An action-oriented mechanism

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By Andrew Redden – Representatives from Hastings County, City of Belleville and City of Quinte West met yesterday with stakeholders from our cultural community.  The meeting was intended to review a draft terms of reference for a new Cultural Roundtable (a recommendation in the Cultural Plan) including proposed membership and tasks to complete.

Group of Seven painting of Maynooth

Group of Seven painting of Maynooth

As outlined on p. 18 of our Cultural Plan, the Roundtable is not going to be another “advisory body, but an action-oriented mechanism…”  We are careful not to create “another layer” and duplicate efforts and committees already in place.  Therefore, the Roundtable is envisioned to consist of a group of representatives from existing cultural related organizations and leaders across the community who will provide a “community voice” for culture.  They will also relay back to their organizations communicating the importance of culture (both for economic development and quality of place) and help embed recommendations from the Cultural Plan (for action) within their own existing organizations and committees.

“…not that of an advisory body, but an action-oriented mechanism to support implementation of the Cultural Plan and ongoing cultural development.”

Take for example one of the initial recommendations to host the successful Creative Hastings networking events in Belleville and Quinte West.  Instead of the Roundtable taking on this directly, this might be something a Chamber of Commerce might take the lead on, with the support of the Chamber representative on the Roundtable and other organizations.  Another is to “Bring Arts Council Representatives Together”.  The Roundtable Arts Council members might initiate this by providing an event where an Arts Council networking opportunity could happen.  But it’s up to all the Arts Councils and Groups to continue networking and collaboration where practical.

As well, it will be important to keep in mind the vast geography of our community as it stretches from the shores of the Bay of Quinte to Lake St. Peter.  The Roundtable will not necessarily have to have regular monthly meetings on a set date and time since modern communications provide the flexibility to allow Roundtable members to coordinate actions virtually whether it be in the form of an online discussion group or Video conferencing using tools such as Skype.

An interim Roundtable is the next step and they will be tasked with helping finalize the Terms of Reference and confirming structured membership on the eventual Cultural Roundtable.

 

Implementation Update

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By Andrew Redden – Yesterday I got together with City of Belleville’s Mark Fluhrer and City of Quinte West’s Linda Lisle and Jennifer Rushlow.  After approving our Cultural Plan before Christmas, it took a bit of coordination to get us all in the same room.  Busy schedules it turns out!

Anyway, we had a great meeting to discuss next steps with the implementation of our 10-year Cultural Plan.  First thing, we’ve scheduled a future meeting involving ourselves and a select group of individuals from our local cultural community.  This will be our implementation Working Group who will review a Cultural Roundtable Terms of Reference and help identify potential Roundtable members.

For the Roundtable, it is not intended to be “another Advisory Committee.”  Instead, this group will be “action-oriented”.  What does that mean?  It means this group may not have to meet regularly.  It might mean that they meet over email, Skype or even Tweet to one another.  Afterall, we might have someone on the Roundtable living in Frankford while another lives north of Maynooth.  More importantly, they will be active individuals from our cultural community, whether that be private or not-for-profit, and be willing to help see actions take place.  They will also be a conduit of information between the Roundtable and the various organizations that they already participate in or represent.

The Roundtable will also help take action on making sure the Cultural Plan “does not sit on the shelf”, but rather gets implemented.

Stay tuned.  I’ll post updates here as they take place.

New report shows significant impact of arts and culture on tourism

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The economic impact of arts and culture tourism in Ontario is considerable according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC).  Ontario Arts and Culture Tourism Profile, the report prepared for OAC by Research Resolutions & Consulting Ltd., provides a comprehensive profile of Ontario’s arts and culture tourists.

The report includes information on the number, characteristics and impact of Ontario’s arts and culture tourists including, volume, country of origin, activities, trip characteristics, tourist spending, economic impact, market share, motivations, and demographic characteristics.

The report is based on an analysis of several existing travel industry surveys:  Travel Survey of Residents of Canada 2010 (TSRC); International Travel Survey 2010 (ITS US & OVS), and Travel Activities and Motivations Surveys (TAMS Canada & US, 2006).

Executive Summary and Full report.

“This report demonstrates the important role that arts and culture play in Ontario’s tourism industry in terms of spending, economic impact and attracting visitors,” said Martha Durdin, OAC Chair. “It also provides useful information on how to further tap into this large potential market for the province’s arts and culture offerings.”

