While the recession has cut into profits, budgets and employment at many Westchester businesses, a newly released economic impact study paints a strikingly contrary picture for arts organizations in the county.
In 2010, they spent more and supported more jobs than they did before the recession, and reaped more revenue from their audiences, even as individual spending by attendees at arts events declined by nearly $2 per person.
The increased contribution to the economy and to government treasuries from Westchester arts groups also diverged from an overall national trend of significantly less spending by nonprofit organizations and their audiences.
The study by Americans for the Arts was the fourth the nonprofit group has made since 1995 to track the impact of the nation”™s nonprofit arts and culture industry on the economy. Westchester County was one of 182 communities and regions nationwide that participated. The Westchester portion of the study was coordinated by ArtsWestchester in White Plains. About one-third of the county”™s 334 nonprofit arts and culture organizations took part in the study.
Arts organizations and audiences spent a total of $156.4 million in the county in 2010, according to the study, up from approximately $119.9 million in 2005, a 30 percent increase. That tally includes event-related spending by audiences. Since 1995, when Americans for the Arts did its first “Arts and Economic Prosperity” survey, arts spending in Westchester has increased 189 percent.
In that 15-year period, the number of full-time equivalent jobs, created either at the county”™s arts and culture nonprofits or in the hospitality and tourism industry and other businesses that serve arts audiences, more than doubled, from 2,047 in 1995 to 4,800 in 2010, according to the study. The study suggests the nonprofit arts industry in Westchester danced past the massive layoffs of the Great Recession, instead adding more than 1,000 full-time equivalent jobs to the county”™s economy since 2005.
At a time of dwindling municipal revenue, Westchester”™s arts and culture nonprofits paid approximately $10.64 million to New York state in various taxes and fees in 2010, up from $8.4 million five years earlier, a 15 percent increase. Local governments in 2010 received nearly $12.47 million from those groups, according to the study, up from approximately $9.2 million five years earlier, a 26 percent increase.
Audiences at events hosted by nonprofits spent nearly $59.6 million in the county in 2010, an increase of about $11.7 million from their pre-recession spending in 2005. Excluding the price of admission, those audiences on average spent $22.17 per person, nearly $2 less than in 2005.
About two-thirds of the 2.7 million nonprofit arts attendees in 2010 were Westchester residents. Visitors from outside the county spent more freely to attend events, averaging $30.83 per person, while Westchester residents averaged $18.20 in spending for an event.
Those higher-spending arts tourists in the county represent “a sector that we can build upon,” said ArtsWestchester CEO Janet Langsam.
“The audience has grown” in the county, she said. “The economy has affected what people spend, but the good news is that on the arts side, a lot more people are getting their arts locally.”
Langsam pointed out the boost to employment in the county by arts and culture nonprofits. In the economic downturn, “This new climate that we”™re experiencing is all about jobs, and I think people underestimate the fact that the arts are a job producer.”
“Westchester has a very robust arts scene,” she said. “We really do have an affordable and eclectic arts scene, and I think the study bears that out in terms of how people have used the affordable arts, particularly at a time of personal cutbacks in spending.”
