I just want to emphasize that we are creating something that has not existed yet. It's wonderful to hear about projects all across the country that are able to regenerate buildings, as we have just heard. We have nothing, and so we're doing what we do in small living rooms and in garages across Nunavut in the Arctic.
As an inter-sector cultural hub, Qaggiq provides the physical space needed by performing artists to create other compatible uses, including much-needed visual arts gallery space and a theatre to screen Inuit, Nunavut, and circumpolar films. Qaggiq features a teaching kitchen for the Inuit culinary arts, and an atrium, which is an indoor market, for our country food—seal meats, caribou meat, and so on— and for artisans and cultural skills teaching, including skin sewing and hunting tool construction. Broadcasting to Nunavut communities, Qaggiq provides advanced digital streaming capacity and live broadcasts of performances and master classes to Arctic communities in the world. In a digital age, it is vital that Internet providers support the delivery of Inuit content to stave off the onslaught of mostly English-dominated environments. We need to be able to hear our language in order to use our language.
On interdisciplinary collaboration, there are many disciplines within the performing arts umbrella, including contemporary and traditional Inuit music, theatre, dance, acrobatics, film, and new media. Qaggiq provides opportunities to bring artists from various performing arts and media arts together to collaborate, including Nunavummiut interested in learning and working in the technical fields of the arts—lighting, sound, recording, video editing, camera, digital design and projection—as well as in the fields of art management, stage management, set design, construction, costume and makeup design, directing, writing, and producing.
In the area of tourism, Qaggiq will be Canada's first performing arts space for Inuit, providing a destination for Inuit and cultural tourists. Qaggiq is a physical space for cultural exchange between artists, the community, and visitors.
On economic impact and cultural exports, Qaggiq will allow Nunavut to become a unique international cultural centre while contributing significantly to the $54.6 billion arts industry by creating high-value jobs. Qaggiq creates economic opportunities for artists and arts sector technicians and managers.
The hub model is at its most effective when there's an intersection among hubs, including partnerships, collaborations, and cross-cultural alliances. When hubs strengthen their sector, they are better able to share knowledge with other sectors, including other hubs in the cultural sector, such as heritage, visual arts, film and new media, and non-artistic sectors, such as business, government, environment, social justice, and technology. Qaggiq will strengthen the abilities of Inuit performing artists and technicians to work and collaborate in other sectors.
The rationale for an Inuit performing arts hub is that the people of Nunavut are the only people in Canada without a performing arts space. Without space, Inuit performing artists cannot collaborate, create, learn, teach, and present. By strengthening performing artists with an interdisciplinary hub dedicated to their needs, artists can build culture and language and strong partnerships with other sectors in Canadian society.