The Kelowna Initiative: A Cultural Tourism Case Study

Cultural tourism in the Okanagan Valley began with the "Kelowna Initiative": an undertaking spearheaded by the City's Arts Development Office to establish Kelowna as a leading cultural destination in the Pacific Northwest.

Read this case study to learn about the development of cultural tourism in Kelowna, and how the Kelowna Initiative gave rise to the Okanagan Cultural Corridor Project.



December 2000

Steven Thorne
Executive Director
The Okanagan Cultural Corridor Project


Good morning,


I'm pleased to have the opportunity today to talk about the arts development initiative that is currently underway in the city of Kelowna.

Let me begin by describing the genesis and purpose of the "Kelowna Initiative". This initiative, spearheaded by my office during the time that I worked for the City, has, as its objective, developing Kelowna into a leading cultural tourism destination in the Pacific Northwest, and, over time, an alternative to Vancouver for the location of the cultural industries: film, publishing, sound recording, new media, ceramic and glass production, and the manufacture of other products with a high design element. Initially, however, realizing Kelowna's cultural tourism potential is the focus of the Kelowna Initiative.

How did the Kelowna Initiative get started? The initiative began in 1995 when the City of Kelowna created its first arts development office. In August of that year, I arrived and took the helm. I was not a city staffer. Instead, I worked under contract to the City with an office at the Chamber of Commerce.

First, a few words about Kelowna to set the context for the Kelowna Initiative. The city is in the heart of old Socred BC It has a population of 100,000. Politically and socially, it is very conservative: home to a large, fundamentalist Christian community, and home to a large population of seniors living on fixed incomes. Municipal tax rates are low, government can sometimes be viewed with suspicion, and, with the exception of its generous support for parks and athletic recreation services, Kelowna is a city which, when I first arrived, saw its responsibilities as being largely the provision of roads, sewers and sidewalks. At the same time, Kelowna possesses less than two-thirds of the percentage of university graduates compared with the Canadian average. It is a most unlikely community for an arts development initiative.

When I began work, the situation I encountered in the arts community was desperate. Through years of financial and artistic mismanagement, exacerbated by civic under-funding, the city's two flagship performing arts organizations, Sunshine Theatre and the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, had each succeeded in accumulating a debt in excess of half the size of their annual operating budgets. Squabbling between various factions within the Symphony was being played out, openly, on the letters page of the Kelowna Daily Courier. Not surprisingly, the business community had pretty much turned its back on the arts, arts organizations could not attract strong board members, and, behind closed doors at City Hall, the following joke was said to be repeated. Question: What qualifications are needed to sit on an arts board in Kelowna? Answer: A pulse.

As for civic financial support for the arts, apart from the City's line-item appropriation for the Kelowna Art Gallery, grant monies disbursed through the City's arms-length funding agency, the Kelowna Arts Foundation, equalled $75,000, or less money than the City expended on the janitorial contract at Memorial Arena. In truth, the arts in Kelowna were not really considered to be a public good. One senior councillor summed up his position on the arts succinctly: "government should not be involved in funding people's hobbies".

Early weeks on the job were sobering. Phone calls to business leaders often went unreturned. I later found out that, because I was associated with the arts, many assumed that I must be calling, cap in hand, seeking money. Other early contacts in the community frequently revealed a patronizing attitude toward my office, and toward me. It was almost as if there was an initial assumption on the part of the individual I was phoning or meeting that I was probably not a particularly intelligent or capable person. After all, an intelligent, capable person wouldn't be Kelowna's arts development officer.

How then was I going to do what needed to be done? The task was enormous. Our flagship performing arts organizations were dysfunctional. Leading businesses had little or no interest in assisting the arts. The City had no infrastructure of policies or funding programs of consequence to support the arts, and, when I first arrived, no interest in creating them. Civic arts facilities -- with the exception of the new Kelowna Art Gallery and the old Kelowna Community Theatre - were non-existent. The arts in Kelowna had no cachet, no sex appeal. The arts, in fact, were virtually a community leper.

