How Canadian arts groups delivered family benefits for gig workers

After decades of artists and arts workers straining to work on inflexible schedules and short-term gigs, a group of Canadian organizations are establishing policies and benefits to better accommodate the family needs of artist-caregivers. 

Among them are parents of young children, people caring for their own elderly parents, and others with caregiving and kinship responsibilities. Without these necessary benefits, those arts workers might have to leave the sector altogether. 

“As a short-term contract artist or arts worker, you’re not seeing wellness programs, employee benefits, parental leave [or] easy access to EI,” said Susie Burpee, the executive director of Balancing Act. 

An organization founded to increase access and security in arts employment for mothers, parents and caregivers, Balancing Act found in a 2019 survey that more than 70 per cent of professional artists had to turn down paid work due to caregiving responsibilities. 

Burpee, herself a former professional dance artist with an MA in drama, theatre and performance studies, found that a six-day work week was very common in the theatre world. Arts spaces were also not always accommodating of caregivers, especially parents, she said. 

“If you do bring your child into a space, or if you do need to leave early for [school] pick-up, that’s somehow deemed less professional or less focused,” she said. “There’s this idea that in order to exist in the arts, you need to be 100 per cent available.” 

Over the past five years, Balancing Act has convened arts organizations through the Level UP! initiative, which supports the development of caregiving and compassion policies in the arts. Starting out working exclusively with performing arts companies, the initiative has now expanded to include professionals in the music, visual arts and screen-based media industries. 

Among its partners are the Toronto Fringe Festival, Canadian Stage, and the Stratford Festival. 

During Level UP!’s initial pilot that ran between 2021 and 2024, nearly 92 per cent of the artists impacted by these new policies reported an improvement in their quality of life, ability to participate in their work, overall workplace culture, and work / life balance. 

The majority of organizations felt that they could find room in their annual budgets to sustain these caregiving support initiatives beyond the pilot. 

More recently, Women in Music Canada and Music Publishers Canada published a report on caregiver needs among professional musicians, finding that many musicians were unaware of available caregiving support. 

The report reiterated the need for more family-friendly practices in touring, rehearsing and production schedules, as well as opportunities for hybrid, flexible and fractional employment to accommodate caregiving responsibilities. That said, there was also a recognition that a slower-paced touring schedule can be unattractive to funders and grantmakers. 

Robyn Stewart, the executive director of Women in Music Canada, recalled the impact of a microgrant that allowed an Indigenous DJ to take her daughter to a gig in a Northern community. 

“It was incredibly interesting for her, as well as for us, to see her daughter engage with that programming,” Stewart said. 

“And I think that what was great for me is that when you can bring [your children] along, and you would just assume you couldn’t, it adds other elements that we miss.”

How did caregiving policies take shape?

Keeping women and gender-diverse people employed in the arts and culture sectors is critical to Canada’s economy at the moment, Burpee said. According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s October 2025 report, the country’s arts and culture sectors contributed $65 billion in direct GDP to the economy in 2024. 

Much as accessibility ramps for people with disabilities also open access to people with strollers, Burpee emphasized that caregiver-centred policies and work patterns have positive impacts for other workers in the arts and culture sectors as well. 

“I want to acknowledge all the different vectors of care that we’re working with,” she said. “The folks that we have worked with are looking at things like compassionate scheduling in film to accommodate scheduled injections. To consider all forms of family, like blood, adopted, foster [and] chosen.

“Kinship circles of care are really big in the arts [and] we create our own families because we move away from our families, we’re queer, or because we’re just loving the people we’re working with.”

As part of the Level UP! initiatives, arts organizations across Canada trialled new policies, compassion funds, flexible working methods, on-site childcare and other methods to allow parents and caregivers to show up fully at work. 

CADA East, a professional association for dance artists, established a caregiver subsidy program (CSP), which continues to run today. Eligible artists can claim the cost of childcare up to $7 per hour, up to $350 per year. 

“In particular, dance artists face a very unique challenge, as financial instability and insufficient supports can be a strong driver of an artist’s choice to move away from larger cities in order to sustain their career, or even step away from their career in dance,” said Rhonda Baker and Valerie Calam, staff at CADA East. 

“Often, there are artist-mothers who feel like they need to keep their motherhood a secret because they think it’s going to be viewed perhaps negatively, as some kind of risk to your career,” added Neena Jayarajan, vice president of CADA East’s board, at the launch of the CSP. 

Two Vancouver-based theatre companies also launched compassion funds as part of the Level UP! initiative.

At rice & beans theatre, which spotlights the work of marginalized artists of colour, founders Pedro Chamale and Derek Chan only got access to full health benefits themselves last year. 

“There isn’t much that the [compassion fund] doesn’t cover,” Chamale said, recalling examples of the fund being used by artists to cover the cost of medication, childcare, parking tickets, and even a massage. 

During the rehearsal period of any new production, Chamale actively lets artists know to take advantage of the fund. Now, he says, it is a non-negotiable, immovable part of the theatre company’s budget. 

At Neworld Theatre, the team went beyond providing financial assistance to launching a bespoke Framework of Care policy, developed in conjunction with HR consultants and lawyers. 

Having already worked with artists with disabilities and neurodivergence, the theatre company recognized its role in allowing artists to show up with their needs met, said Managing Director Alen Dominguez. 

Rather than setting aside a predetermined amount in its budget, the company needed to be a bit more nimble with how much money it dedicated to its fund to avoid internal competition between artists, and to foster a sense of accountability and shared support among them, Dominguez said. 

In order to do so, artists requesting support are asked to evaluate the extent to which they might be hindered from participating in the project without it.

Both Chamale and Dominguez recognized that because such support has not been available to professional artists before, they are sometimes reluctant to seek it out, or guilty when they have to use compassion funds. 

For Dominguez, this is particularly the case among pre-COVID generations, who “have been conditioned to just show up, shut up and work.” The tide, he said, is now turning.