How the arts strengthen newcomer settlement in Canada

Settling in a new country is often imagined as a sequential process, built on a supposed hierarchy of needs. You accomplish one priority, then another, and another and then you’re integrated into the country and economy.

Material and essential matters — housing, employment, language classes — come first. Cultural or spiritual matters — a sense of belonging, community connections, civic participation — come second.

The recently released research I conducted with Toronto Arts Council (TAC) on its Program for Newcomers and Refugees (PNR), however, suggests this logic needs to be challenged.

What does art have to do with settlement?

Founded in 1974, TAC is an independent funding organization that operates at arm’s length from the City of Toronto. Its mission is to enrich the quality of life in the city by supporting the arts. The decision to create a program specifically for newcomers was driven by research highlighting the barriers newcomer artists faced in finding work and navigating the Canadian arts landscape.

The PNR launched in 2017 and has allocated about $2.92 million between its inception and 2023. Forty organizations received support through the Newcomer and Refugee Arts Engagement stream, while 176 individual artists received Newcomer and Refugee Artist Mentorship grants.

Two years ago, along with TAC, I began researching to learn about who benefited from this support and how. We held focus groups with newcomer artists, arts managers and settlement organizations, analyzed program data and produced film portraits of two artists.

Our goal was to understand what the arts contribute to integration and what challenges newcomer artists face. Our findings show that the divide between settlement and the arts should be reconsidered.

Instead of being treated as separate domains, they can complement each other in ways that strengthen integration.

The arts as holistic settlement support

The Newcomer and Refugee Arts Engagement stream provides grants to organizations — including settlement agencies, community arts organizations and artistic institutions — with experience serving newcomers through artistic activities. Beneficiaries of the engagement stream showed that arts projects are not cosmetic add-ons.

Community arts professionals work hand in hand with settlement workers to address practical barriers from the outset.

Child care is arranged so mothers can attend. Interpreters support multilingual workshops. Programs offer snacks and Toronto Transit Commission fare. Schedules are adapted to hospitality and shift-work hours. These small design choices make participation possible.

The outcomes are multidimensional. Arts programs support language learning in low-pressure, confidence-building settings. They open pathways to employment through the acquisition of digital skills, production experience and access to professional networks. They reduce isolation and support mental health by creating safe, culturally sensitive spaces.

Newcomers Dance Too!, a free dance class for refugee-background women and girls in Flemington Park run by dancers from Fusion Cardio Toronto — which was promoted in Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi and other languages — is one example.

StoryCentre Canada, a non-profit that empowers short multimedia first-person narratives, set up digital storytelling workshops that taught photography and video editing while letting participants share their stories in the language of their choice, building both technical and communication skills. Hinprov, a collective of South Asian improvisers, created spaces where expression was possible even for those still learning English.

Arts projects also spark civic conversations. At Matthew House, which offers transitional housing settlement assistance, a mural led by a refugee artist-in-residence prompted neighbours to ask questions about refugees, opening dialogue that challenged stereotypes. Another PNR project collaborated with LGBTQ+ newcomers, using photography and film to counter stigma and create networks of care.

These initiatives show how the arts allow creative newcomers to assert their voices and identities on their own terms, positioning them not simply as guests but as active shapers of the cultural fabric of their new country.

Newcomer artists face systemic barriers

Newcomer artists design and deliver effective arts-based projects. Their ability to contribute, however, is limited by systemic obstacles.

General settlement services rarely provide tailored guidance for creative careers. Newcomer artists are directed toward generic job markets or told to pursue “Canadian credentials,” with little information about arts funding, networks or sector norms.

Discrimination compounds these hurdles: accents and linguistic differences become barriers to casting and collaboration; racial bias and expectations about “ethnic” content narrow opportunities; western-centrism and unfamiliarity with certain artistic traditions from outside the West devalue skills gained abroad. For instance, an Indian musician criticized the tendency to classify Indian classical music as “world music” rather than recognizing it as a classical form, limiting its appropriate recognition and funding.

Administrative rules add further exclusions. Temporary residents may be ineligible for public arts funding. Artists living in the Toronto area but outside the city proper can be excluded by residency requirements, even when they exhibit and perform in Toronto. These policies limit access to precisely the resources that help artists integrate into local scenes.

As part of our project, we worked with filmmaker Ogo Eze to produce two short portraits of newcomer artists: Iranian artist Aitak Sorahitalab and Palestinian-Syrian musician Tarek Ghriri.

Both stories illustrate how, despite formidable challenges, newcomers can become community leaders, using their art to support other newcomers while enriching Toronto’s cultural scene. Their stories show resilience but also underline how much potential is lost when systemic barriers remain in place.

Mending the arts and settlement divide

We have too often treated settlement and the arts as separate and incompatible worlds. Bridging them requires a shift on both sides.

On the settlement side, we must move away from sequential-needs thinking that relegates the arts to the bottom of the priority list or treats cultural activities as communications window dressing. This underestimates the concrete, multifaceted support community arts professionals can provide and sidelines newcomer artists.

On the arts side, TAC’s program is a promising template. By offering targeted support to newcomers, the PNR acknowledges the particular challenges they face when starting out, while avoiding the trap of permanently labelling them as “migrant artists.”

Given that only two per cent of Canadian arts funders offer targeted support for newcomers, lessons from this program can guide similar initiatives across Canada and beyond.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jeremie Molho, Toronto Metropolitan University

Read more:

• Canada’s cuts to newcomer English language programs puts communities’ well-being at risk
• How smaller cities can integrate newcomers into their labour markets
• Canadian immigrants are overqualified and underemployed — reforms must address this

Jeremie Molho received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Engage Grant for the project Fostering Integration through the Arts: Learning from Toronto Arts Council's Program for Newcomers and Refugees', conducted in partnership with Toronto Arts Council