Where to begin? Well, in circumstances of this kind, I believe the place to begin is with a vision. Many years before arriving in Kelowna, when I taught at UBC, I often used to visit the Okanagan. What always impressed me about the Valley was the combination of its exquisite natural beauty, its enviable summer climate, its burgeoning wine industry, and its booming recreational tourism industry built around its beaches, its campgrounds, its golf courses and its ski hills. But what always perplexed me about the Okanagan was the absence of a significant cultural component to its tourism industry. Where were the major arts events? Where were the major arts festivals? Where were the well-developed and well-marketed heritage tourism attractions? Where were the winery-based celebrations that integrated the arts?

Of course, I realize now that, in a region, which had never really defined the arts as a public good, investments in an arts infrastructure, which, over time, could contribute a cultural component to the tourism industry, had simply never been made.

But the opportunity! Wine and the arts: is there a more ancient marriage? Furthermore, connected to four major markets -- Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Seattle -- by road and by air, Kelowna was perfectly positioned, with the right development strategy and the right investments, to become a major cultural tourism destination. In fact, much of the groundwork to allow this opportunity to be realized had already been laid.

You see, in the north end of Kelowna's downtown, the city possesses a variety of cultural facilities, which have been built over the years, largely by happenstance, within a two-block radius of each other. On the arts side of the ledger, there's the 850-seat Kelowna Community Theatre, and the new Kelowna Art Gallery. On the heritage side, there's the Kelowna Centennial Museum, the Orchard Industry Museum, the new Wine Museum, and a beautiful Japanese Garden built to honour the sister city of Kasugai.

In the same two-block radius the city boasts the new Kelowna Library, the four-star Grand Okanagan Hotel, and a spectacular new Waterfront Park, which contains a shell with all the makings for a first-class outdoor amphitheatre. And, at the heart of this area I'm describing, a 6000-seat multi-purpose sports / entertainment / trade show facility was on the drawing boards when I arrived.

And what did I suggest to the City that it do with this area? First, recognize it for what it is: a cultural district. And then, do what over 55 other North American cities have done: develop and market the district. This involves concentrating arts events, festivals, exhibitions and programming within the district; encouraging compatible retail outlets and destination dining -- much as we see on Granville Island; nurturing a sense of place through signage, streetscaping and public amenities; and marketing the district to our citizens and our visitors.

So, this was the vision. Develop a cultural tourism industry centred within a downtown cultural district.

Now, in the beginning, the City, the tourism industry, and the business community paid little attention to what I was suggesting. Even though there are scores of well-established cultural tourism destinations in North America, few community leaders took this cultural tourism stuff seriously -- and fewer still believed that such an initiative could ever succeed in Kelowna. Many actually thought that the phrase "cultural tourism" was something I'd invented. Moreover, suggesting that the City make significant infrastructure investments in the arts... well, this was a non-starter. That is, as long as that suggestion was being repeated by me, or by other voices in the cultural community.

You see, in Kelowna, as in most cities and towns, it's the leaders in the business community who have currency at City Hall, not the leaders in the cultural community. Fortunately, we in the cultural community have many friends in the business community, good friends, people who know that developing arts and culture makes good business sense, people who are willing to use their influence on our behalf.

And this is why, during my first month on the job, I created the Council for Business and the Arts in Kelowna. A group of 21 influential, arts-friendly civic, tourism, and business leaders, the Council for Business and the Arts in Kelowna advocated, largely behind the scenes, on behalf of arts and culture.

In the beginning, these were the people who had access to the ears, which I did not, who lunched with the Mayor, who golfed with the city's decision-makers, who moved in the right social circles. It wasn't a formal group. In fact, we never held a formal meeting. Instead, once every couple of months, council members received a 3 or 4-page communiqué from my office with information ranging from the latest StatsCan figures on cultural tourism, to the infrastructure needs of the arts community, to the kind of lobbying that needed to be done.


