Document text
Economics of the arts Mail Tribune/Bob Pennell photo By Bill Varble Bob Peterson grabs a handful of the electrical cables snaking out of the trunks on the Britt stage and starts stuffing them into a monster lighting truss. Peterson, who owns and operates Oregon Stage Lighting and Sound, works with two of his employees to hoist the big assembly high overhead as other workers install sound gear. In a few hours, the band Little Feat will open the Britt Festivals� 2000 concert season. One of Peterson�s employees, Brad Nelson, will handle the $100,000 bank of lights for the show. At the same time, Peterson will be at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland working the preview of "Hamlet," which kicks off the OSF�s outdoor season in its Elizabethan Theatre. Britt will sell some 60,000 tickets to more than 40 concerts this summer. Shakespeare will sell nearly 400,000 to its roster of 11 plays. Peterson, of Ruch, isn�t that visible, but every one of those thousands of concertgoers and Shakespeare fans benefit from his company�s work. Peterson and his nine employees are corpsmen in a growing army of Oregonians who make their living working in or with the arts. While Southern Oregon�s rich arts-and-entertainment culture helps make the region an inviting place to visit and live, it�s also a growing segment of the region�s economic pie. There�s no doubt A&E is big bucks. But how big? "You�ve got some big players, and lots of little ones," says Rebecca Reid of Southern Oregon Regional Services Institute. "One of the problems is, a lot of it stems out of categories that wouldn�t be captured in the economic numbers." A family from Roseburg goes out to eat in Jacksonville before Friday�s Wynton Marsalis concert. Or a novelist signs (and sells) books at Bloomsbury or Barnes & Noble, or a graphic artist telecommutes to do work for a Bay area magazine. Shakespeare, Britt and Peterson are strands in a complex web of economic transactions stretching from big venues to little theater groups, and from events like the Bob Dylan-Phil Lesh concert Tuesday at Jackson County Expo to a show by the local artist who exhibits paintings at the corner bank. Peterson for 20 years has provided production rentals and installations to stages around Southern Oregon. He counts among his clients biggies like Britt, Shakespeare and the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, for which he does sound. But he�ll also do the lights for, say, a drama at Butte Falls High School. His 10-person firm also sells equipment all over the country. "I�m really in two businesses," he says. Some 20,000 arts workers in Oregon officially make up 1.39 percent of the state�s labor force, not counting self-employed artists and free-lancers. They are painters, sculptors, craftsmen, architects, musicians, composers, photographers, authors, actors and directors, art teachers and dancers. They are employees of arts organizations. Not counted in that number are many workers in the tourist industry or others that depend on arts events. While no government information-gathering agency tracks the economic impacts of spending or employment strictly in the arts, conclusions can be drawn from the available data. The arts field is growing half again as fast as the average for all industries. From 1994 (when Oregon ranked 12th nationally in the number of arts workers as a percentage of its labor force) to 1998, Oregon arts employment grew 22 percent. Total employment for all industries increased just 14.2 percent. The state�s total 1998 arts-related payroll ($1.13 billion) was comparable to that for eating and drinking places ($1.15 billion), according to a report in the state employment department. It�s possible to extrapolate numbers for Jackson County, which represent generally about 4 and 5 percent of the state totals in population, employment and payroll. That could mean a local arts-related payroll of upwards of $50 million. "It would be a pretty wobbly number," says Duane Ackerson, an employment economist with the state. "You�d maybe add to it because of the preponderance of arts there with Shakespeare and Britt and some of the others. It�s probably safe to assume it�s larger." The median income for arts organization employees in Oregon is about $24,000, right in line with the average wage in Jackson County ($24,279), although less than the statewide $29,548 number. According to the latest statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau, 54 taxable arts and entertainment organizations in the Medford-Ashland metropolitan statistical area generated $29 million in sales and employed 668 people with a payroll of almost $8 million. Nineteen nonprofit A&E and recreation organizations (the Census Bureau�s category) accounted for another $22 million in receipts and had a payroll of more than $10 million for 555 workers. The Census Bureau lists five performing arts companies and four theater companies for which it won�t disclose sales or payroll numbers. The Oregon Arts Commission cites the Medford-Ashland area as among those that are "home to a substantial number of artists in proportion to the cities� populations." Any effort to try to quantify something as widespread as the "arts" is bound to be fuzzy, due to unreported activity, overlapping categories, volunteer hours and other anomalies such as hard-to-track self-employment and part-time writers, craftsmen and artisans. The Mail Tribune receives hundreds of review copies a year of books, most of them from Southern Oregon writers. These range from writers who repeatedly hit the New York Times best seller lists, like "Conversations With God" author Neal Donald Walsch of Ashland, to the majority whose sales are small. Visual artists, too, toil mostly in privacy. The OAC says they typically receive one-third to one-half their income from their preferred activities in the arts. Writers, artists, photographers and graphic and computer artists mount hundreds of readings and exhibits each year, selling books and art to publishers and the public and over the Internet. A vibrant theater scene in Ashland and Talent has grown up over the years around Shakespeare. There are six professional-caliber recording studios in Southern Oregon. There are actors and musicians. "There�s a slew of them that have chosen to live here," Peterson says. "It�s difficult for them to survive here. Many have two jobs. They do it because they love it here." Touring entertainers like Bob Dylan and Phil Lesh, who perform at the Jackson County Expo Tuesday, cause big bucks to change hands, although the performers take most of the money with them. "It�s not clear how much stays in the community," says Tom Olbrich of Southern Oregon University�s program board. Olbrich books performers for SOU�s One World Series of music performances each year. That series has a budget of about $100,000 for nine or 10 shows. Jefferson Public Radio presents a similar number of concerts in some years, less in others, renting space from SOU in Ashland or the Craterian in Medford. "It varies so much," says JPR�s Maria Kelly. Experts say the A&E piece of the pie is likely to continue to grow. Bill Flood of OAC points out that as communities focus on downtown development, they increasingly care about how new businesses look and how they affect towns. Arts businesses are clean, nonpolluting and upscale. They typically involve educated employees and an affluent audience. They are a good fit in a post-industrial future. Ackerson says the growing share of employment and payroll that is arts-related might seem paradoxical at a time when many people appear to have more of a passion for the stock market than the human spirit. "However," he adds, "the increased pace of the average American�s life has probably resulted in an even greater need for diversion in their time off. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA