Cultural recreation and amateur artistic practice: Status report

Last updated February 15, 2022
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Do you organize artistic activities and want to know the best practices in cultural recreation? Check out this diagnostic analysis of cultural recreation venues in Montréal and this comparative study done in 10 cities around the world.

What is cultural recreation?

Cultural recreation is another word for amateur artistic activities and practice. It includes many disciplines: visual and performing arts, literature, music and crafts.

Report on cultural recreation in Montréal

A study was done to find out more about the places and facilities that specialize in amateur artistic practice in Montréal and to describe how they are used. Data were collected in 2021 from all the city’s boroughs, as well as from the Service des grands parcs, du Mont Royal and des sports.

Highlights 

  • 613 multi-purpose spaces in 311 buildings are used for cultural recreation activities:  66 per cent of the sites are owned by the city and 12 per cent are schools.
  • The spaces used are: 
  1. Permanently occupied by only one organization in 59 per cent of cases  
  2. Available free of charge 65 per cent of the time

Comparative study with other cities

To find out the best practices in management, organization and municipal supervision of cultural recreation and amateur arts practice, a recent study compared ten major cities: Barcelona, Bogota, Brasilia, Copenhagen, Manchester, San Francisco, Seoul, Sydney, Trois-Rivières and Vancouver.

Highlights 

  • The study identified three organizational models: partner municipality, beneficial municipality, and hybrid model
  • The common denominator of the three models is the transversal dimension of cultural recreation and amateur artistic practice: Cultural and artistic activities cut across several municipal departments and lead to various partnerships, collaborations and practices.

English translation available upon request (Highlights only). Contact us: [email protected].

This diagnostic report and study were done by Artenso - centre de recherche art et engagement social in collaboration with the city’s Service de la culture.

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