ARTICLE

As a Community’s Arts and Culture Sector Thrives, So Does its Economy

July 28, 2017 – Christopher Visentin

The Jazz in the Park festival on St. Thomas is one of the most popular cultural events on the island, and was founded and largely sponsored by International Capital & Management Company to promote the downtown Charlotte Amalie area and revitalize the local business community. Now in its eighth year, the event has grown in popularity, and so has business involvement: the concert includes a street fair and features street venders, food trucks, and open art galleries.

Sunset Jazz in Frederiksted concert series features local and international artists, sponsored by the Frederiksted Economic Development Association. It is held in Budhoe Park, close to the cruise liner pier, and is geared toward spurring interest and support for local vendors and the downtown area.

These events are part of a recent effort to revitalize the downtown areas and contribute to economic growth by promoting local arts and cultural communities.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to the Virgin Islands. Last month, Barbados’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth, the Hon. Stephen Lashley, advocated investing more of the region’s resources in cultural industries, and even diverting funding from more traditional economic sectors to do so.

Far from an idealistic elevation of the arts over the economy, such an investment will help to provide a much-needed boost to the region’s economies, he argued. With the proper support, the industries connected to the arts can provide much needed economic development to struggling communities throughout the region.

While many might overlook cultural and creative industries in favor of more traditional sectors of the economy, communities and governments around the world have slowly come to realize the potential for economic growth and community development through investing in the arts.

A Briefing Paper of the American Planning America Association details how Minister Lashley’s investment in the arts might succeed. Generally, the report notes four distinct “keypoint” benefits a robust arts and culture sector offers communities:

1. A growing arts and culture district unites skilled workers to form a creative industry. The concentration of these resources into a single population can help drive economic development in a community.
2. By highlighting local cultural and artistic heritage, a community can better attract a skilled and educated workforce to live near cultural centers and encourage the local youth population to remain a part of the community.
3. Designated arts and cultural areas also attract visitors from elsewhere in the community and from surrounding areas. This visitor traffic can greatly boost local business.
4. A growing community of creative, innovative, and skilled workers can help strengthen other sectors of the economy through collaboration. Area-specific industries such as tourism, for example, will benefit from a more innovative workforce and a more vibrant product.

For communities struggling with an increasingly competitive global economy, the arts represent a way to maintain community integrity and spur local development at the same time.

A 2014 EcononomicDevelopment.org article points to a number of reports that urge struggling communities to invest in the arts in order to energize the local economy.

The same article references a study that points out that American Rust Belt communities are ideal for individuals in the creative industry, and vice versa: artists regenerate long-depressed areas and reverse shrinking populations, provide small businesses with growth, and increase property value and community engagement. Meanwhile, the areas’ low cost of living and preexisting infrastructure are boons to artists.

This mutually beneficial arrangement is not exclusive to the Rust Belt: a  publication from the National Governors Association notes that establishing and encouraging “arts and design districts” in communities helps to revitalize struggling neighborhoods.

There are plenty of specific examples of communities drawing on their cultural heritage to transform their economies: Kinston, North Carolina has begun developing a community space and arts park featuring kinetic sculptures, which has in turn inspired commercial and residential investment in the surrounding area.

Add to this list rural Iowa, where a small business developer is working to foster jobs in the arts to attract and retain younger, skilled workers, and Chattanooga, Tenessee, where organizers are highlighting the city’s connection to the arts in order to attract industry, jobs, and new residents to the downtown area.

Lashley himself cited promising numbers in the U.K., where the cultural industry accounts already for 1 in 11 jobs, and is rising at a rate faster than any other industry; and South Africa, whose creative and cultural industries added up to 192,410 jobs as of 2014.

Clearly, this push for investing in arts and culture as an industry is an international trend, and one that can be tailored to the distinct culture, heritage, and goals of a community.

In a recent op-ed piece for the Virgin Islands Daily News, David Jessop pointed to Kingston, Jamaica and Georgetown, Guyana as two cities that may be leading the vanguard for a Caribbean renaissance.

Kingston is working to develop locations to attract greater tourist and residential activity, and museums, music, and local cuisine are driving a significant aspect of this push for a revitalized downtown community.

On the other side of the coin, Jessop notes, is Georgetown, which is facing a mass influx of cash and industry thanks to ExxonMobil’s offshore drilling plans. Now, the community faces the challenge of maintaining the integrity of its cultural identity and heritage.

A recent Daily News op-ed piece details the work of the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development to transform and revitalize communities in St. Croix. It has  brought together representatives from a number of sectors in order to define a clear path forward for their mission. First among the list of sectors was the culture and arts sector.

In each case, if reports and case studies from around the world are to be believed, community, governmental, and private investment in local arts and culture will pay dividends for the respective communities.