstrating that the arts build social cohesion. The arts and culture sector has a unique ability to bring communities together, which is being acknowledged by organizations across the country, as well as the Canadian government. 

However, in an age where trust in both people and institutions is at a historic low, there is a need for increased effort to improve social cohesion in Canada. Not only are communities at stake, but indeed the country itself. The arts and culture sector can be an organic solution that strengthens social bonds, promotes civic pride, encourages inclusion, celebrates diversity, and much more.

Some arts organizations resist the idea that their value be scrutinized for their contributions to social cohesion, based on a belief that their mandates should be appreciated for their artistic contribution and aesthetic benefit to audiences and culture. Without an explicit mandate in Arts in Health, or explicit partnerships with organizations that deliver social benefit programs in parallel with their artistic programming, allocating resources to this can be experienced as external pressure to expand mission.

This tension comes up when funder or investor calls for evidence of contributions to social cohesion are experienced as a demand for arts and culture organizations to position themselves primarily as social purpose organizations. This can be perceived as a call to reorganize their efforts around delivering social value programs rather than developing, producing, and presenting artistic work, and engaging audiences around that work.

Based on significant effort by Make the Case Research Assistants in 2025/6, particularly around the multiple definitions of social cohesion available, it is clear that arts and culture organizations implicitly already generate social cohesion value. The challenge to produce social contribution evidence is not likely related to types of artistic programming, but around ways to make visible and credible the deep contribution to the social fabric of society that arts and culture already knows that it generates, without mission expansion. Make the Case is developing resources to build sector capacity to this end.

The sector contributed $65 billion in direct GDP to the Canadian economy in 2024 and supports 1.1 million jobs across the country. Arts and culture is growing faster and supporting more jobs per dollar than other key sectors like oil and gas, manufacturing or agriculture.

The 2025 Artworks Report clearly establishes with data and cases the importance of local community organizations and projects in generating this value and explicitly connects this value to social cohesion benefits. See our Summary Note for more detail (pdf) and our Research Snapshot.

At the same time:

• Many community-driven projects depend on external funding to begin or expand their work. With limited consistent funding across different levels of government, accessing investment plays an important role.
• Investment in this sector at the community and project level is a precursor to the immense socio-economic benefits that impact communities across the country
• These benefits align with the stated high-level goals of the federal government, which has currently allocated over $471 million to Creativity, arts and culture spending. (See Spotlight on Canadian Heritage below).

Making the case for social cohesion generated through specific projects in communities is one mechanism to connect the dots between these large federal investments and the work that arts and culture are already doing in communities to generate social cohesion.