OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

2. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BASED ON ATTRACTING VISITORS AND TOURISTS
of the United Kingdom (Travers, 1998). The survey covered 50 theatres belonging
to the Society of London Theatre, and considered their revenues of all kinds
as well as restaurant and accommodation spending. Using an expenditure
multiplier of about 1.5, it concluded that theatre activity has created £1 billion
in sales revenues, tax returns of £200 million, and an export surplus of £225 million.
A parallel estimate of employment created places the number of relatedrelated
jobs at nearly 41,000 (27,000 direct or indirect jobs and 14,000 induced
jobs). These are very impressive figures, and according to the authors they exceed
those for Broadway, making the theatre sector one of the principal tourist
attractions of Britain.
- Another illustration comes from the evaluation of the Chichester Theatre Festival,
which consists of a series of temporary events as opposed to the permanence
of London’s West End theatres (CLREA, 2000). It attracts 350,000 visitors, 75%
of whom are from outside the local district. Here again, the study starts with
revenue box-office data and ancillary spending by spectators, 500 of whom
were interviewed. This initial phase was supplemented by an analysis of the
festival’s expenditure accounts, and of the resulting inter-industry exchanges.
The study concludes that the overall volume of spending and changes in
revenues amounts to nearly £17 million, £7.5 million from the box office and
£9.5 million from tourist spending. A third of these revenues is considered to
remain within the local economy, representing the equivalent of 200 full-time
local jobs.
The relative contribution of cultural activities to local development
From the viewpoint of local development, the real challenge is to identify the relative
contributions of different cultural activities, and the conditions under which those
contributions will be positive or, to the contrary, will disappear or even become
negative. Will the presence of a restored and maintained monument do as much for
a territory’s development as hosting a festival? Will mounting an exhibition provide
greater returns than a contemporary art or film fair? Of course, these choices may be
somewhat misleading, recognising that some activities occur together or in sequence,
such as festivals relating to a monument, or the association between festivals and
markets.
The information currently available seems to point to four criteria for defining the
development potential of cultural activities:
- their permanence,
- the degree of participation by local people in addition to tourists,
62 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005