 Thank you. Your conference will begin shortly. You are being placed into conference in muted mode. I'm the recipient of the Queen's Jubilee Medal in 2002, Honorary Citizens of the City of Victoria in 2000, Victoria's Citizen of the Year in 1994, and Runner-up Victoria's Community Leader in 1993. Chris has coached and played sports for more than 40 years and enjoys reading, drinking coffee, dreaming, and spending time with his wife, Judith. Thank you for being with us. And with us we have Bruce White, who is the Cultural Tourism Advisor in the Arts and Cultural Branch with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and the Arts. He has over 20 years of tourism experience and has spent most of the 1990s developing and conducting GIS-based inventories of tourism resources and tourism community studies. With the Provincial Tourism Ministry in the seven years of the Council of Working in Community and First Nations Tourism, like many, he's moved into the workforce and sometimes tourism jobs as a dishwasher and a short order cook, working his way up to Stewart at a major hotel. Bruce holds a diploma in print journalism from Loyalist College in Bellevue, Ontario. A Bachelor of Science in Geography from the University of Victoria and a Master's in Environmental Education and Communication from Royal Roads University. So I thank all the presenters for being with us today. Hopefully you can see a screen with the presenters and we'll just move to the agenda for our decisions. That will be our presentation from the three speakers for about 35 minutes and then we'll have about 40 minutes for some discussions and dialogue and five minutes for closure. I'm going to pass it over to Bruce. Thank you. I'm actually going to defer to Dr. White who's going to start this discussion by explaining a little bit about what cultural tourism is and maybe what it is and how we can use it. You with us, Brian? Hello, Brian. Oh, Brian, you'll have to press star seven to unmute your line. We'll try unmuting all the lines so that means all the presenters or all the participants also can be heard. We'll try it, see if we can get them. The conference has been unmuted. Okay, star seven. Does that work? Hi. We just unmuted all the lines for now so we'll give that a try and we'll go back to remuting if we get a lot of feedback from other lines. So you're on for now. Okay, I hope everyone can hear me. I'll have to apologize for not being familiar with this technology. This is the first time I've used it, so please stay with me. First of all, the discussion about cultural tourism and community cultural tourism is essential in BC at the moment because of the transition from resource-based economies to a service-based economy. It's particularly significant that economic development offices and responsible for local tourism development be aware of the role that culture and the arts plays in making sure that BC communities have viable and successful economies which are locally based as well as economies which have the reach to attract business from a number of different, right across the globe. If you take a look at what community-based cultural tourism is, you'll see that it ranges from very day-to-day lifestyle activities in a community through to special major events or unique events that communities host right through to what we might call higher-level arts and crafts and traditions. And they're all very variable. Each community is very unique in this particular field. Economic development offices may or may not have tourism in their plan, most do, but part of the issue that has come up in the province is the linkage between culture, the arts, and tourism. That linkage isn't something you can assume, and it's a role that economic development offices can and will play. The economic development offices role in particular has to do with the ability to bring people together in the community to make sure that partnerships and alliances can build so that you can build something which is more than just the sum of the parts. It's about coordination. It's about product development. It's about bringing people in, about training, about education, and about importing ideas that are going to work. There's the example which is listed in the slide in your discussion around the Juneau Awards. This is a situation where you have, if we could bring the Juneau Awards to Victoria, for example, you would have a major event which would have enormous spin-off benefits in both in short-term and in the long-term. So that's a very significant example which Chris can speak to more than me, but I think it's something that can, in different scales and different situations, occur right across the province. If you take a look at, for example, the Nanaimo. Nanaimo has built in major tourism development as part of its economic development strategy, not without controversy, but certainly in a transformative way. So just to summarize this set of comments, the idea of community-based cultural tourism is about community transformation in British Columbia. It's about looking at alternative economies, building the social networks that the community has, and, most importantly, working collaboratively to try to have a generator effect on economic activity and social networking which builds the community's employment, builds its tax base, and also attracts migrants, immigrants, and community migration into the community so that that will provide some more economic activity as well. So there's a first set of comments on this first slide. Okay? So we can move along. There's a snap quiz that's come up on the screen. I think what you're looking at here is a list of different activities, and in it you'll see things which appear to be cultural and things that don't. So why don't you just take a look and figure out, as a group, which ones might be considered to be cultural and which ones aren't? And you might have some interesting discussions around this particular point. Okay. Any comments on that? Okay. Once again, I'm not totally up to speed with this particular situation. I'm also not sure how we advance this because I didn't get any advice on how to do this. Just so I can move it for you. Okay. Okay. Let's maybe carry on to this next slide. What is community cultural tourism? Travel to experience authentic culture of BC's people, places, and activities as an overall kind of definition. If you take a look at the three topic areas that you're in the slide, you'll see it's formal arts. These are the things that most of the time we're going to identify as being typical about cultural tourism. The first two. Museums, heritage sites, interpretive centres, theatres, galleries, performance, music, special artistic events and cultural events. Yes, I think everyone's going to get that. But the sense of place argument, I think, is worth advancing. The thing that we don't recognise very often is that we are, as a cultural entity, as a series of culturally-based communities with particular lifestyles and attraction in itself. I'm reminded that there was a sign at Whistler, which I thought was quite interesting. It was in front window of somebody's house. It said, smile, you're a tourist attraction. To a certain extent, that sums up the sense of place. Everywhere you go in the province, there's something there which is of great interest to visitors. The argument was that a good place to live is a good place to visit. I think we'll see that come up later as well. Maybe next slide, please. As you can see, everything's ticked. Bingo