“We’re at a critical inflection point where the digital economy, data sovereignty, and precarity in the arts and creative industries collide.”

When I read this comment from Kelly Wilhelm on my last article, it made me pause. (see her comment here)

For years, I’ve been focused on discoverability — how arts and culture are found online, and how digital infrastructure shapes what we see (and what we don’t). But lately, I’ve been asking a deeper question:

Is cultural sovereignty even a consideration in how we build digital infrastructure, or are we just adapting to systems we don’t control?

This question isn’t just theoretical. It’s urgent.

Right now, the global landscape is shifting in ways that could have profound consequences for Canada’s creative industries. The rise of AI, the dominance of U.S. based platforms, and the economic uncertainty fuelled by shifting trade policies — including new punitive tariffs — are all forcing us to rethink how we sustain and protect cultural knowledge in a digital world.

But here’s what makes this moment different: it’s not just about dependency — it’s about instability.

I’ve been thinking about instability — not just as a byproduct of political and economic shifts, but as a deliberate strategy. If you look at the current U.S. landscape, the unpredictability of trade policies, platform regulations, and international relations isn’t random. It’s disruptive by design.

This has made me wonder: What happens to cultural sovereignty when long-term planning becomes impossible? What happens when the systems we’ve relied on — whether trade agreements, digital platforms, or economic partnerships — become so unstable that our only option is to react?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this:

  • Agency comes from building the conditions for our own stability.
  • In a chaotic world, we can ill afford to be passive about the infrastructure that sustains our arts and culture sectors.

Discoverability Isn’t Just About Visibility — It’s About Sovereignty

We often talk about the digital divide in terms of access: Who gets online? Who has the tools to participate? But the more pressing issue today is who owns and governs the digital infrastructure itself.

The current system works like this:

  • Platforms control cultural distribution. The internet was supposed to democratize access, yet centralized platforms now determine who gets seen and on what terms.
  • AI is built on unregulated cultural data. Without governance, artistic works are treated as raw material for automated systems rather than deliberate acts of expression.
  • Economic precarity weakens our ability to act. When resources are scarce, the arts sector is forced to depend on the very platforms that make discoverability costly and precarious.

And when instability itself is a tactic, those dependencies become even more dangerous.

Fair Licensing Begins With FAIR Metadata

Before we can build a fully fair licensing system, we need to ensure that cultural metadata itself is FAIR — findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Note: Metadata is data about data-describing, categorizing and linking information to make it findable and usable.

Right now, too much metadata in regard to arts and culture is fragmented, locked away in silos, or structured in ways that don’t support discoverability. If we don’t get this first layer right, no licensing model — no matter how fair — will function effectively.

Making metadata FAIR ensures that:

  • Artists and cultural works are findable and accessible across platforms and search engines.
  • Data is interoperable, meaning it can connect with open knowledge graphs, registries, and public archives.
  • Artists and cultural organizations retain agency over their digital presence, rather than being dependent on proprietary systems that control how (or whether) they are discovered.

FAIR metadata is not the end goal, but it is the starting point. Once we establish a foundation of structured, open, and ethical cultural data, we can start to tackle the much bigger challenge of fair licensing and governance.

A 360-Degree Approach to Cultural Infrastructure

Kelly Wilhelm’s comment also pointed to something critical: we can’t just look at discoverability or licensing in isolation. We need a 360-degree approach to cultural infrastructure — one that includes collective management, licensing, open access, and ethical AI use, ensuring that cultural knowledge is protected while remaining usable across different contexts: exhibition, education, research, and digital innovation.

This kind of thinking challenges the status quo, where cultural data is either hoarded by platforms or scattered across disconnected systems. A 360-degree model would mean cultural infrastructure is deliberate, interconnected, and built for the long term — not just a patchwork of short-term solutions.

Agency is About Shaping Our Own Destiny

The key issue here is agency.

You have agency when you direct your own digital future. You lose it when you’re forced to adapt to external forces that shift without warning.

Canada has an opportunity — right now — to take a leadership role in cultural sovereignty. But that requires more than adapting to global shifts. It requires proactively building the infrastructure that ensures long-term resilience.

Canada Needs a Digital Infrastructure Strategy — Now

This is not just an arts-sector issue. It’s a structural problem that affects every industry that relies on data, digital access, and knowledge. And as the global economy becomes more volatile, Canada needs to start treating digital infrastructure as an essential part of economic and cultural resilience.

If we don’t, we will remain dependent on external forces — U.S. platforms, private AI models, and economic policies beyond our control — to determine the future of our creative industries and cultural knowledge.

This is Just the Beginning

This is the conversation I want to have more of.

Over the next few articles, I’ll explore strategies — open data approaches, policy shifts, and infrastructure models — that can put discoverability back into the hands of creators, institutions, and the public.

If this resonates with you, let’s keep the conversation going. What digital infrastructure solutions have you seen that work? What’s missing?