Can I point to any success of the Kelowna Initiative directly attributable to the council? Yes.

For several years before my arrival, the arts community had been lobbying the City to convert an old 25,000 square-foot warehouse in the downtown core into a community arts centre. The warehouse was City-owned, located on prime real estate, one block from the waterfront. For its part, the City planned to sell the building when the market was ripe, and saw the property redeveloped for commercial use.

Now, in the year before I arrived in Kelowna, the City actually went so far as to fund a feasibility study to determine the building's suitability as a community arts centre, but there was never any political intention of giving the building over to the arts. The issue came to a head in the summer of 1996 when, in response to a very positive feasibility study, City Council had to vote on whether or not to dedicate the building, the land on which it sat -- and a proposed $1.5 million capital contribution -- toward the creation of a $6.9 million community arts centre.

What happened? The Council for Business and the Arts went to work. Weeks before the vote, letters were written to the Mayor. Letters were written to councillors. Phone calls were made. Lunches were arranged. Radio open-line shows featured arts centre supporters. Arguments were advanced related to economic development, jobs, and tourism. A monthly editorial page column, which I wrote for the Kelowna Daily Courier - a column entitled "Culture Counts" -- advanced the arts centre cause.

Soon, the arts centre was no mere "arts issue". Backing the project in writing -- and in attendance at the City Hall vote -- were representatives from the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Kelowna Association, the Kelowna Hotel Motel Association, the Restaurant and Foodservices Association, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, and the Economic Development Commission -- all of whom, not co-incidentally, had representatives on the Council for Business and the Arts.

Preceding the vote, members of the Council for Business and the Arts -- and the entire arts community, or so it seemed -- assembled in council chambers. But it was the members of the Council for Business and the Arts who sat in the front row, together, facing the Mayor and City Council. After the non-profit group, which proposed to run the arts centre presented its business plan, the manager of the Toronto Dominion Bank rose and endorsed it. I then gave a presentation on the vision for the Kelowna Cultural District, assisted by the President of the Downtown Kelowna Association. Finally, the influential general manager of the Grand Okanagan Hotel -- which is one block from where the arts centre would be located -- stood and gave the project his unqualified support.

That afternoon, City Council voted unanimously to dedicate the building, the land, and $1.5 million toward the creation of Kelowna's community arts centre. Today, the official fundraising campaign is nearing its goal, and the City has increased its cash contribution to $2.8 million. $1.7 million has also been raised from the business community. I might add that the infrastructure for the fundraising campaign -- its professional staff, office, and publicity materials -- was funded through a grant of $240,000 from Human Resources Development Canada, which understands the arts centre's potential as a catalyst for economic growth. Additionally, the federal Millennium program has partnered in the project. Last year, it announced a grant of $980,000 to the arts centre -- the single largest Millennium grant in BC The arts centre, by the way, is located at the heart of the emerging Kelowna Cultural District.

Now, having related the story of how we won a community arts centre for Kelowna, I wouldn't want to suggest that the City was sold on culture's economic value. In the early stages of the Kelowna Initiative, culture was still perceived not as a sector, which contributed to the economy, but as the best-known place where money disappeared. And this, of course, was related to the ongoing financial tribulations of our flagship performing arts organizations.

However, the cultural economy was much, much larger than Sunshine Theatre and the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra. It included our community theatre facility, our public art gallery, our commercial art galleries, our museums, our libraries, our cultural festivals, our visual artists and craftspersons, our commercial artists, our graphic designers and photographers, our private music, drama and dance schools, our academic arts teachers, our picture framers, our craft retailers and suppliers, our musical instrument retailers, our ticket outlets, live music venues, cultural service organizations, and on, and on.

And so, knowing that the cultural economy was very large indeed, but knowing that our community had never conceived of culture as an economic generator, my office commissioned a study to quantify our sector's economic impact. At the same time, I wanted the study to project the potential size of the cultural economy if we were to realize our cultural tourism vision.

