Canada's 1st creative ec dev office?
Updated: Jul 18
WHAT
The creative sector in the Vancouver Island/rural Islands super-region has the potential to be a vital economic driver. Our 2021 all-Island arts impact study and 2022 pilot projects validate the strength of the sector. We are now designing a three-pillar Creative Economic Development strategy to build capacity and remove barriers.
A connected, measurable ecosystem
A village of makerspaces
A team of creativity coaches
This fall 2023 we're securing partnerships and funding to start implementing our strategy. The timing is perfect. In the next few years, it is anticipated that the tourism and economic sectors will be developing their own super-regional strategies. The creative sector exists at the intersection of these other major sectors, and a robust Creative Economy Strategy will enhance these efforts.
We're calling this initiative 'Canada's first Creative Economic Development Office' because our ecosystem approach is new. In practical terms, it won't actually be an office, but instead a coordinated network of existing and customized supports, overseen by a collaboration of cross-sector delivery partners such as Tourism Vancouver Island, the Rural Islands Economic Partnership, and Community Futures, as well as specialized creative business development coaches.
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WHY
The creative sector is an overlooked and underleveraged resource in our super-region, especially in rural areas and for IBPOC and other equity-denied populations (footnote 1) resulting in economic exclusion and foregone GDP. We are not optimizing the unique multiplier potential of the sector to contribute to “employment and business growth, social cohesion, and local regeneration” (OECD, 2022)- particularly as we recover from the pandemic and adjust to transitions in other resource-dependent sectors.
“The arts is a human asset that’s available in our communities and entirely underexploited. There is so much potential lying dormant: undervalued and underutilized." - Line Robert, Former Executive Director, Island Coastal Economic Trust
This strategic plan represents an inaugural exploration into the full capacity and potential of the sector (footnote 2), and a scaling up of Creative Coast’s shared services model for filling support gaps that we’ve been testing in select areas with solid success over the past three years.
The Vancouver Island/rural Islands super-region is the perfect scaling-ground to apply a creative economic development framework. To our knowledge, this approach is untested in Canada.
Our enviable characteristics:
Defined geography and manageable population (~900,000)
Tourism strengths (global top 10 destination) and creative tourism opportunities
Balance of urban and rural (50:50)
HOW
Our Creative Economic Development Strategy is comprised of three pillars. Implementation will be guided by a diverse, cross-sector Steering Committee.
1A: Connecting our super-region through outreach and engagement
Creatives are regional development actors with deep understanding of culture and place, and a powerful role to play in forging new, interdependent creative economies in our super-region. To tap into this potential, we aim to build trust and space for authentic cross-sector and cross-community collaborations. We will do this by dedicated outreach to creative networks (e.g. arts-serving organizations, creative clusters) and arts communities that employ different ways of seeing, ways of knowing and ways of working. For us, this is a first step in diversifying and decolonizing economic development.
"Art is the softest place to have the hardest conversations.” - Illana Hester, Co-chair, Creative Coast Our inclusive engagement process will:
enhance the conversations we are already having with all 30 of the arts councils in our super-region, as well. as with mainstream economic and cultural development organizations (VIEA, 4VI, Community Futures, Arts Councils)
strengthen the capacity of our super-region to uncover the potential for new creative economic development trajectories that contribute to social, cultural and economic well-being
align with BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and Action Plan
1 B: Measuring and mapping assets and capabilities
A number of community and cultural mapping exercises and geospacial analyses will be conducted to:
benchmark current market (age, composition, needs, training etc)
track spacial and racial inequalities (who is more/less able to participate and why)
reveal opportunities (creative clusters, micro-creative industries, creative tourism) and capacities (who knows what where)
audit infrastructures/assets (arts-serving organizations, spaces, business supports, synergistic industries), including existing creative tourism initiatives/supports mechanisms to support endogenous (grass roots) development
A locally developed geolocation platform (artfinds.me) will be used to capture and share these data stories. “Estimates of levels of employment and economic contributions in the creative and cultural industries are often underreported, with many people being excluded due to systemic barriers such as poverty, racism and sexism, and many jobs being excluded due to skills-bias. These inclusions, exclusions, and definitional differences, along with data gaps such as tracking those with multiple jobs, or those engaging in hybrid entrepreneurship can make it challenging to assess the health and growth of the sector as a whole, and can trickle down into programmatic and funding access.” - A Portrait of Creative Entrepreneurship and the Creative Economy in Canada, Brookfield Institute, 2020
2+3: Creating makerspaces and synching business coaching
We can level up the sector by providing virtual and select in-community, expert coaching, structured using a similar approach as the Tourism Resiliency Program:
For equity-denied creatives: high-touch, dynamic entrepreneurial supports (e.g. career coaching, digital content creation and marketing, business incubation and custom digital platforms)
For less-barriered creatives: lighter-touch connectivity and funnelling supports (e.g. artists and arts orgs who are actually tourism businesses without knowing it, and who would benefit from access to new channels for distribution of goods and services; business-ready creatives who are experiencing systemic barriers to accessing capital).