is a cultural heritage act. I mean, whoa, okay. But it's part of the culture. It may not attract a lot of overseas visitors to a bingo hall. But when you talk about culture, when you talk about sense of place, you will be talking about the bingo hall. You'll be talking about the local post office as kind of a local community site. It's part of the fabric of the community. And culturally community tourism focuses around those elements which makes the community to come alive. And if the community has a significant number of different, it has diversity and richness, those are the things that build a sense of place and also which build business and activity for people. You see those, everything from coffee shops to First Nations, First Nations canotrips. I still remember speaking, you know, of being in Haida Gwai and visiting a fascinating coffee shop and having a very engaging conversation with the server who worked there about the community. And I'll still remember that 15 years later. Next slide, please. So the faces of cultural tourism include anyone and everyone that lives in this province. First Nations cultural tourism, of course, is an essential and front and center opportunity for communities, particularly First Nations communities throughout the province. Any one of our rich diversity of ethnic communities, those are the kinds of things that give the place richness and life. As the next logging engineer myself, the logging and the forestry traditions which have characterized British Columbia for so long are still significant to us, absolutely essential. And yet we're looking at a forest industry which in many cases is not thriving the way it was and yet the cultural traditions are still there and it's something we can celebrate. Next slide, please. If you take a look at this model here, you'll see the elements of cultural tourism which is based in communities. A critical factor that you all need to look at in any community in the province is the significance of institutions and community organizations in building an alliance, building particular linkages. What you sometimes get is a silo effect in which operators do not speak to small businesses. You don't get chambers of commerce engaged as much as they could with business associations, economic development, and I would suggest that the community part of this particular model which you're looking at right now is actually one of the absolutely critical components. Municipalities, elected officials can provide an amazingly strong leadership role in building the linkage between culture and tourism. And one of the things that is really important to recognize is that there are different cultures in culture and tourism and in community organizations. Each one has its own set of values and beliefs. And part of the problem that we have to overcome is that cultural organizations may not see tourism as being something that they want to be close to or involved in, especially in communities that have one or two larger significant attractions or events, kind of hallmarks. Very often there's a sense that the connectivity isn't there and in fact you don't really want to have these other people involved because it isn't going to improve things. The reality is that successful communities tend to be those communities in which there are community champions. There are people from whichever sector it is who step forward and they bring people together to work on it. If you look at the center of this circle, you've got the visitor or the resident. And this goes back to the good place to love it, the good place to visit, idea. And that is that as time goes on we're not going to see as much of a distinction between what the visitor wants and what the resident wants. If you take a look at... Sorry? Hello? Hello. I'm going to get recalling. Okay. All right? Okay. If you look in the middle of the circle you'll see the visitor or resident. The visitor is a person who eventually in many cases in British Columbia moves here or they move to the community. So a tourist is a person who may be on a pathway to actually investing and moving in to live in the place. And the depopulation happening in many parts of the province is something we need to be involved with. So that circle, the center of the circle, the visitor to the resident is the person who is the beneficiary of the linkages and the partnerships that these three groups put together. You'll see there are provincial organizations there like Council of Children's Associations, Aboriginal Children's Association at BC. These are people who can provide a supporting role, but really it's about the community organizations that pull people together. I think... I know Yvonne Black is involved here in SUCC. And that's a... She's a person who I think is an example of making things happen by providing that community level organization. And there's several other people on the list who do the same. Next slide, please. We've got the numbers piece. Economics, 1.4 billion. Now, the critical thing about this is where does the money land? We've got a lot of billions of children's revenues, but a lot of that is concentrated in the Golden Triangle between Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler. The issue in community cultural tourism is to get economic benefit into smaller communities and spread throughout the province. That is the essential economic driver for community-based cultural tourism. And one of the other elements to make that happen is the differentiation that each community can bring to the table, whether it's culinary tourism, if you're looking at adventure or ecotourism, you're looking at wine tour routes and this kind of thing. The major thing is getting those FTEs up, getting those jobs in place and making sure that people can live in the community and make a decent living by diversification. And this is one of the best ways of doing that. There's so many different spin-offs that happen which affect the quality of life. There's a very, very large number of benefits, but benefits include increasing the level of investment in a region and in a community. Absolutely essential. Next slide, please. Okay, we've got a situation now where you've got baby boomers looking to move to nice places to live. Okay, immunity. If you want to see an example of a place which is a classic of this and which has had some problems as a result, look at Salt Spring Island. You've got 52% of the population there who's retired. You think that affects the politics of the island? You've got it does. Community-based cultural tourism also tends to attract small entrepreneurs, people that want to start a business or have downsized and move to a different lifestyle. Well, guess what? Salt Spring Island has the same thing. So what you tend to get is a situation in which many of the activities that you see in British Columbia have to do with people who've chosen a lifestyle and want to make a living and cultural children, if you have the right economic strategies, you have the right biology, you have the right incentives and the right economic direction for a community, you can attract that group. Older visitors absolutely are looking for cultural heritage, the baby boomers, the empty nest of their people who've got money. The experience economy says that lifestyle is important and cultural tourism offers that range of stories that you can tell about your life that is lacking very often if you just look at standard mass tourism. So we're starting to see a lot of niches develop and a