In March of 1998, with funding support from a consortium of private and public sector funders -- including Bank of Montreal, Towne Ticket Centre, the Kelowna Hotel Motel Association, and the Economic Development Commission -- my office published The Economic Impact of Arts and Culture in the Central Okanagan, and Toward Our Future: Cultural Tourism and the Cultural Industries. And what did this study find?

Let me share a few highlights. First -- and we were careful to be conservative in our calculations and rigorous with our methodology -- we found that the direct economic impact of arts and culture in the region was more than $37 million. We found that the total economic impact of arts and culture -- including the so-called "ripple effect" -- was more than $67 million. We also found that more than 1,150 people were directly employed in arts and culture -- more people than the combined number employed at two of the three major manufacturers in Kelowna: Sun-Rype Products, and Riverside Forest Products. Additionally, we found that, for each dollar of public support for non-profit performing arts groups -- whether from civic, provincial, or federal sources - $7.24 in total GDP impact rippled through the economy.

As Kelowna's senior city councillor, Robert Hobson, remarked upon presentation of the report, he could think of no other area of public expenditure where each dollar spent stimulated so much economic activity. Further, we found that almost $1 million in "peripheral impacts" -- spending on restaurants, babysitters, dry cleaners, etc. -- was generated by the region's performing arts events and festivals.

It is difficult to describe the impact of the report. It was as if the doors at city hall were thrown wide open, and we were invited in from the cold, to sit at the table.

And what about projections for cultural tourism in Kelowna? Let me first tell you why cultural tourism is so important to the city.

Kelowna and the Okanagan Valley have built its tourism industry around recreational tourism. In the summer, that means camping, swimming, boating, golfing, hiking, biking, visiting theme parks and family attractions. In the winter, it's skiing at several nearby resorts with excellent facilities and runs. Predominately, however, it's the Valley's hot and sunny summer, and its jewel of a lake -- Lake Okanagan -- that draws the tourists each year. "Beaches and peaches" has long been an apt description of the Valley's tourist appeal.

But here's where the problem lies. The Okanagan's recreational tourism industry is becoming increasingly vulnerable to shifting demographics: specifically, to an aging tourist population less inclined to participate in outdoor, athletic activities, and to a decrease in family vacations as a growing number of baby-boomers become empty-nesters and no longer choose family-oriented travel destinations.

The Valley's recreational and family vacation product is tired. The region needs to create new product. And here's where the opportunity for cultural tourism lies. The wave of baby-boomers heading for retirement - almost a third of the population -- is the best salaried and educated of any previous generation. And all the research shows that a high percentage of boomers consume culture in their own communities, and consume culture when they travel. Moreover, research shows that cultural tourists earn more, spend more, stay longer in the cities they visit, shop more, eat in restaurants more, and are more inclined to stay in hotels, motels, or B&B's than to stay with family or friends. And because cultural tourism is not seasonally dependent or dependent upon fine weather, it can occur year-round.

As if this weren't enough, by the year 2025, when the entire North American baby boom is retired, there will be 85 million individuals in the 55 to 74-age category. That's an increase in that age category of 38 million individuals -- fully 80 percent. And this cohort, we are told, is expected to inherit an estimated $10 trillion from its parents' generation.

What this means for tourism -- and for cultural tourism -- can scarcely be over-stated. Possessing health, leisure time, and the financial resources to enjoy both, boomers will seek out unique, one-of-a-kind travel destinations -- destinations that offer personal enrichment, destinations that offer insight into other peoples, places and cultures.

So, to project Kelowna's cultural tourism potential, we first compared StatsCan's national tourism data with local data collected by the Kelowna Visitors and Convention Bureau. In so doing, we found that Kelowna was fully 16 percent beneath the national average for the percentage of trips in Canada, which include cultural activity. The national average for the percentage of trips by Canadians, by Americans, and by international visitors which include cultural activity -- visiting a museum or art gallery, attending an arts event, attending a festival or a fair, visiting an historic site or other heritage attraction -- is 19 percent. In Kelowna, we were at three percent. I wouldn't have expected it to be otherwise. Kelowna had never developed and marketed its cultural attractions.