“Cultural tourism is a powerful force that is transforming global travel and trends,” said Michael Chan, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport. “Our diverse arts, culture and heritage has helped us attract visitors from within our borders and beyond to explore and experience our exciting province.  Our government is committed to evolving our tourism strategy to align with our cultural assets – for example, harnessing live music experiences that will drive our economy and firmly place Ontario on the international map as a premier cultural travel destination.”

 

KEY FINDINGS:

Arts and culture are a key part of Ontario’s tourism industry. 

  • 9.5 million overnight tourists to Ontario participated in arts and culture activities during their trips in 2010 – representing 22% of all Ontario’s overnight visitors.
  • Of the 9.5 million Ontario arts and culture tourists, 66% were Canadians, 23% were Americans, and 11% were from overseas.
  • A high proportion of Ontario’s foreign tourists engage in arts and cultural activities.  American arts and culture tourists represent 39% of all American overnight visitors to Ontario in 2010.  Sixty-three percent of Ontario’s overseas visitors engaged in an arts or culture activity during their trip in 2010.

The economic impact of Ontario’s arts and culture tourism is substantial. 

  • Arts/culture tourist spending generated:
    • $3.7 billion in GDP province-wide in 2010.
    • 67,000 jobs and $2.4 billion in wages.
    • $1.7 billion in taxes.  

Arts and culture tourists spend more, and stay longer.

  • The average Ontario arts and culture tourist spends twice as much per trip as does a typical tourist – $667 per trip versus $374.
  • On average, arts and culture tourists spend 4.4 nights in Ontario – 42% longer than the typical tourist at 3.1 nights.
  • Spending in Ontario by arts and culture tourists totaled $4.1 billion in 2010 – representing 36% of spending by all overnight tourists in the province that year.
  • Many sectors of Ontario’s economy benefit from arts and culture tourist spending.  For example, Ontario’s arts and culture tourists spent $1.1 billion on lodging, $1.1 billion on food and beverages, $600 million on retail and $500 million on entertainment and recreation in 2010.

Arts and culture is a primary motivator for consumer travel among Ontario’s tourist market.

  • The market for arts and culture tourism in North America is very large: 89% of North American tourists with travel experience in Ontario over a two-year period seek an arts or culture activity on their trips.
  • 44% of North American tourists with Ontario travel experience said that arts and culture was their main reason for traveling for at least one of their trips.
  • Some arts and culture activities are more likely to motivate trips than others.  For example, 14% of these North American tourists were motivated to travel by music performances, 11% by theatre, and 8% by art festivals.

Ontario’s arts and culture tourists seek out a variety of activities while travelling.

  • Each arts and culture activity attracted significant numbers of Ontario’s overnight tourists in 2010.  For example:
    • 4.1 million tourists visited historic sites;
    • 3.4 million tourists visited museums or art galleries;
    • 3.3 million tourists attended arts performances;
    • 2.1 million tourists attended festivals and fairs; and
    • 1.2 million tourists visited zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens.
  • Ontario tourists who engage in one arts or cultural activity on a trip tend to participate in other arts and culture activities on the same trip.  For example, 26% of overnight tourists who attend an arts performance such as a concert or play also visit a museum or art gallery during their trip.
  • Ontario’s North American arts/culture tourists travel for culinary experiences and to shop at twice the rate of tourists overall.  For example:
    • 37% of arts and culture tourists are motivated to travel for culinary experiences, compared to 19% of all Ontario’s North American tourists;
    • 23% of arts and culture tourists travel in order to shop, compared with 12% of tourists overall.

For more information:

Kathryn Townshend
Director of Research, Policy and Evaluation
416-969-7456 or 1-800-387-0058 ext. 7456
ktownshend@arts.on.ca / www.arts.on.ca

Kirsten Gunter
Director of Communications
416-969-7403  or 1-800-387-0058 ext. 7403
kgunter@arts.on.ca / www.arts.on.ca

 

Creative Placemaking course

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Here’s something you might be interested in.

Artscape has recently partnered with the University of British Columbia to offer an online course in Creative Placemaking, the practice of leveraging arts, culture and creativity to drive community growth and transformation. First offered in fall of 2012, the second session of the course begins February 18th, 2013.