lot of communities are going into that particular direction as well. Next slide please. If you take a look here, you'll see the demographic range. I'm getting a bit along with the truth myself and in my early years I was kayaking, mountaineering, a lot of biking and that sort of thing and now very much into gardening, wine and culinary experiences because I'm over 60. So if you take a look at the product characteristics and the movement over lifestyle and the preferences that people have for products, you want to be in a place where you're going to have a range of attractiveness across the whole lifespan but you've got to recognize that cultural children do attract very often a moneyed, older demographic and that's a really critical piece. So smaller communities who want to attract that particular market segment and get the benefits of that are well advised to focus on developing cultural partnerships and products which will hit that particular market because it's a market that will spend money. We have a dip in the middle. We have a situation where the younger demographic is much smaller and we haven't got strategies in place from the province yet yet to attract that younger demographic. So it's a falling market. I think we will. I think it will turn around but it's going to take a lot of time and effort to do that. Next slide please. So if you take a look at this list here or the graph and see that one of the things that's hit us is that over and above the aging of the baby boom we've also had a number of critical events which have affected travel. Obviously the situation we've had with the United States the thickening border, the increase in the Canadian dollar all those things we don't know about SARS, 9-11, all of those kinds of events one after the other over the last few years have significantly changed the character, shape and feel of tourism in BC. Domestic tourism has become far more important to us. It's a really critical factor. We're still seeing issues with long haul around things like volcanoes going off. We're seeing increasing costs for fuel and fuel is probably going to be one of the things which will push us significantly in the post-Olympic phase into an approach which looks at attracting a range of domestic, northern tier states, Alberta, Lower Mainland. We're looking at that market. One of the things we're going to have to see is an increase in our total population which will match and support community-based cultural tourism. I think the shift towards community-based cultural tourism is going to address that particular opportunity of a domestic, aging domestic market. Next slide, please. We know that the older travelers have got better educated, they've got more money. They are in fact travelling to spend their children's inheritance which is what I intend to do in a couple of years with a bit of luck. If that's the case, then you want to make sure that you've got a range of opportunities which will allow the older traveler to have stories, to have the experiences which will make life richer and more significant. The direct experience marketplace is something that cultural tourism can do. In smaller communities, you can get hallmark events, smallest scale, niche-oriented, marketed through web and through other means which really, really works well. That's something that I'm starting to see. Also, a well reconstituted at a downtown core, even if it's very small, can make a huge difference in attracting that particular market. That particular group of people is looking for quality and they're willing to spend to get it. Next slide, please. Let's talk a bit about authenticity. Authenticity has to do with the state of being perceived to be real. Authentic is to have a sense of reality about what you're doing. It's a very important component in terms of the richness of a place as a destination. A destination that has authenticity is a place that's going to be more livable because of the fact that there's a greater sense of place. Place has to do with the idea that you're living somewhere or visiting somewhere that has meaning. Meaning is about the experience that we mentioned in the last slide. It's about the idea that you are able to come away with something that has meaning and significance in your life. So sense of place is about building a culture builder. Economic development offices in particular can, if they have that perception, can be culture builders for a destination. That's a critical factor. Vancouver, certainly, I think the example of Vancouver is a very, very good one. Because Vancouver set out to build that cultural identity, many other communities in BC have done the same. And I think that's something we can all share and we can all learn from. And it will be different. If you're in Fort McMillan, it's going to be different than if you're in East Kootenai or if you're up north, but there's something there which will work. So that's an important element. Next slide, please. Right, okay. So this looks like quasi-motor, I think. So what are you actually trying to come out in terms of social and economic opportunities and contributions? Well, one of the things we've dealt with is aging infrastructure and neighborhoods. We've got situations where neighborhoods which are going downhill lead stabilizing. They need to be put into a situation in which there is investment coming in where property values start to increase and improve. Those are kinds of things that really make a difference in whether a community has long-term sustainability or not. If you want to talk about the cultural tourism opportunities and cultural development, talk to real estate people. They are really interesting because the real estate market is always watching the property values of a place. And property values are driven by whether or not a place has immunity value. If it has immunity value, that means that the place itself is a desirable destination. And sometimes those can be for the most unusual reasons. One of the things also that you want to make sure is that you've got enough thriving businesses, small, medium, large in the community that you don't have to have the economy draining away. If you have a community which simply becomes a commuter destination in the next overnight community where everyone leaves town and goes to work somewhere else, that's a major problem because you're not getting investment back from the residents back into the community. So reducing economic leakage for a variety of different sources is important. Pride and identity, absolutely critical. If you have pride in a place, a sense that the place is really special to you, that kind of drive can get people involved in building attractive, valuable, high quality types of landscapes in those urban environments. They protect the landscape that is around the community and there's a sense that the community itself is worth a lot. It's a place where you can invite people to visit because you are proud of it. You can see this in many communities around the province. In other places, it just doesn't happen. So that's a really critical piece. So what are we saying about the civic pride piece? Well, people in BC move around. You're going to get people moving to new locations and investing in new homes after they have traveled there for some time. You're starting to see people moving, for example, to Euclid. You're seeing people moving to communities further north. You're seeing places that are being... seeing a boom in investment and in new residents coming in because the