A lot has happened since the workshops in June and we’d like to take the opportunity to update you on our progress.
- We’ve consolidated your comments and ideas from the workshops and placed them on the website under Workshop Findings
- Changes to the cultural assets mapped for the workshops have been integrated and we’d like to create new maps for the website
- We’re working with the Applied Geomatics Research Group in Nova Scotia to prepare the cultural data gathered by AuthentiCity, for transfer to each municipality for the purposes of adding to the Geomatic Information Systems housed in the municipal planning departments. The data will be in categories consistent across the region as framed by Dr. Baeker and used by Statistics Canada. This will allow us to maintain, change and build on the cultural data to create new maps helpful for land-use planning, economic development, tourism and regional collaborative planning.
- A final report prepared by AuthentiCity and economic analysis prepared by Millier Dickinson Blais, on the region’s cultural assets have been reviewed by the Steering Committee. We’ve provided these documents to the consultants that are preparing the Regional Economic Development Strategy and its recommendations, due for completion this Fall. Some of the highlights of Dr. Baeker’s reports include:
- The importance of culture in enhancing quality of place in the region.
- The relationship of quality of place to cultural tourism, one of the fastest-growing and lucrative segments of the North American travel industry.
- The potential to maximize the region’s appeal to cultural tourists based on its unique identity and ‘sense of place’.
- The potential to attract tourists through the internet and to increase audience engagement through social media.
- The highest numbers of creative cultural industries in the region are in design, performing arts, advertising, motion picture and video industries, and publishing (2009).
- In terms of growth in numbers of creative cultural occupations (versus % growth/decline) the six highest areas of growth were in authors and writers, journalists, graphic designers and illustrators, artisans and craftspeople, musicians and singers, and painters, sculptors and other visual artists.
- The emergence of small business and entrepreneurship in the region, coupled with the fact that many creative cultural occupations are small businesses, often home-based.
We recognize that this is just the beginning to cultural mapping in our region. The South Georgian Bay Cultural Mapping Steering Committee plans to continue meeting in the Fall to collaborate and discuss ways we can continue to gather cultural data at the community level. Please check in with our website periodically. In the meantime, I invite you to contact us with any new cultural information you might have. For example if you know about a new gallery, or creative business in the community, please let us know.
The consultants for the Regional Economic Development Strategy are planning a Town Hall meeting in the Fall to share the findings, recommendations and next steps of this project.