This course is offered as part of the Certificate in Cultural Planning in UBC’s Continuing Studies Department. Over ten weeks, students will acquire the knowledge, skills and inspiration required to investigate, develop and implement creative placemaking projects in their community. The course will explore a range of creative placemaking strategies, including: the development of cultural districts and creative industry clusters; public art; cultural flagship development and artists’ space projects; and festivals and events. The partnership with the University of British Columbia is the most recent addition to Artscape’s work in sharing our practice. In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the creative community’s role in driving growth, change, transformation, and the new economy.

The course runs from Feb 18th to April 28th 2013, and is 100% online. Early bird registration closes February 1st. The course is authored and instructed by Artscape’s Pru Robey, Director, Knowledge Exchange. Pru advises communities across Canada and internationally on strategies to support city-building through the arts.

To find out more or to register, please visit www.cstudies.ubc.ca/cultural-planning/courses.html

 

Cultural Plan adopted

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Hastings County Council approved the Cultural Plan at their September 27th meeting.  It’s a 10-year Plan containing four main goals designed to improve networking between organizations while boosting economic development for the County, City of Belleville and City of Quinte West. 

Economic Development Manager Andrew Redden commented, “There’s a patchwork quilt of really cool and unique cultural attractions across our County, but we need to do a better job of packaging them up with a nice bow on top.  If we don’t, then tourists and new entrepreneurs might just pass us by”.

Here is a copy of the 10-Year Plan in PDF format.  You can also download here the Key Findings and Strategic Directions Report.

One of the first tasks is to create a County-wide Cultural Roundtable of volunteers who will help oversee the implementation of the plan and take action on the recommendations. If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about becoming a Roundtable volunteer, please contact us today.

Making Hometown History

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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Kiwanis Club of Belleville. As part of its anniversary events, the club is celebrating area history by partnering in the launch of a history series showcasing the rich past of Hastings and Prince Edward Counties.

The series launch will take place at The Empire Theatre in Belleville at 7 pm. on Saturday, September 29th with a second launch at 7 pm. at The Regent Theatre in Picton on Monday, October 15th, 2012.

The series, called History Moments, features short stories of early settlement, prominent people and significant events, which have profoundly shaped the past of the Quinte region. History Lives Here Inc., a heritage communications company in Picton, has pioneered the concept in Prince Edward County producing an annual series over the past three years, which plays before movies at The Regent Theatre, is distributed into area schools, libraries, archives, and museums as an educational resource, retailed at local shops, and broadcast online on community partner websites to promote increased tourism and to enhance the profile of local heritage organizations.

“We wanted to celebrate our history as part of our anniversary plans, “ says Kiwanis President Ed Hawman. “This series is a means of celebrating more broadly with the community by showcasing these wonderful stories drawn from the past.” “This is popular history,” says series producer Peter Lockyer. “ The series is designed to engage the community in its past – to awaken us to the history that is all around us, and the enormous economic potential of promoting our history to the world. The past can be a big part of the future if we work together to promote it as a suite of products retailed to heritage travelers.”

This year’s series will profile pioneer author Suzanna Moodie; the story of Eleanor May Bowden, the British servant girl at the Philip’s house (now Glanmore National Historic Site), one of the home children from poor English families sent to Canada and Australia to help populate these countries; the history of one of Canada’s oldest community newspapers, the Belleville Intelligencer; the company town of Pt. Anne and the Village of Wellington celebrating its 150th anniversary this year; and the story of the Fox Sisters from Consecon in Prince Edward County, two clairvoyant young women who helped shape the spiritualist movement in the United States in the 1850s.

Area businesses such as Black Prince Winery, Essroc Cement, Lafarge Canada, The Belleville Intelligencer, and the City of Belleville and the Corporation of the County of Prince Edward are sponsoring the series. Project proceeds help support the work of the Kiwanis Club of Belleville.

To purchase tickets to the launch events, contact: The Empire Theatre 613 969 0099 http://www.theempiretheatre.com 

Kiwanis Club of Belleville
http://www.kiwanisclubofbelleville.com

Sense of Place

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North Hastings is hosting a follow-up event to their first “Sense of Place” held back in June.  It will take place September 22 from 9am to 2pm in Bancroft and will feature an interactive tour that will highlight how cultural spaces are contributing to community economic development and building upon their “sense of place”. 