immunity value has been built through the official community plan and through economic development planning. I would suggest those two pieces, working together, are an essential foundation for any municipality or regional district that wants to actually see themselves transition into a full-scale service-based economy in the province. And in some places that's happened, but there's lots of parts of the province where it simply isn't happening yet. And I think that's a really important thing. So next slide, please. So I think that's as far as I was supposed to go, isn't it, Bruce? Yeah, that's right. Thank you, Brian. Okay, thank you. Basically, we're asking you whether any of those things has ever... if culture has done any of those things for your town, and you'll see in the follow-up questionnaire that comes out after this, we're quite serious in asking. We'd like to know how has culture helped your time because we'd like your town if you know of examples of that. So I'm going to carry on from where Brian has established what cultural tourism is and why it's a good thing and something about what it's good for. I'm going to mention... I'm going to start talking about how do we turn this to commercial advantage? How do we get some economic value out of this good thing? And as Brian's touched on, a lot of it has to do not only with the direct economic benefits, but also the indirect things that it provides in terms of enhancing the quality of life in your community, which leads to the mobility of businesses and industry. It helps companies, individual companies and individual business people and companies decide that your town is a good place to live because it's got those amenity values, a good place to live. And as Dr. White has said famously, a good place to live is a good place to visit. That's the theory that we've adopted in working for this community cultural tourism strategy and the approach the province has taken is that we recognize that working on this file can help make our towns better to live in as well as better places to live in. So one of the things that happens is as we form our identity in our communities, as we become proud of being a west coaster or a person from the Cubanese or a person from the north, as we shape our town's identity, this helps us determine who we are as communities and citizens, but it also helps us produce our tourism brand. And that's the image that we put out to outsiders. That's the image we project to the world outside and say, here we are, come and love us. This is a great place to visit. So we need to found that on something. And once it's founded on it, it's based on the beauty of our natural location and the special characteristics of the people who live here. Next, please. So traditionally, British Columbia has used to have an approach that was very closely tied to the spectacular nature of our wonderful province. We adopted the brand Supernatural BC, back when Grace McCarthy was Minister of Tourism. That phrase, I've been led to believe, actually came about because the minister at the time recognized the beauty of our nature, but she felt a culture with the super part in it. That's anecdotal. I don't know that for a fact, but I believe that's true. So I'm showing you here a newspaper advertisement from 1967 and there's a performance group doing something and you can see some mountains in the background. Traditionally, British Columbia marketed itself with a focus on the 3M. I'd like you to think for a second, what are the 3Ms of traditional tourism marketing in British Columbia? Just take a second to have a look at that list and we'll get to the answer in a second. Okay, move on. It's not that big of a joke. I'm sure many of you know that it's mountains, moose, and mountains. They're traditional images that BC once got unused. We've actually moved on from that quite a bit and the latest iteration of adjustments and enhancement and evolution in our tourism marketing brand are very interesting and particularly interesting to those of us working in cultural tourism because what's happened is that the marketing wizards, the people who are experts in this stuff, have come to the same conclusion, that culture is a key driver for the emerging markets to tourism. They're putting more emphasis on what I'm calling the super in supernatural DC. Next, please. I should mention with all the modern technology I had to reproduce an ad in black and white because I couldn't scan it in color. Sorry about that. Our tourism brand, the way they go about this, they figure out who are they talking to and look at the characteristics of the kinds of people that they're talking to, the markets they're trying to bring to British Columbia. They're looking for people who live life youthfully, people who are reaching out and touching life and being engaged in the things that make our place special. And you'll notice they say, engage in culture or activities that energize the mind, body and soul. That's because in British Columbia, sometimes it's kind of difficult to separate culture from nature. If you and a bunch of friends go climb a mountain, is that a natural event or is it a cultural event because you're doing it with friends? We won't worry about the distinction, we'll just try to take advantage of the opportunity. Okay, next slide, please. The other thing about our brand is that they're appealing to the market on two fronts. One is rational and the other is emotional. And it's important in marketing to use both the logical argument and the emotive argument to reach right in the back of your brain and grab you by the back of the scruff of the neck. We're pushing the natural beauty but we're also acknowledging our cultural diversity, which is kind of a new thing for us and wealth of activities. So two years ago, the minister then of my ministry and now of ministry of community and rural development, Bill Dennett, decided that we should look into this cultural tourism thing and he asked us to prepare a provincial strategy for cultural tourism, which we did. We conducted background research, we formed an expert advisory group that advised us on how to go about the process to make sure that it was reflecting the interests of the stakeholders and that it was reflecting the latest thinking in all of this. We went all around the province and talked to people and I noticed from the list of folks that are taking part in this conference call, several of you have been part of that consultation. And then from that, we developed a draft strategic approach. The strategic approach recommended actions in six different areas. These are ways we can get at making cultural tourism provide a greater contribution to our communities. So the first one and one that we consider to be critical is working on figuring out ways to work together. This is the part that Brian was talking about around the role of economic development officers who have the capacity to pull together the players in their community who are involved in this particular kind of economic development activity. We also have to provide information so that people can demonstrate why cultural tourism is a good idea, what culture and what tourism are doing for their communities and demonstrate the case. Make it in both terms of economics and those other non-economic values I mentioned. We have to do some stuff to help develop products. We have to find ways to help people create the experiences of products that are going to attract visitors. Another one that always comes up is to