SFU professors joined a panel of experts at the City of Surrey’s Creative Economy event on Tuesday, June 11, to discuss how our economy would benefit from investment in the creative sector and what can business do for arts and culture.
The panel of experts was joined by Dr. Rowland Lorimer, director of the Master of Publishing program at SFU’s Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, and Catherine Murray, a professor in the School of Communication. Additionally, SFU IAT students presented interactive art displays at the event that included a virtual reality piece to help people suffering from chronic pain.
The summit was held in support of the New Surrey Cultural Plan, which was adopted by the Surrey Council last year. The Plan aims at “enhancing urbanization in the city through the development of arts and heritage services.”
According to Councillor Judy Villeneuve, “this plan includes a specific goal to enhance the economy by fostering local artists, preparing a cultural marketing plan, a cultural economic development plan, a cultural tourism plan, and to develop policies that lead into affordable spaces for artistic and heritage endeavours.”
The council hopes that by pursuing this goal, the Plan will “foster, enhance and expand the development of the rich human, cultural and natural resources of the community, resulting in a more competitive economy and one of the nation’s most livable communities.”
Lorimer was invited to participate in the summit because of his work with BCreative 2012, a conference oriented to trying to encourage the provincial government to create policy to further build the creative economy.
“Of all the provinces in Canada, BC spends the least amount on the creative economy,” said Lorimer. “At the time [BCreative 2012 was held], all of the policies were being challenged . . . The province wasn’t really making any positive moves. There are lots of creative initiatives being put into place around the world, and BC isn’t engaging.”
At BCreative 2012, the panel brought statistics that show how the municipalities of BC spend the most amount of money on the creative sector on average across all of Canada, even though BC, on a provincial level, invests the lowest.
In addition to monetary gains, Lorimer proposes that by investing in the intellectual and creative sector, BC is remaining competitive on an international scale.“It’s incredibly difficult to compete with people in China and Vietnam who get paid a whole lot less than do workers in Canada,” said Lorimer.
He continued, “One of the ways of remaining competitive is to develop the intellectual and creative sector. It does pay off: for every dollar that government invests, there are three effectively that get returned to the government.”
“If you look at all of the creative sector, the cultural industries (innovation and the digital economy, and so on) . . . that’s a really growth area, and what the Europeans — led by the British — have realised and what Ontario and Quebec are also doing is spending on supporting the creative economy, it pays off in spades.”
When asked why our country would choose to shift to this new economic model rather than concentrate on industry and today’s status quo, Lorimer replied that the creative economy is not only the path to revenues; it is also the path to a greener world, in every sense of the word.
“The reason is partly the environment,” said Lorimer. “There’s all kinds of activities, especially mining and forestry, that are environmentally devastating.”
“The eventual return that society gets from [investing in the creative sector] is the same as investing in, say, highways going to mines, but culture and creativity have positive environmental, social, and economic impacts.”