The event(s) are free and anyone is encouraged to come out.  It includes a trip to Eagles Nest and a short walking tour in downtown Bancroft.  Refreshments will be served at Club 580 including a Ploughman’s Lunch. 

For further information contact Chris Drost at 613.332.6246.  Or visit the Arts and Culture pages of www.northhastings.com

Presentation of the key findings and directions report

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By Carol Feeney – The Advisory Committee for the Regional Cultural Planning committee met on June 7, 2012 to review the draft cultural plan.  At the meeting Greg Baeker of Millier Dickinson Blais provided an overview of the Key Findings and Directions Report (not the final report). The Report summarized the results of the research and community engagement, and concludes with eight strategic directions which will guide the recommendations and actions of the final Cultural Plan. The presentation focused on the strategic directions described in the report.

While there were many comments on individual Strategic Directions, a few overriding messages emerged from the discussion. The Plan will not establish consensus on all issues among all stakeholders, however, it will provide a framework and set of mechanisms to sustain dialogue to maintain momentum and cooperation.

This process will take time; although the Plan can produce some short-term wins it must incorporate mechanisms to facilitate progress over the long-term. The process can also take longer when building public/private sector partnerships. The Plan needs to be a road map that enables action by each municipality separately and collectively over the long-term. Funding considerations are central to the Plan and to the directions it sets forward. The municipalities themselves are one source but there is need for ‘thinking outside the box’ about other sources.

There must be a strong value proposition established for culture. In tourism, concrete economic impact metrics/numbers have made a big difference. Without establishing this value proposition, the potential for real investment in culture would be hard to achieve. Cultural resources and cultural development must be seen as an integral component to local economic development. Councils and stakeholders must come to see funding not as a subsidy but as an investment.

In many ways this is a communications and public relations challenge. People must come to understand how important cultural is to the economy. Champions will be needed to carry this message forward. Simple awareness of different organizations and activities is less the issue than deeper understanding and sustained engagement.

The cultural plan could start with some ‘easy wins’ to start the ball rolling. It is about both developing and selling a product to residents and visitors/tourists. Here are some examples:

  • Strong cultural packages need to be developed and they must be of sufficient quality not to disappoint when they are marketed.
  • Some overall cultural branding (‘meta narrative’) is needed for the region.
  • Developing products and packages could be a central part of the Cultural Plan.

There are challenges in positioning the Plan in each partner municipality; each are at different stages of understanding regarding a range of issues including culture’s role in leveraging the ‘creative economy’.

There are also dangers of trying to be all things to all people. Local cultural and economic development strategies should not be discouraged; there may be strength in different areas having different strengths.

Overall, a number of specific actions identified include:

  • The waterfront trail must be connected.
  • Youth engagement is a systemic problem. Youth need to be engaged in innovative ways. We need to listen to them as they are a strong force when mobilized and engaged.
  • There are many parallels between Ontario East Economic Development’s, Region 9 Tourism (the Great Waterway) and the goals associated with this Plan. Regional branding and positioning, for example, should be explored and potentially incorporated into the final Plan. 
  • Municipal downtowns are being revitalized in several communities (Belleville and Trenton were noted as strong examples); although further work is needed across the region, success stories should be told. There should be ‘unique but consistent’ approaches to downtown revitalization.
  • Look at and speak to existing success stories related to different recommendations in the Plan.

I am very encouraged by the findings and the efforts of all involved in creating this plan.

A final draft of the Final Report and Recommendations is currently being reviewed and scheduled to be presented to City and County Councils this Fall.

Advisory Committee Gives Thumbs Up to Strategic Directions for Cultural Plan

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On June 7, members of the Community Advisory Committee for the Hastings County and Quinte Region Cultural Plan met to review the Key Findings and Strategic Directions Report. The report summarized findings from all the research and input from the extensive community engagement process. The Report also set out a series of Strategic Directions that will guide the preparation of the final Cultural Plan.

A draft of the Cultural Plan is now complete and will be reviewed by the Advisory Committee in the coming weeks before being posted for public comment and input. Based on this input, the Cultural Plan will be finalized and taken forward to Hastings County Council, Belleville City Council, and Quinte West City Council in August.

The Key Findings and Strategic Directions Report can be downloaded here.