Culture is serious business

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Cultural ruminations were once the nearly exclusive purview of the chattering classes, those with the time and inclination to consider such interests.
How times have changed. Now, culture is serious business, figuring into the strategic visions of municipal planners and presented as a major contributor to current and future economic fortunes.
Barrie’s Aileen Carroll, MPP and the province’s culture minister, extolled the virtues of culture as an economic driver when she lunched with captains of commerce in Toronto at the Economic Club of Canada. The numbers speak for themselves.
The creative sector is a $46-billion industry in Canada, almost four per cent of the national GDP, and it contributes $7 billion annually to the province, according to Carroll.
Ontario is the third largest entertainment district in North America, after California and New York. During the past 10 years 80,000 jobs have been created in the creative sector, a 40-per-cent increase compared to the 17-per-cent growth in the total provincial economy; the sector employs 276,000 people.
Politicians and planners are paying attention. Noted economist Richard Florida, whose theories on culture as an economic driver, and on creative cities, have caught the ear of the McGuinty government, suggests Ontario is positioned to benefit from a post-industrial ‘creative’ evolution.
Investing in the sector is a winning strategy, Carroll told her business audience.
That way of thinking is not confined to the minister’s office or the charts of Florida and others. It can be found here in Barrie, in strategies to develop cultural industries, and enhance the city’s growth possibilities through culture by creating a sense of place that entices investment and people.
The intriguing conversion of a bank at the Five Points into a location for professional theatre is one notable result of the city’s culture strategy – another is the drive to bring Georgian College’s School of Design and Visual Arts to downtown Barrie.
Not only would this add to the city’s sense of place as a creative centre, it would bring in cold, hard cash. According to the city’s downtown commercial master plan, moving the school to the city core would add $6.8 million annually to downtown coffers.
The arts have always been about broadening the mind, soothing the soul and opening the heart. Now, increasingly, it’s about dollars and cents, and jobs. It’s reassuring to see Barrie at the forefront of this evolution.