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What is the Chicago Arts Census?

The Chicago Arts Census is a comprehensive, cross-discipline data collection effort in the city created by and with the art workers of Chicago.

The Census is built to amplify our voices as art workers in Chicago, serve as an advocacy tool fighting for better working, living, and making conditions, and create opportunities for coalition-building across art sectors.

It does so by collecting, mapping, and visualizing data sets identified by and with art workers to better illuminate the reality of our living and working conditions. At present, a complex and intersectional account of our labor does not exist. The collected data will be translated into a series of maps, a website, a publication, and public programs that demonstrate the interwoven and dependent relationships that make up Chicago’s art ecosystem. Read Our FAQ here.

What are the project outcomes?

To collect and unify legible data identified and determined by the art workers of Chicago so that we can use the information to name, support, and defend healthier labor practices in the city’s various arts and cultural institutions for ourselves and our peers.

To create an expanded definition of art workers to acknowledge and hold the labor of our visible and invisible work. This includes, but by no means excludes other possibilities, those that define themselves as artist, arts writer, art handler, educator, fabricator, custodian, preparator, intern, docent, administrator, security guard, designer, and/or curator.

As funding institutions, both public and private, look to redistribute resources across geography, media, and demographics, we want the data collected by the Census to guide and recalibrate these funding streams toward the livelihoods of art workers in Chicago, specifically to create more opportunities to support collaborative and community-based projects.