But if the city were to do so, and if it were simply to achieve the national average for the percentage of trips which include cultural activity, then, based on visitation and spending data compiled by the Visitors and Convention Bureau, Kelowna would enjoy another 270,000 tourists annually, and another $40 million in annual tourist spending.

Of course, these numbers made people sit up and take notice. At the same time, these numbers provided the economic rationale for the public and private sector investments that needed to be made. And let me enumerate the investments that have been made to date by the City of Kelowna.

In addition to its $2.8 million commitment to the community arts centre, the City, in 1997, established a public art program in which an amount roughly equal to one percent of the City's annual capital budget -- $115,000 this year - is invested in public art projects throughout the community. The City's Public Art Committee, charged with administering the public art program, is now commissioning sculptures, murals, and various other forms of public art -- including a major sculpture that was recently unveiled at the Kelowna Airport.

Also in 1997, in response to a consultant's report on the operations of the Kelowna Community Theatre, the City created a new staff position, hiring its first theatre manager. His job? To take the theatre facility -- which was being operated as a town hall -- and proactively manage and market it as a centre for the performing arts. With the hiring of the City's theatre manager, the theatre -- which had been neglected over the years -- has seen capital upgrades worth over $150,000.

Three years ago, the City also committed $50,000 toward Parks Alive!, which, partnered with another $67,000 from Human Resources Development Canada, animates Kelowna's downtown waterfront parks with a summer-long program of free musical concerts, children's arts activities, a juried arts and crafts show, and other arts-based entertainment.

Beyond these initial investments, however, I knew that the City also needed to provide a meaningful level of funding to its professional arts groups -- Sunshine Theatre, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, and its other arts groups and festivals. After all, these are the organizations that will create the arts events and the programming - the "cultural product"; if you will -- that will attract the cultural tourists that Kelowna is seeking.

Excluding the City's line-item appropriation for the Kelowna Art Gallery, the City's operating grants to arts groups when I first arrived totalled $75,000, or about 84 cents per capita. By contrast, comparing apples to apples, the City of Vancouver was investing over $6 per capita in its arts groups. Whatever else the City might do, the Kelowna Initiative would not succeed if the chronic underfunding of our arts groups was not redressed.

And so, in the summer of 1998, Mayor Walter Gray, three city councillors, and a delegation of community leaders accompanied me on a week-long cultural tourism fact-finding tour. Its purpose? To let each person see and taste the tourism dividends enjoyed by communities that are investing in arts and culture.

Where did we go? We went to the village of Leavenworth, Washington, which hosts 1.2 million visitors a year who enjoy its Bavarian architecture, arts and cultural festivals, specialty restaurants and theme shops. We went to the town of LaConner on Puget Sound, a cultural get-a-way destination for Seattle boomers, which welcomes 600,000 visitors a year. We went to the 37th Annual Anacortes Arts Festival, where the community's entire 10-block downtown is given over to a wonderful two-day arts celebration on the August long weekend. We went to Victoria, visited Butchart Gardens and the Royal BC Museum, explored the Inner Harbour, and attended, along with 40,000 others, "Symphony Splash" -- the Victoria Symphony's annual outdoor summer concert. Of course, we visited Chemainus - 400,000 visitors a year. We then went on to Vancouver, toured its cultural district, Granville Island, and attended a "Bard on the Beach" production of Richard III. And finally, we finished our tour in Burnaby where we saw the Burnaby Heritage Village, and the magnificent new Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

Along the way, in each community, we met with political and tourism representatives, and heard -- from the horse's mouth -- the value of their cultural investments.

