Years after Connecticut consolidated local tourism offices that touted the state”™s events and venues, a Fairfield nonprofit is filling part of the void in helping rally residents and businesses to support the arts ”“ and by extension the state”™s overall appeal to visitors from New York and elsewhere.
If the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County”™s efforts are difficult to quantify, the group this month pegged some numbers on the economic impact of the local nonprofit arts and culture organizations: $130 million in 2010 spending and support for more than 4,000 jobs.
Americans for the Arts crunched those figures from surveys of just more than 75 arts and cultural organizations in Fairfield County, adding the resulting local estimates are conservative of the overall sector, given the exclusion of for-profit arts and culture enterprises from the study.
The organization has offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., and partnered with the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County in surveying local organizations, with the Danbury-based Housatonic Valley Cultural Alliance also collecting data.
The jobs and economic activity estimates include the economic impact of spending by audiences at arts venues. Arts and cultural events drew more than 2.1 million visitors in 2010, with 500,000 of them from outside Fairfield County. Visitors spent $25 each on average, largely at restaurants near attractions.
The study shows conclusively that a small investment in the arts yields a big return to the economy, according to Ryan Odinak, executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County.
“They keep on ticking in spite of the licking,” Odinak said. “Throughout the next few months ”¦ we know that we”™ll be talking with a lot of businesses, meeting with our organizations, reaching out to our trustee network and so forth and trying to make sure that as many people as possible know about the results of this and that it has a greater impact.”
In Bridgeport this month, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism held a meeting to convey resources and support available for area organizations. Under Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Connecticut notoriously slashed tourism marketing to $1, while cutting off funding for a Fairfield County tourism office. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has since launched a renewed tourism campaign under the slogan “Connecticut ”“ still revolutionary.”
“Absolutely, $1 a year had a huge impact,” Odinak said. “What we”™re seeing now with the rebranding of the state ”¦ and more funding being put back into tourism, we hope we are going to see some change.”
As a sector, the arts community is only just starting to get sophisticated in how it makes its case, according to Steven Wolff, founding principal of AMS Planning & Research Corp. in Fairfield.
“We”™ve made the intrinsic argument about the value of arts and culture in creating better people, more creativity, better innovation places that people want to live; and we”™re making the case about the economic benefits,” Wolff said. “We need to continue to build the partnerships around the system that make it clear that it all works together.”
For state Sen. John McKinney of Fairfield, venues like the Fairfield Theatre Co. stand up to the “common-sense” test, in his words, on whether the arts merit funding on par with other society priorities.
“When I come here for a show, in fact I usually go somewhere within walking distance for dinner and a glass of wine,” McKinney said. “If I”™m at the Dressing Room when the (Westport) Country Playhouse is having a show, there”™s a lot more business and activity going on. The evidence of the economic impact (of) the arts is obvious.
“As the father of three young kids, I see what arts and music does for them,” McKinney said. “It enriches their lives, inspires their creativity and makes them better, smarter people ”¦ We need to grow the ”˜room”™ of people who love and appreciate the arts for what they are and what they bring to our culture, and then drag everyone else in the room on the economic argument.”
