Presentations

Presentation prepared and delivered by Steven Thorne at the Creative City Conference, Fredericton, New Brunswick, September 2009.

The CCTF report was applauded across Canada for its insight, in-depth analysis and comprehensive set of recommendations. The report was unflinching in its analysis, creative in its recommendations, and holistic in its approach. The community has really embraced the report and making London a more creative city has now become a common media and street phrase. A number of community organizations have set up their own Creative City Committees and have taken on one or two of the recommendations and developed them further. The city now understands it has to change to prosper in the new Knowledge-based economy, and has taken strong action to make those changes.

London is a mid-sized community of 360,000 in the heart of Southwestern Ontario. The city's economy is diverse with a strong influence of institutional--education, health care and financial. There is a manufacturing sector that is important and growing, and the city acts as a regional shopping centre. The CCTF Report was challenged to address a number of issues, including retaining and attracting more bright young 20-30 year olds; bringing together the scattered arts/cultural/heritage communities; setting an economic course for the city; developing new Planning elements for creating new neighbourhoods and protecting existing structures; improving the downtown core; making London a more creative city that would also be a healthy city.

The process consisted of a City Council resolution to establish the Creative City task force in 2004. There were 3 members of Council plus 13 COmmunity reps, and a Working Group consisting of a dozen senior Arts industry representatives. The Task Force did a great deal of community outreach, worked extraordinarily hard, and delivered its report eight months later. London City Council shortly thereafer adopted the report and the recommendations, and implementation has been going on ever since.

The TF report identified a number of weaknesses and inconsistencies in the municipal structure. There is now, for the first time, a Cultural Office in city hall that reports directly to the CAO. The Arts Council was strengthened, a new relationship with the city developed and municipal funding went up 10x! There is a new London Heritage Council now operating. The arts and cultural agenda is now firmly supported by Council. London's first Public Art policy was adopted in 2007 and the city has now established annual funding for public art--for the first time! Groups as diverse as the Public Library and the London Home Builders have started their own Creative City committees. Local media now feature Creative City information in their local publications.

This document provides the cultural plan for the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, an urban-rural municipality of about 108,000 in Southwestern Ontario. It is divided into four parts. Part One, describing the cultural and economic development of Chatham-Kent and its strategic directions and goals for 2007-2010 provides the context. Part Two, Where Are We Now? includes a statistical portrait of Chatham-Kent, its 2007 Economic Development Strategy and a cultural mapping of the community. In Part Three, Where Do We Want To Be? the results of community consultation and a cultural tourism analysis and a report on the strategic priorities by the working groups of the study are discussed. Part Four, How De We Get There? A Cultural Plan For Chatham-Kent, outlines a vision of culture for the community, the roles for the municipality and the community in working toward the vision, recommendations for building cultural tourism capacity in the area and a list of strategic priorities. The report also contains three appendices: a cultural resource framework, the results of the community forum and a list of the strategic priorities for the working groups.

Becoming a Creative City is about Canadian municipalities leading the way in our rapidly changing society as they respond to new demographic trends and realities. It is about jobs, prosperity and the Knowledge-based economy. It is about building and rebuilding municipalities that are livable, environmentally friendly and appealing to the Creative Class. It is about towns and cities finding new ways to establish better neighbourhhoods, and how to rebuild downtown cores that are often faltering.

Any industry that has an annual economic impact of $85 Billion and employs well over 1 million people is a huge industry in Canada. Those billions represent 7.4% of Canada‟s annual Gross Domestic Product; it is an impressive amount.

The industry, surprisingly to many, is the cultural community. And for many smart municipalities in Canada this is a growing, welcome and important part of their local economies. In fact, many municipalities are making strategic investments in the arts sector as part of their Municipal Cultural Planning implementation.

The challenges facing Canadian communities because of the financial meltdown in the US that sparked the credit crunch globally and the subsequent economic downturn is the number one issue for all levels of government right now. And that means how you re-shape your community is becoming the number one priority for smart Council members.
Enter the Creative City movement. Through Municipal Cultural Planning, the Creative City concepts can help municipalities to address critical community issues:
- How Canadian towns and cities are going to attract and retain the bright young people in their communities is a major factor in the future economic prosperity of any municipality.
- How to foster entrepreneurship and innovative new partnerships for economic development.
- How to harness the energy and creativity of the arts, cultural and heritage sectors to strengthen the community.
- How to design/build sustainable, vibrant, safe and appealing neighbourhoods and downtowns that are attractive to a variety of markets—singles, young families, seniors…
- How best to celebrate the multicultural face of Canadian communities, and to ensure that towns and cities are at the forefront of the rapidly changing social spectrum.
- How to build a greener, sustainable community, because a Creative City is also a Healthy City.

To explore the potential of MCP as a key strategy to support rural economic and community revitalization, The Ontario Rural Council (TORC) partnered with the Municipal Cultural Planning Partnership (MCPP) and a number of sponsoring organizations to host a series of three MCP Forum events. These gatherings took place in Brockville (November 17, 2008), Chatham (November 26, 2008) and Minett / Muskoka (March 26, 2009) and attracted a total of 284 participants.

The TORC Report is an official document summarizing “what we heard” during the TORC Municipal Cultural Planning (MCP) Forum series. It is a critical outcome in so much as participant insights, observations and recommendations are intended to help inform stakeholders, as well as federal, provincial and municipal decision-makers, on the issue of MCP. It is hoped the Recommendations for Action herein will aid stakeholders and decision-makers in leveraging opportunities towards addressing a number of issues related to MCP.

Cultural tourism is a fast-growing and lucrative segment of the North American travel industry. However, for a city or region to realize its potential for cultural tourism, its destination marketing organization (DMO) must:
1. Possess a holistic understanding of culture,
2. Understand the city or region’s cultural character, and
3. Understand the travel motivations and behaviours of cultural tourists.

These “three understandings” then become the basis for cultural tourism that is place-based rather than attractions-based. Capitalizing on a destination’s unique identity, cultural character, and “sense of place”, placed-based cultural tourism maximizes a destination’s appeal to cultural tourists, and maximizes a destination’s profit from cultural tourism.

Using a number of indices that examine the relationship between technology, creativity and diversity, the authors examined twenty-five urban regions in Canada with a core population of more than 100,000 and compared them to a number of regions in the U.S. with similar populations. The findings of the study indicate that these relationships are as strong as, if not stronger than those in the U.S. They found there is a “vibrant local creative class” and openness to diversity that attracts knowledge workers to Canada and that Ontario city-regions are well placed to compete against U.S. city-regions. There is a bibliography and a number of appendices.

Using a number of indices that examine the relationship between technology, creativity and diversity, the authors examined twenty-five urban regions in Canada with a core population of more than 100,000 and compared them to a number of regions in the U.S. with similar populations. The findings of the study indicate that these relationships are as strong as, if not stronger than those in the U.S. They found there is a “vibrant local creative class” and openness to diversity that attracts knowledge workers to Canada and that Ontario city-regions are well placed to compete against U.S. city-regions. There is a bibliography and a number of appendices