No other week during my tenure in Kelowna did more to ratchet-up the political will in support of the Kelowna Initiative than the seven days spent on the cultural tourism tour. Shortly thereafter, in response to recommendations made by my office, the City committed to double its grants budget for the arts to more than $160,000 annually. Additionally, the City established a new $100,000-a-year festivals fund, designed to stimulate the creation of new arts and cultural festivals in our tourism shoulder seasons. Other monies were set aside to assist with marketing initiatives.

In total, the City committed to $210,000 in new arts investments, to be phased in over three years.

On a per-capita basis, these investments are bringing Kelowna's total arts investment -- including civic theatre operations, operating support for public art galleries and arts centres, public art budgets, and civic arts staff -- to about 90 percent of what the City of Vancouver now invests.

Where is Kelowna heading next? The City has recently completed a major exercise with outside consultants to put all the pieces together for the emerging Kelowna Cultural District: streetscaping, signage, public amenities, the location of compatible retail shops and destination dining, marketing strategies, district governance, financing and operations.

How soon will we see the emergence of a cultural tourism industry in Kelowna?

From the beginning, I made clear that it will take five to ten years to develop competitive cultural tourism products, and ten to twenty years to develop a cultural tourism industry. It took no less time to produce award-winning wines in the Valley. For its part, the City is committed to staying the course with its investments. And of course, the quality-of-life dividends enjoyed by the citizens of Kelowna -- and the new reputation, which Kelowna is enjoying -- means that the City is already seeing returns on its investments.

Does the Kelowna Initiative have implications outside the Okanagan? I believe that it does. While not every city is as strategically well-positioned for cultural tourism as Kelowna, the cities of Victoria, Nanaimo, Nelson, Cranbrook, Revelstoke, Penticton -- to name just a few here in BC -- all have unrealized cultural tourism assets, or are strategically positioned to benefit from cultural investments, if these investments are made.

In 1999, Tourism BC, in cooperation with the Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture, released the report, Strategic Directions for Culture and Heritage Tourism in BC The authors of the report, Jim Lee and Dr. Peter Williams, proposed that the Province consider a pilot project to model the processes for cultural tourism development. The region recommended for this pilot project was the Okanagan Valley.

In many respects, this would be the logical "next step" for the Kelowna Initiative: the development of the Okanagan Valley as a cultural tourism corridor. This project would link the Valley's arts events, cultural festivals, museums, art galleries, heritage sites, wineries, and other agri-tourism attractions. It would then package and market these cultural resources collectively, positioning the entire Valley as a cultural destination.

In terms of arts and entertainment, the Kelowna Cultural District would form the heart of the cultural corridor. The Valley's wineries -- and there are now more than 40 -- would form the corridor's backbone, stretching throughout the Valley. In fact, the project I'm describing -- the Okanagan Cultural Corridor Project -- has been underway since June of this year. Tourism BC is the principal funder, and I have the privilege to serve as the Project's executive director.

Finally, I would like to say that none of what I've described here this morning -- the tripling of arts grants in Kelowna to over $7 per capita, more than $3 million in new investment in bricks and mortar, a one-percent-for-public-art program, a $100,000-a-year festivals fund, the hiring of new civic arts staff, the creation of new civic arts programming, the development of a designated cultural district in the downtown core, the embracing of a cultural tourism vision for the future of the city -- would have occurred without the political leadership of Mayor Walter Gray. Elected in 1996, Mayor Gray leads a Council, which understands the pivotal role that culture is playing in the emerging new economy. From the beginning, my job was to articulate a vision and recommend the investments. It takes political leadership, however, to grasp the brass ring.

In closing, let me quote the words of Nancy Hanks, a former Chair of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. To quote Ms. Hanks, "There is no crisis in the arts. The only crisis is our failure to view them as a resource for stimulating the vitality, the humaneness, and the economy of our cities and towns".

Thank you.



Copyright © 2000, Steven Thorne. All rights reserved. Please contact Steven Thorne for permission to reproduce this speech in whole or in part.