Quantifying the Impact of the Arts in Tacoma
The arts contribute a lot to the quality of life in Tacoma. From shows at the Rialto to Monkeyshines to the Hilltop Artists and everything else in between, Tacoma’s residents and visitors have a pretty great variety of ways to explore life through art, as audience and as participants. Pointing to a quantifiable measure of what the arts contribute is a little harder, but some studies try to do just that.
In 2011, the City of Tacoma’s Arts Commission participated in a national study called Arts & Economic Prosperity IV. The study attempts to document the economic impact that nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences have on the economy.
The study looks at direct spending by nonprofit arts organizations in Tacoma and across the country. It also looks at money spent by those attending events at those organizations, and at the ways that money moves through the community.
Some highlights shared on the Tacoma Culture page include:
Economic Impact of the Nonprofit Arts and Culture Industry in Tacoma
(expenditures by both organizations and audiences)
Total Expenditures – $64.72 million
Full-Time Equivalent Jobs – 1,735
Resident Household Income – $40.52 million
Local Government Revenue – $2.82 million
State Government Revenue – $3.76 million
If you have a bit of spare time today you can read up on the project methodology and how the total impact is a combined number based on direct and indirect spend … but that’s not what we’re going to get into here.
Tacoma is facing the serious budget cuts, so these numbers no doubt will be useful to arts supporters in arguing for maintaining funding. We have to wonder, though, if there is a risk of minimizing the big picture in the attempt to quantify something as essentially qualitative as the impact of the arts on our community?
Read more about the study, and link to summaries and full reports of the results at www.TacomaCulture.org.
Filed under: Arts, Economic Development
8 comments
C CouncilWatcher June 12, 2012
I think this may fall on deaf ears. Council Actions this year:
Cut 2 staff members from the Arts department.
Cut over $200K from the Arts budget in Tacoma
Implemented taxes on non profit hospitals, despite over $350 million in economic impact.
And now the council knows that the Arts can afford it to be taxed directly.
C Chalky White June 13, 2012
There are wants and there are needs. Government can’t do everything. Time to break the cycle of dependency and loopholes.
F fredo June 13, 2012
Here’s an illustration of an illogical argument:
Tacomans spend $64M on art in Tacoma.
The city provides some public funding to encourage art.
Therefore, the publics willingness to spend millions on art is dependent on the city’s ability to provide public funding.
O OkayThen June 13, 2012
To fredo’s point, how much of the money spent on the arts in the study is spent by government? $1M, $10M, all $65M? Or maybe government funding was excluded? (but I kind of doubt it since the organizations that receive the money are hopefully spending it)
P Peter Peter June 13, 2012
@OkayThen I read through the study – mostly – and the money stated here is money spent by the arts organization for expenses including salary, operations, etc. or by patrons on things like food, drink, etc before or after said artsy events.
So, none of the money being spent here is government money. There’s money coming into these organizations from somewhere; grants or government or ticket sales etc., but this isn’t a calculation of return on investment.
This is a tool to illustrate the impact of the arts, but doesn’t address the initial funding of the programs.
J Jenny Jenkins June 13, 2012
The study seems to be trying to quantify how far money spent by arts organizations goes in the community – wherever it comes from. It seems to be implying that arts dollars make more of an impact than other dollars, although they don’t do the same kind of analysis of spending at other businesses, etc. They talk about it as an “iterative” statistical procedure and give an equation for adding up each time the money spent on arts gets re-spent within the community.
I’m not enough of a statistics whiz to decipher the equation, so I don’t know about the math, but the study seems to exist in a bit of a vacuum – I feel like it needs more context to say whether it’s significant or not.
F fredo June 13, 2012
The real purpose of the study isn’t to see how much prosperity art brings to a city in terms of economics but rather to advocate for increased government spending on arts programs.
Unfortunately, the study doesn’t actually show that spending on art is related to government spending.
The study seems to show a correlation but doesn’t show a cause and effect.
F fredo June 13, 2012
Every morning I make a pot of coffee, and then shortly thereafter the sun comes up.
Using the methodology of the study described above I guess we would have to conclude that the reason the sun rises each morning is because I make a pot of coffee.