How to support your kid’s dream
To get a job in arts, a child must learn to embrace the hustle.
When I first told my parents that I wanted to be a writer, they gave me the same advice a lot of first generation immigrant kids hear: art is a hobby; get a day job, preferably a stable, professional one.
They weren’t wrong, but if my own children were to approach me with a similar dream today, my response would be very different. I would tell them to go for it, but to be fully aware of what a career in the arts entails. Today, I’m urging my fellow first and second generation immigrant parents to do the same, for a few reasons.
Firstly, the market is vast and hungry for new voices. There is a critical lack of diversity among artists across Canada. According to the Canada Council of the Arts, only 15 per cent of Canadian artists identify as racialized, and only 3 per cent as Indigenous.
A 2020 Toronto Star diversity survey of children’s literature in Canada pointed out that, while children’s books predominantly feature white characters, other voices are increasingly represented. However, the books themselves are still mostly written by white authors, despite an increasing interest for books written by authors of colour, or with diverse identities and abilities.
Second, working in the arts doesn’t immediately equate with forever living in your parents’ basement and financial insecurity. The creative industries are a massive market, with more jobs and niche roles than most people can contemplate.
Enjoy the movies? Try getting a job working production. Enjoy visual art? There are plenty of graphic artists employed by large companies, or in advertising. Have a way with the written word? There are jobs in media, technical writing, film, television and publishing. As a writer new to the profession, I quickly realized that the key to this industry was to embrace the hustle.
Layth Gafoor, entertainment lawyer and Director at Lucentem Sports and Entertainment, is familiar with the disconnect between reality and assumptions about a career in the arts. “The definition is not just the person on the stage entertaining people. There’s film, set design. There is the artist and the sports and entertainment industry, or rather industries.”
Gafoor does acknowledge that there is a difference between working in a career adjacent to the arts, and being an artist: “People who are servicing the arts can live vicariously, but they’re not the artist. I think they [artists] are such brave people. The artist is the one who bares themselves.”
It is true that most Canadian artists juggle multiple jobs, but working within the artistic field can be a good sideways step into making art, as it allows budding artists to pay their bills while learning more about their industry. Such jobs tend to pay well, too.
Lindsay Wong, whose memoir “The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family” was a 2019 Canada Reads finalist and finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers Trust non-fiction prize, can relate to parental worries. “It comes from a really good place to worry about your child but … if you were forced to be a lawyer or a doctor would you be happy?”
However, she cautions that the creative life is not for everyone. “It’s the gig economy, where you have a million different gigs, and this can worry parents. It’s for people willing to move and work different hours and take on different jobs that will allow more flexibility — your schedule is your own. But there is that uncertainty, what if you don’t get paid for many months? Some institutions take a long time. You will always be thinking about money.”
Yet the payoff, in terms of legacy, cultural capital and financial rewards, can be massive. Art curates culture, and culture in turn is the foundation of society.
How much time do we collectively spend on entertainment? From TikTok videos to streaming television shows, to podcasts to music to fashion — art is a part of everything we do, and it impacts us all.
Gafoor points out that it is the culture and the arts that we remember. “We judge societies based on their literary and art contributions more than anything else. What was their mythology? What did they worship, how did they live? It’s all an expression of art.”
For Wong, it all comes down to following that passion. “You have to love your art, so you can do anything for your art.”
While the lack of diversity in the arts is a systemic issue, encouraging our artsy kids is one way my fellow Brown/ Asian parents can affect real change. Also, the future is murky, medical school is competitive, engineering only appeals to a particular type of person, and all of my lawyer friends work too many hours to actually spend their money anyway.
I’m practising what I preach. While my older son continues to disappoint me with his interest in computer science, I have high hopes for my younger son. He loves to draw, and spent the pandemic reading manga and imagining his own.
So if you have a creative kid — someone hard working, preferably with an independent, stubborn streak and with stars in their eyes — encourage them to pursue their dreams. The world needs their voice — and they can always get a day job if it doesn’t work out.