Why Culture needs Abundance?
Abundance begins where resentment ends. In Canada’s cultural landscape gatekeeping, austerity, and cynicism often reign. Embracing abundance could mark a radical shift. Not with endless dollars or utopian idealism, but in how we define value, community, and future vision. The politics of resentment, prevalent across ideological spectrums, thrives on the scarcity myth: that there’s not enough room, not enough funding, not enough future. But to quote from an undeniably successful Canadian voice: "isn't it ironic?" that scarcity sits inevitably at the ass end of equity? And that the concept of scarcity has such an intense hold on our psyche that it has us believing that equity equals poverty. How did that happen?
Different things won't happen unless we try different things.
It seems that everyone feels that too much has changed or is changing, and the imperative now is to try and STOP the change. Across political spectrums - it appears that “change” is bad and we need to go back to when it was good. But what if - like certain energized idea makers - growth means tending to the garden that will feed our bodies and souls?
Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics offers a helpful lens: a thriving society lives between a social foundation (what people need) and an ecological ceiling (what the planet can bear). Amsterdam used this framework post-COVID to guide decisions around housing, food systems, and energy, balancing equity and sustainability—not perfection, but progress.
What if Canada’s cultural policy did the same? Instead of beginning every grant cycle or strategy session with deficit talk and apologies, we start with a vision of shared abundance: that art is essential, that the future has yet to be created, and that cultural ecosystems are gardens, not pies.
What if we actually worked to win as opposed to shying away from the game? Let’s reframe competition: not for the remaining crumbs, but for better ideas, more abundant gardens?
A cultural policy rooted in abundance doesn’t deny complexity or injustice—it just refuses to stop there. It dares to move beyond critique into creation, And that’s where the future begins.
David, Owais, SGS