get the government to heck out of the way so that people can go on about their business. We also have to support marketing and as always with government work, we need to do some evaluation so that we can determine if we're going about this properly. When we started developing this strategy, times were fairly good and they actually had a few bucks from the kitty for us to roll this out. Between now and then, world economic meltdown happened and my kitty got rated such that we were challenged to find a way to go about implementation and put it bluntly with no money. The way we came up with doing this is to work with communities in pilot projects using what we've called a low-key implementation path. Rather than rolling out a big provincial program with grant applications and funding and that sort of thing, what we're going to try and do is figure out how to do this by working with individual communities and then trusting that the world autonomy turns around, money's available, then we'll be able to support a broader program. So the pilot projects are basically projects where the local community is already doing something and they ask me to come in and offer a bit of advice and technical support. Critical to this is that my bosses have made me say, going into every one of these processes, that there is no commitment to fund anything. We will, of course, look at any proposals that come out of these kinds of processes, but there's no advanced commitment. This can be annoying to the communities, but then when we mentioned that, well, once you've got a plan in place, you'll be able to make a stronger case for your funding application. It seems to make sense. Four of the main projects we're working on right now are in Campbell River, where the community suffers some mill shutdowns and has had a real difficult time. And in that community, we've got the Arts Alliance and all the different business folks together. And we've come up with a short-term strategy where we're basically going to package together the special events that that community already does. And we're going to wrap them up with a bowl, put a big ad out on it, and make a big to-do out of the events that they've got and use that as a way to leave rich moving forward. They have some big plans for the future, but those are big infrastructure projects. And in terms of talking about, what are we going to do by this summer? We're not going to be building multi-million dollar facilities in time for that. So we had to come up with a strategy as to what we already have in place. Over in Grand Forks, the issue is a little bit different. Same kinds of problems with shutdowns and reductions in traditional resource industries. But folks there don't have as solid an organizational structure for tourism management in place. And so they're looking at forming a regional chamber of commerce that can take on tourism marketing and development for not just Grand Forks, but Greenwood Midway and Christina Lake as well, the boundary country area. And that's a really good idea. It's got these small communities who would have a heck of a time doing anything on their own. By working together, they've got the horsepower to get something done. Over in Suc, we've begun the process of mapping their cultural values and we'll be developing a cultural plan, and then we hope from that we'll go on to develop a cultural tourism plan that'll look at how we can use cultural assets in an appropriate way to develop commercial opportunities. Up in the Alaska Highway, where April Roy and the folks are going to be tours, we're trying to get that route designated as a scenic byway and a historic place. And so we did some work to compile an inventory of all the good things that they've got up there. The Alaska Highway is an interesting one because, of course, it was built in World War II to get more supplies to Alaska. Ever since one of the main customer bases using that route have been ex-American servicemen and their families going to visit the scene of Dad or Grandpa's wartime greatness, well those folks are now very much too old to be traveling. So this area is thinking about recreating themselves in a way that's relevant to modern people and that makes more sense and can draw visitors further away. And a big part of that is probably going to be connected to their contemporary culture, the culture of the oil patch, the culture of their agriculture out there and the culture of their First Nations folks. Okay, thanks. Let's go next. So after we did this strategy and came up with some ideas, we saw that there were some things that needed to happen to follow up on it. One large block of work that we can think about doing is stuff that's not been muted. We have now that Tourism British Columbia has been brought into the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts. We have access to the people who look after marketing, the people who run the visitor information centers, the people who do the HelloBC website, the people who work with the travel trade. All of these exciting technical specialists who are really among the world's best at this kind of stuff are available to us to help. And so I'm running around trying to convince my colleagues that on top of everything else they're doing they should add this to the work list. And amazingly, most of them are very keen to help in spite of heavy workloads. They're saying this is a good thing and it's worthy of further attention. Many of the other things that we want to look at will be both working with outside partners and I've listed here Ministry of Community and Rural Development primarily with the smaller rural communities outside of Lower Mainland and they have people which is you economic development folks on the ground there who can work with us on this kind of thing. And then as the chart that Brian showed you mentioned there's a whole other, there's a whole bunch of other partners that we need to work with in each community to try and develop these ideas. When you look at how people take plans for tourism development and turn them into reality there are a number of different vehicles that are used. You'll see the different stacks there a standalone tourism unit, formal council committee member, a city councilor, economic development. I beg your pardon, I've gotten a touch of the flu. Different ways, yeah, Christmas away. Those are different ways that people can incorporate tourism planning into their community, planning in a bigger sense. And so when you have a special tourism unit not surprisingly there's quite a lot of the tourism planning goes into that sector but if you think about does the Chamber of Commerce do tourism planning? Well as you can see by the purple stack in the Chamber of Commerce yes they do a fair amount. When you look at some of the other areas like economic development tourism gets a pretty good recognition which to me is excellent because it means that active austers are becoming aware of the opportunity and we just want you to be aware that there are different kinds of ways to go about implementing this stuff and that it's important to where you can't to work with all of those. Move it along, the timekeeper is saying okay so we'll go fairly quickly there are a number of things the local government can do we've listed five, the one I want to bring to your attention here is the idea of integrating tourism and economic development. I've been involved with a number of active officers around the province over the last 20 years and interestingly some of