Minto took another step forward in development of a cultural strategy for the area with the first of three community launches to bring the idea to the public.
Though only a few dozen local residents were at the initial meeting in Palmerston, more were expected in the launches to be held in Harriston and Clifford.
Last month, a presentation was made to Minto council by Greg Baeker of AuthentiCity planning.
While much of the presentation was similar to that made to Minto councillors in October, the results of recent municipal elections meant that many of those people will not be returning to the council table.
As a result, the information was new to a number of those who will be part of the next term of council.
Treasurer Gord Duff explained the Palmerston meeting was the first of three such meetings.
“As you know, Minto has been interested in this field for several years.
“I think it began when I went to the first municipal planning and culture forum, in 2005.”
“In Minto, we’ve looked at this from an economic development point of view. It’s not just the culture and the arts, but quality of life, and what makes Minto an attractive play to stay.
Nine months ago, the Ministry of Culture offered the Creative Communities Prosperity Fund, which Minto was successful in applying for.
The grant was for $55,000.
“We are very fortunate to have Greg Baeker – who literally wrote the book on this – working for us.”
Duff said Baeker, a senior consultant with AuthentiCity, has worked on cultural plans for communities of all sizes across Ontario and Canada – from large urban areas such as Toronto to smaller rural areas.
AuthentiCity, Baeker’s firm, is a Toronto-based consulting practice. It works with municipalities, local business and community coalitions to build local economies through culture. It offers three core services: municipal cultural planning, cultural mapping, and workshops.
Baeker noted “[Minto] is actually the smallest community/municipality that has undertaken one of these plans.”
As a result, he said, “Minto is breaking new ground trying to do some of this work in a smaller community, which I’m excited to be part of” Baeker said.
“In the early 90s, I came to see next breakthrough for leadership in culture was not going to come from the federal government or provincial governments, it’s really going to have to be locally.”
Baeker said “Leadership would have to be within the municipality, within the community.”
His focus was how culture connects with community planning and economic development.
“More and more municipalities across the country are paying attention to culture and municipal cultural planning. It’s getting more attention.
“It’s becoming more widely recognized as a key planning and economic development tool.”
He explained that last year in 2009 and into early 2010, he worked with another consulting firm to create regional economic strategies in eastern Ontario and southwestern Ontario. Minto was part of the latter regional economic analysis, Baeker added.
“Those strategies were trying to look at the relationship between mid-sized communities and larger urban centres and look at the drivers in this thing called the creative economy.
“One of the main conclusions of the study, is that the creative economy is driven by culture and more importantly, by quality of life.”
He said the patterns within the labour force indicate that jobs in the creative knowledge based class are on the rise.
“It doesn’t mean that agriculture will not continue to be a really important part of any local economic – but that is not where the future growth in the economy is.”
Culture plays an important role in enhancing the quality of life in the community, Baeker said.
“We used to think economic development was about chasing new businesses, or industries or big factories in the belief that if you attracted new industries, people would follow businesses.
“We know now that it is the other way around. If you have communities where people want to live and work, businesses and investments follow people.”
Growing local assets
Baeker commented that the point to this “is simply 80% of the growth in local economies doesn’t come from new businesses or factories coming in. It comes from existing or growing businesses within the community.”
He said the Minto study will look at identifying local cultural enterprises and businesses and try to find out how to grow those local assets.
Baeker added “Cultural tourism is the fastest growing kind of tourism in the world today, and is a factor in growing local economies.”
Similar work in Prince Edward County, indicated “that a traditional approach to economic development – bringing in industries to the community – would have zero chance of success because the community had no competitive advantage.”
New ways of thinking were needed.
Baeker said “If you turn the economic development model on its head, and look at the quality of life, and quality of place in Prince Edward County, then there is an opportunity to grow the economy.”
He stressed “the traditional economy does not go away, it’s just not where the future growth is.”
Cultural mapping
In talking of cultural mapping, he pointed to a map generated which indicated 270 cultural and tourism assets of that community.
“We developed a database of those assets.”
“When we took the cultural plan forward to council, one of the powerful things is that you challenge a person’s assumptions of what a cultural asset is.”
But Baeker saw part of his role is to help change some attitudes on the role of culture in the economy.
He stressed the results of Prince Edward County are not the same as what other communities might achieve.
He said not every community would find the same level of success in each attribute.
“But if there are interesting things to do in a community, people stay longer. If they stay longer, they spend more money.”
Baeker said cultural mapping includes both the tangible assets and the intangible assets, the stories behind the community “stories which give the community its unique identity.”
But, cultural mapping is just a tool, to systematically identify classify and mapping those item.
It provides better information to create better planning for economic development.
He said another reason is to simply increase the awareness of cultural assets within the community, first and foremost for the residents.
“Yes, we’ll get the tourists, but one of the primary advantages is to profile to the community, what we have here.”
When we are in an environment we take for granted, there are things that are there we just don’t notice.
“There is a myth that we don’t have any information on culture in communities.”
He said there is a lot of information, it is just collected by different people or exists within different databases.
Cultural mapping is not just about creating databases, it is about using it within GIS (geographical information systems).
“It’s a way of managing information on any type of asset the municipality needs to make decisions.
“Culture becomes a layer of information, akin to economic development information or demographics.”
He said that under the provincial definition – it is a municipally led process.
That in itself is important said Baeker since in other parts of the world, cultural planning has been done at the community level.
“But it is essential the municipality is the lead. Nothing can be done without the community. The point is to have culture be seen as a planning responsibility – like economic development or any other planning responsibility the municipality might have.
In the past, it was thought the town’s main involvement in culture was funding museums, libraries or delivering recreation or cultural programming.
Those responsibilities still exist, however Baeker said there is the bigger vision of bringing those issues within the larger plans.
Local response
Councillor elect Ron Faulkner asked if this was manageable for a community the size of Minto, “or are we going to have to look larger and work either in partnership with the County of Wellington or Wellington North?”
Palmerston resident Bob McEachern used an example of his putting on a function – “to make that work, I’m going to have to talk to 20,000 people.”
He said the 8,000 people in Minto will not generate the 200 seats required to fill the event.
“The point we need to look at is in Minto itself. When amalgamation took place, Wallace [Township] didn’t come with us and Mildmay did not come with Clifford.
Those were the natural traffic patterns, he said.
He felt if this process is going to work, someone will need to speak with North Perth and Wellington County about their plans.
He said if this is going to work, then Minto needs to look at partnerships with its natural geographical partners.
“And we probably need to include the county.
“We need to get the county thinking the world doesn’t stop at Fergus.”
He said the northern three municipalities tend to be forgotten.
McEachern agreed that there would also need to be discussions with Wellington North and Mapleton as well.
“To do this alone, doesn’t make any sense. We have to get those other guys on side.”
Duff said economic and business development officer Belinda Wick-Graham is on a county committee working on a regional basis for economic development. He said county efforts to work on tourism have come along slowly.
He suggested Minto could become a leader in the county.
“It’s a mindset. We want to work with them, but they have to want to work with us.”
For additional information, check out the website being created at www.mintoculturalplan.ca
