It should have been on the summer reading list for every city and regional planner: The Artistic Dividend, a quantitative take on the unappreciated impact that the cultural arts have on a region’s economy.
The study comes only a couple of years after Richard Florida’s popular Rise of the Creative Class in which he suggested that the “creatives” — a broad category he claimed covered 30 percent of all workers — were congregating in relatively few places around the nation. And guess what: having a vibrant cultural and artistic community was a major factor.
While some public officials this year offered a king’s ransom for the promise of the next Boeing plant, others are figuring out that it is the quality of their community, its assets and ethics, its life opportunities that determine its economic fortunes.
Jim Brett is the CEO of the New England Council, the major business organization for the six New England states and the oldest organization of its type in the U.S. He calls the cultural arts the “green tea of the economy.” For centuries we knew green tea was good but it was all a matter of taste; now we know it’s also good for us, a health benefit. So it is with the arts, says Brett, after his Council sponsored major research three years ago. It found a whopping $6.6 billion economic impact of the arts from tourism alone, accounting for nearly four percent of the region’s total work force. And those occupations were growing much faster than average.
Now comes the 2003 Artistic Dividend study done by Ann Markusen and David King at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute Project on Regional and Industrial Economies. Markusen says most people still think of the economy as manufacturing plants, business services, buying cars and houses. She and King found significant gains in the productivity and earnings of a region associated with a concentration of artists.
Artists export work and import income. Their skills enhance the design quality of other products and services. They purchase supplies and services, employ accountants and attorneys. And in sufficient concentrations they become a part of the region’s asset base, and help to lure all sorts of other people who want to live where the arts visibly flourish.
The New England Council got this message already. This year it set up the New England Creative Economy Council, with the explicit mission to foster more partnerships and push for policies that will nurture the creative side of their economy. Seventy heavy hitters from business, government, the arts, and universities signed on.
Outside the Boston citistate, New England’s mostly a collection of small cities and towns, suggesting that any region can take this tack. Artists won’t be just in New York or Los Angeles. In fact, Markusen’s study shows a spread of artists concentrations to places such as Albuquerque and Seattle and the Twin Cities. Notably, not some of the go-go growth centers like Atlanta and Dallas.
So it does make a difference what you wish for. Perhaps it’s not too late in the summer to catch this wave of wisdom, which certainly looks like better long-range strategy than chasing Boeing.