OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

2. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BASED ON ATTRACTING VISITORS AND TOURISTS
• The third was to exploit partnerships between landowners, municipalities
and artists. Here, abandoned rural dwellings, where soy sauce had been
stored, were converted into artists’ studios (in the Kanazawa Ona Kura
project). An old manufacturing plant was transformed into performance
venues (the Kanazawa Citizens Art Centre) open to all and administered
by representatives elected by the people to that end. As a result, four new
facilities – a dramatic arts centre, a music centre, a centre for the plastic
arts, and a centre for enhancing the quality of everyday life – now stand on
the site of this converted plant (Masuyaki, 2004).
• Cultural activities will have a greater impact if they are mutually reinforcing, taking
advantage in this way of “crowding-in” effects. We saw above that festivals
have no real local development impact unless they give rise to other activities
that will prolong or deepen their spin-offs. An analysis of cultural activities
sponsored by the City of Montreal provides some evidence.
The Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the City of Montreal commissioned
a study in the 1980s to evaluate the economic impact of three institutions: the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO), the Montreal International Jazz Festival,
and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 65 .
The gross impact included the institution’s spending on goods and services
and on wages, as well as guest artists’ expenditures, and spending by the
public. Thus:
• the Montreal Symphony Orchestra spends $7.151 million dollars and
generates spending of $12.293 million Canadian dollars;
• the Museum of Fine Arts spends $5.206 million which produces gross spinoffs
of $10.293 million; and
• the International Jazz Festival spends $1.020 million for gross spin-offs of
$10.357 million.
The calculation of net spin-offs shows that the Jazz Festival produced the strongest
injections into the economy, at $590,000, compared to $522,000 for the art museum,
while the orchestra had a net negative impact of $ - 733,000, primarily because of fees
to non-resident artists (an outflow of funds) and the fact that only season subscribers
were counted (thereby minimising audience expenditure). The authors stressed that
the outcome for the orchestra was still positive if one compared it with the net spinoffs
that would result if the provincial government had taken an amount equal to
spending by the orchestra and its customers and spent it on road construction or on
recreational centres.
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 85