We can accelerate creative enterprise development by strategically locating physical hubs in underserved rural areas, delivered in partnership with arts serving organizations.
Note: Our approach does not intend to duplicate existing business incubation and creative entrepreneur programs. Instead these programs may act as delivery partners (e.g. embedding a virtual coach at an Arts Serving Organization (ASO) or a Community Futures / Nuu’cha’nulth Economic Development office) and/or referral partners (Rural Islands Economic Partnership, Tourism Vancouver Island - 4VI). This business-centred approach is a departure from the community enhancement focus of the sector/typical ASOs, putting our activities more closely in alignment with community economic / rural economic development efforts.
BIG IDEA
ABOUT CREATIVE COAST Creative Coast is a collaboration lab of Vancouver Island and rural Islands artists and arts organizations, as well as strategists from the economic development and tourism sectors. Our purpose is to transform isolation into connection, and collectively grow our creative supports, practices, audiences and impacts. Since 2019, we’ve been fostering sector-wide collaboration and innovation to explore the benefits of operating as an ecosystem, instead of in regional siloes. In 2021 we conducted an All-Islands Arts Impact Study and preliminary gap analysis which enriched our understanding that the creative sector could be playing a more significant role in the super-region’s economic and social well-being. (For a broad summary of sector impacts, check out this incredible Impact Explorer Tool from American for the Arts.) In 2022, we expanded our conversations to include tourism and economic development sectors, and began exploring opportunities for collaboration and integration. This Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy has emerged from these cross-sectoral conversations. This timely exercise will ensure creative sector inclusion in emerging super-regional economic development and tourism strategies.
SAMPLE METRIC/OUTCOMES (will be finalized during asset mapping phase)
Who is participating?
equity-denied groups (Indigenous, racialized, newcomer, youth, LGBTQ+, people with differing abilities)
gender, race, age, etc.
participant or partner
areas of the arts sector (arts orgs, arts admins, artists)
geographic areas
How are they engaged?
attendance webinars, conversations, community forums, etc.
interactions with outreach portal/platform
How do they describe their experiences?
surveys and key informant interviews at various touch points (e.g, initial contact, midpoint, etc.) for creatives, Initiative Partners and other stakeholders
What are the results of our work together?
number of readiness plans
number of creative tourism opportunities
number of clusters and new markets emerging
number of regional new marketing strategies emerging
number of referrals to Initiative Partners and other existing business support agencies
number of new jobs /and/or businesses created
number of existing businesses boosted/experiencing income growth
What outcomes are we striving for?
more creatives feeling more connected and valued in their communities
more creatives engaged with business development and tourism development supports and services
more creative leaders, including those from rural/remote and underserved communities integrated into super-regional and sub-regional economic development conversations
more understanding of distinct community assets and capabilities, and how the sum of these parts adds up to a stronger super-regional creative economy
more, deeper strategic collaborations across sectors and communities
better data that enhances the insights from 2021 Arts Impact Study, offers a more complete view of participation rates, employment and income figures and impact, and lays the foundation for a Creative Economic Development Strategy
FOOTNOTE 1
We are not alone in this regard: the modern creative economy is in a vital transition period. Analysis of the first 20 years is now revealing who’s been included (urban, more privileged) and who’s been left behind (rural, less privileged). Established economies around the world such as the USA, UK and Australia are now implementing strategies to value and include those left behind by the modern Creative Economy. Federal Reserve inclusion calculator. UK press release and early measurement results. Equity-denied populations include Indigenous, racialized, newcomer, youth, LGBTQ+, and people with differing abilities.
FOOTNOTE 2
Our definition of the creative sector is broad, and includes arts-serving organizations and individuals involved in a wide range of activities associated with the modern Creative Economy such as advertising, and marketing; film, TV, radio and photography; music, performing arts and visual arts; crafts; design including product, graphic and fashion; publishing; architecture; and software/computer engineering; as well as people working in creative roles in industries that are not typically thought of a creative such as education and training, retail and manufacturing and public administration.
It also includes cultural capital elements such as: tourist trails, community arts, creative hubs and clusters, annual festivals, regional networks, music studios and conceptual spaces, and traditional endogenous (grass roots) crafts and archives, as well as new/emerging creative industries.