Arts Commons and Calgary Arts Development drive major returns for city’s arts sector: report

In a city where every budget line gets second-guessed, the arts has receipts.

The 2024 Civic Partner Annual Report, presented to the Community Development Committee Thursday, outlines what the city put into the sector — and what came out.

Calgary Arts Development (CADA) — the city’s arts funding and development agency — channeled nearly $15 million in grant dollars to local artists, collectives, and organizations in 2024.

That investment powered over 5,000 youth-focused education activities and supported a growing list of equity-deserving initiatives. In total, grantees reached more than five million participants, helping keep the arts a visible and accessible part of city life.

While it’s hard to assign a single dollar value to that kind of impact, one metric offers perspective: $19.8 million in investment divided by 5.1 million participants equals less than $4 per person reached.

The social return on investment includes city-wide exposure to equity-deserving artists, Indigenous artists, and youth-led programming.

If you’re looking for a hard dollar return on investment, look to Arts Commons.

Home to Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, the Calgary Philharmonic, several visual arts galleries, and educational programming, the complex showed significant returns in 2024.

For every $1 the city invested, Arts Commons generated $3; that’s $15.8 million in revenue, built from just over $5.2 million in public funding.

The venue hosted more than 2,000 performances, workshops, and events, drew over 290,000 ticketed attendees, and reached close to 20,000 students through outreach. It also posted a surplus of $183,756, making it one of the few civic partners to end the year in the black — while continuing to deliver a full schedule of accessible programming.

Together, Arts Commons and CADA offered a compelling return on investment in 2024 — not just economically, but socially.

And that return is poised to grow.

A major redevelopment is now underway: the $660 million Arts Commons Transformation (ACT) and Olympic Plaza Transformation (OPT).

Arts Commons is also preparing to rebrand as The Werklund Centre, following a $75 million donation to help evolve the campus into one of the largest contiguous arts-focused spaces in the country.

The transformation is expected to generate $386 million in GDP for Calgary during construction. It will create 3,155 local jobs, and bring in $9.8 million in new municipal revenue. Once complete, the expanded campus is projected to contribute $59 million in annual economic output, supporting long-term growth across both the creative and civic sectors.