Montana should place trust in the arts

Museums, concerts, literary events, dance performances, film festivals and plays make a community not only a more pleasant place to live, but also a more prosperous one. That’s what the state of Oregon is discovering, said John C. Hampton of Portland, self-described "sawmill savage" (he’s a lumber manufacturer), arts patron and winner of the National Business Committee for the Arts’ 2003 Leadership Award.

By SHERRY JONES of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/01/17/news/local/news07.txt

Montana, he said Friday, isn’t far behind.

"The patrons and policy-makers of Oregon’s cultural establishment have something in common: a belief that art is more than just enlightening entertainment that can lure people and their pocketbooks to concert halls, galleries and bistros," Hampton, 78, told the crowd at the annual Missoula Cultural Council Awards Luncheon, in the Broadway Building at St. Patrick Hospital.

"These people argue that a vibrant creative culture is a necessary condition of prosperity without which Oregon will not, cannot thrive."

Almost all the adults who traveled in 2002 – 81 percent – were "cultural tourists," people who make the arts a priority when they plan where to go and what to do, according to Barbara Steinfeld of the Portland Oregon Visitors’ Association. Cultural tourists spent $89 million in Portland in 2002; last year, audience members and theater employees brought $129 million to the Ashland economy via the town’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hampton said.

Word gets around when a community has terrific art and that word tends to reach the ears of business owners, who do consider quality of life when deciding where to locate their shop.

A reputation as an "arts town" also tends to attract "creative thinkers" – artists, engineers, scientists, novelists, dancers, architects, think-tank researchers, analysts, musicians – who breathe life into a community and make it a livelier place to live as well, Hampton said.

But for all that to be true, the arts have to get consistent support, he said; cultural tourists need to know that the culture will be there whenever they decide to visit. That means state legislatures have to be committed to funding the arts, even in the toughest economic times, he said.

"We can’t cripple our culture to the point where it creates a disincentive for the members of the creative class to come here," he said.

"They are the people who provide ideas that propagate new economic activity and new businesses."

To help protect museums and other arts groups from the vagaries of the state’s economy, the legislature agreed to start a cultural trust, whose money would fund all kinds of arts institutions and organizations. Where the trust dollars come from: tax incentives, donations, investments and state funding.

Regrettably, Hampton said, the legislature still feels free to dip into the trust. But at least the Portland Opera, the Shakespeare Festival, and arts and culture providers have more stability than they had before the trust was started.

What the business people and arts providers have done in Oregon building a cultural trust that holds millions of dollars, the Missoula Cultural Council and the new Missoula Business Committee for the Arts can do in Montana, Hampton said.

"It can be done. You already have two legs to the stool here."

The third leg, he said, is convincing others throughout the state that the arts are important.

"How desolate our lives would be if we didn’t have art and culture to relieve the stresses of our everyday lives," he said.

Art is necessary not only for mental health, but for economic health, as well, he said.

"Art attracts the types of workers and generates the kinds of discoveries that will keep the economy of the future humming," Hampton said.

"Art matters – not because we enjoy it or enjoy making it, but because it makes our economy grow."