them recognize tourism as part of the economic development toolkit that's available to them to help their community some others don't seem to see it and I'm not sure if this is because in British Columbia very typically we've been thinking about the next sawmill, we've been thinking about a co-jet plant or some such resource-based thing and we maybe haven't given full credence to the opportunities that tourism presents. Tourism doesn't give you as many high-paying jobs as a new sawmill will but tourism is not only mixed jobs there are good jobs in tourism there are jobs managing, there are jobs operating businesses, there are jobs providing content that are well-paying good interesting jobs so I urge you as you're developing economic plans in your communities to please integrate tourism and make it part of that. Some of the tools that we've we've looked at connect to Ministry of Community and Rural Development and in particularly this has to do with things like building this stuff into official community plans and looking at your community first agreement and above all active officers wind up being involved in these projects where someone has a great idea to build a something and I urge you every time somebody says let's build us something that you think about how can tourism fit into that something that you're building. So if you're going to think about how to use community cultural tourism as part of your economic development I'd urge you to think about this checklist it's a pretty straightforward planning kind of an approach it talks about getting together the players and we've listed a kind of list of all those players conducting the inventory figure out who you're trying to sell to figure out what you've got to sell to them and then match what you're selling to what the market wants to make sure these things line up make adjustments as required and then run your products and test evaluate to see how well you've done it and then again adjust as required. Thank you next. Now the challenge to those of you economic development officers is it includes these things and one that I think falls into your bailiwick is the idea of demonstrating the value of tourism in your community. Many communities are not aware of how much tourism does for their town in terms of creating jobs and adding to the economy there are some additional values that are really important in smaller communities for instance I lived in Hazelton for a couple years we had seven restaurants and we would only have had one if it wasn't for tourism so thanks to the tourists I had a choice of Chinese or a Delhi and in a small town that choice is really important it's hard to hold on to your facilities and you want to do that tourism can help you do it. Use that information to educate your people about the opportunities. Your role as active guys I think a key part of that role is this thing about bringing the partners together to start the problem. Keep community culture tourism in your mind as you're developing projects and then think about structures that will have this will help you work this out and implement it to make it so. Next please. This is the quiz that we will be asking you to give us your other ideas. I'm hoping that by this point you recognize that the first five items are the ones I just told you about what we'd like to see and we'll ask you in the follow-up survey if you think there are other things that economic development officers can do to help community cultural tourism and we're asking this in all honesty because we're not economic development officers you guys know what you can do and if you can help us understand what you can do we can make it better. Next please. So now we're going to talk about a particular case an example of a project that brings cultural tourism to the community and that'll be Kelser Coleman's turn to talk. Thank you sir. Just so you understand my background when I was doing my MBA now 13 or 14 years ago my thesis or my case study involved international tourism development focusing on how you can engage in an alive and inner harbors. I was doing at the University of Victoria and downtown became the perfect focus for that and I don't take any credit for what was a very good project. My two classmates, Sarah Shasco and Allison Pierce-Siddle and Sarah was my classmate and we did very well. It focused among other components on the development of a tall ship festival. Five years later I was the interim ED of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia and the sale training people came in and said we'd like to bring a tall ship festival here. I went, you're kidding, I happen to have my thesis and again I don't take any credit for the development of the tall ship festival in 2005 and again in 2008 and it's now in planning process in 2011 but I recognize that these opportunities occur. So it's an iterative process that communities draw on to develop products and about a year ago a friend of mine phoned me in Victoria and said I know that a few years ago you were looking at a Juno's bid. I just finished working on the Juno's in Vancouver, incredibly successful I think Victoria should think about a bid process for 2013 perhaps 2014 2015 and you need to understand some of the impacts and some of the drawbacks and some of the costs that will be associated with this. My partner and I would happily do a small contract to lead you through that process if you can pitch around and find a couple of local organizations to pay for it. The Provincial Capital Commission and the Downtown Business Improvement Area came forward and said yeah we can fund that and we started the process with a small group of focus groups just three or four people about eight of them and at one of those focus groups who happens to be a neighbor of mine so as soon as it got into the public world it is a small group said well you know I worked on the Juno's bid in Vancouver and the implementation I think Victoria could but there are some hurdles we have to get over so we did a series of small focus groups with the business community the tourism community some members of government at different levels and most importantly the arts community who at that point were going through some cuts and they were concerned that a new product coming on board would just suck up what was left of their funding so one of our original principles was in order to make a Juno's bid we will move forward with brand new funding. We'll find it somehow we'll be creative about this but it's about bringing people together. The benefits from Vancouver it happens in March or April for a week it used to be a weekend event it's now spread it's become five to six nights it probably looks as though it's going to encapsulate two weekends so it's a fairly big event Vancouver saw 5200 5200 room nights booked in their hotels in four days they used multiple sites they blocked off three blocks of Granville Street and engaged the public to come to free events and that's how you got political buy-in for a Vancouver Council that was split between the left and right political reality they wanted both the high-end cultural opportunities and the free community based so there were ways of doing that they spread the activities as I said over a number of nights a number of different types of products so we all recognize the Sunday evening event that we see on television that just recently happened in Zujan Newfoundland and drew a viewership of about 1.6 million but that's the tip of the iceberg there's a whole range of other products that include the Aboriginal community from across the country that talk about a songwriter's festival that engage the public and one of the greatest benefits that comes is not the economic impact but the mandate from the people that own the Zujano's product which is CARES, the Canadian Association of Recording Artists and Sciences and that 50% of all music talent during the week of Zujano's is local so we're now in the process of building a team if we wish to bid for 2013 we have to have all our docks in order by April 2011 so it's a two-year if we want to go for 2014 we've got a little more time to work on it it hasn't come to any of the local political tables we have to be seen as a regional opportunity and I would argue it's a tourism issue we actually have to present ourselves as a capital regional district of the province and we're to present particularly the talent of Vancouver Islands but in fact the musical talent of the province of British Columbia so how do we get into that well we started by trying to leverage the public and we get a fairly quick and dirty website survey and we were hoping for 250 to 350 responses we got about 550 and I think 96% of them were saying yeah get on with it why are you even asking us but this is critically important there is a recognition that this region has all sorts of musical talent in a number of different genres if we lack anything it may be our sense of self-assuredness we actually don't think that we can play on the larger vista of Canada or in fact internationally and I would argue that there are probably still some people locally who don't think we can actually pull off a Commonwealth Games game in fact we did that very successfully but I think that's true of a lot of small communities and Dr. White earlier said it's critically important that we broaden this out through the province there is an issue of confidence and self-assuredness for small communities moving forward with big events and I think that that's one of the things we'll hopefully have some discussion about and I'm aware that time is tight and you want to develop some conversations so can I move you to the next slide I think you have to recognize a dual reality you sell big events by talking about economic impact what you really have to do is engage the other side so that's the easy one we know that a Juneau's bid including funding properly and organizing committee and paying for the bid process is one and three quarter to two million dollars to cross it out we know that if we can get 5200 plus room nights in Victoria in March there is all sorts of direct spending and multiplied spending in the area that will easily top the 9.1 million dollars seen on the screen by all of you but that's not that's how you sell it the more important issue I think is the investments in local arts and culture not by splitting down their budget so they're funding something else but by finding new creative opportunities to fund it and you then think about the other realities I would hope that if we're successful in hosting a Juneau's we can actually develop a business incubator for new talents to be taken to market and that's what we have seen in other areas where MusicBC for example developed a satellite office in Kalana I think those are the critical things on the going forward basis when we do big events we look at the downstream benefits not the immediate benefits next one please so exactly we remember I'm not a musician except perhaps in the shower or in a large group when we're all singing which usually implies there's some beer but we're doing this because it's one economically sellable we can get funders involved because there's some tangible benefit that can be seen more importantly it's what else can we bring to the table I would argue that the south end of Vancouver Island is an incredibly vibrant place for musical talent they need a showcase opportunity to show that to the rest of the world and by bringing all sorts of people in the music industry to Victoria to the south end of the island we can show their wares the best I will admit to some enlightened self-interest I guess there something is incredibly giddy in my mind about inviting the rest of the country here in March or April when we watched what happened in Saskatoon three years ago and it was freezing and cold and we watched the engagement of the public in Parkas, in St. John's a couple of weeks ago and we could put on golf tournaments I think there's something that perhaps that borders on evil I don't know but it is part of the quality of life that this region can offer and we can do it as well as presenting the talents of the province I'll let that be an opening for future discussion we'll just wrap up with a final exam for you ladies and gentlemen students having listened to us go through all this stuff I wonder if you think if you could answer those questions I think you'll have seen them before and I hope that the answers are fairly logical for you the content has been unmuted okay and the resources screen so here we've got and you've all got access to this PowerPoint so you don't have to write this down you can get it later but there are four resources that we think are really essential for people that are thinking about developing community cultural tourism products or that are thinking of getting into this or Aztec Dev Officers if you're a referring client the top one of those is a book a handbook it's not a great big fat one it's a thin book it's usable, it's user friendly it's a good one put out by Link B well as soon as I say text but you know faces drop on all 300 pages of board this one's actually quite bright and it's very user friendly and it helps walk you through the process how can I plan for tourism to fit my community and how do I root it in the stuff that my community's got how do I root it in the family so I recommend that one highly a guide for tourism business entrepreneurs and the tourism business are two publications of our ministry that you can find online and they're basic introductions to the business and Community Tourism Foundation is a program that my ministry has that helps communities do planning for tourism in general and cultural tourism specifically so that gets us to the end of the prepared portion of our program and just to remind everybody as we start this discussion especially if you join late the top right hand corner there's a green box and if you have a question you can change that to purple and then we'll address you by name and then you can pose your question because the lines are now unmuted so go ahead or any of our three presenters I saw you type to question in our presenters can address this question at the end of the webinar or if you'd like to pose it now feel free to ask away regarding agro-tourism Do you want a purple that she's asking and can I answer it? We'll go ahead Jennifer or did you want to repeat it? Sure, can you hear me okay? Great, I actually have a couple of questions and first of all thank you very much for that information I work for an organization called Small Business BC which deals with 47 regions around British Columbia helping small business and this is a very this is a topic of conversation for looking at art, culture and economic development and small business my first question is can you define agro-tourism for me and maybe give us some examples of that and or is that just a buzzword? Agro-tourism has actually defined itself under Experiences BC and there are some folks that are working on that generally it has to do with providing experiences for people to view the growing, harvesting and processing of food there's probably a more technical definition available somewhere and I can go to see if I can find that for you Jennifer If I could help this is Andy Akron here in the Northeast Agro-tourism throughout Canada what they do is they offer tours of farms they get people to actually take holidays on farms get them to experience the farm life however that's the good news the bad news is a lot of countries if you've ever checked when you're coming back from somewhere overseas or whatever they have a little box thing countries like Germany who are organic if you check on being on a farm and you can't and don't have any certification that that farm has been organic you will actually be quarantined until you can show that that farm was organic and that happened to some tourists about two years ago there was about 14 of them that visited some farms in Alberta they did an Agro-tourism tour and were actually quarantined for about a week in Germany until all kinds of government agencies had to get their act together and prove that the farms that they had visited in Alberta were organic so it is all about going out there and experiencing farms and seeing what they do but you have to be careful when you do that to make sure that the right farms are participating Maybe I can chime in on this one of the things that has happened in Agro-tourism is the expansion of farming to tourism by definition and if you take a look around Victoria and the regional district you will see a large number of farms and farm properties like properties, small holdings which have expanded to serve the domestic market so for example Ragley Farm out in East Sook has weekend markets and is very much in the Agro-tourism business but it is very much for residents that are coming out there it is more for excursionists the other end of the spectrum is Woofers working on organic farms and that is another aspect of it as well which is actually marketed quite heavily internationally Your question? Yeah, that is great actually it was sheep farming in Clearwater that brought up the question and I really appreciate that piece on the quarantine Thanks, Ray I see that you have a question feel free to ask I was just wondering besides the resources that were listed I was just wondering if there are any resources or workshops designed to help enlighten businesses and how they might be able to participate and maybe squeeze more out of events in their community and specifically my question is based out of our own situation we have our grids fest music festival our emperors challenge half marathon mountain run where there seems to be a lack of presence or participation from the businesses and we are sometimes not profits in our own communities so we would like from time to time to bring facilitators in for that sort of thing so I was just wondering if anyone knew of any resources or workshops to focus on that subject well there's if you look at the resources that Bruce listed transforming communities through tourism handbook for community tourism champions that particular workbook actually came out of a series of workshops which we had offered around the province so there is a workshop it's just a matter of getting enough demands to actually have us put it on and this is put on by linkbc in partnership with the ministry and it's something that could be you know it's an excellent workshop I think okay you can bias to help write it right but still you know it's got exactly what you're looking for in terms of actually building that capacity in communities that is a community foundations program from the ministry as well and if I can offer this there is some work by Luis Matino on opinion leadership just so you understand I did the community development marketing for milestone restaurants for 15 years I think I was on a six month trial basis for about 16 years because I was on a trial basis they didn't fund me very well and I had to go out and do all sorts of community development partnerships when you want to get local businesses in you have to show them a payback if it's restaurants they like immediate payback the different sectors will require different things but it's about creating the vibrancy of the economic relationship that then sells the partnering opportunity and so it's all about opinion leadership on marketing and understanding how that works so you might want to do some reading on that that's not specific but general finally Ray I think that if you'd like to send us a request for something like that I'll see if I can find the right kind of person to come and do a workshop with you thank you great and Pat Deacon you have a question thanks very much really appreciate the opportunity to hear and learn about this when you talk about the provincial strategy you one of the six areas that you're working in is providing foundational information can you talk a bit about what that is and how we access that sure one of the things that's been an issue up to now is that we those of us who've been working around cultural tourism community cultural tourism have been pretty sure that it's a good thing but it's been difficult to demonstrate how and why in part this is because the definition of cultural tourism is a little bit slippery and variable however what we have to do is to be able to show that and there's some work that's been done internationally by the OECD there's some work that's been done nationally by the Canadian Tourism Commission and there's now a little bit of work that our provincial guys have done in cooperation with some other provinces so if you're looking for technical background we have a bit we need more and that's one of the things that we're saying going forward we need to do and we've actually got funding requests and we're working with a federal provincial territorial tourism initiative to produce a guide book specific to cultural tourism in the vein of the one that we've been talking about transforming communities so we're hoping to produce those over the next little while we've only just got going on this we do have some technical background information and if you'd like to send me an e-mail I can send you copies of that kind of stuff terrific thank you Jennifer did you have another question? I do so I'm curious how do we support the aboriginal communities in rural British Columbia with something like a Juno initiative meaning I get a lot of requests for helping aboriginal communities keep their youth within their community and in particular in entrepreneurship and running a small business when you look at a 4,000 you know 4,000 population in a community like the Nishka which is in northern British Columbia it's not that big and so they're looking at ways to create economic development within their own area but one of the things that's primarily important to them is retaining their culture their art and having their youth be a part of that so I'm wondering how do we collectively know that that's going to be most likely tourism based and how does that affect something like a Juno event if at all? Ok first I want to first off there are opportunities to use events in First Nations communities that can be really great and the First Nations are actually one of the areas that they're really strong in is organizing how how to get together so they're very good at that now the challenge is that's working with friends and neighbors on an informal friends relationship to put that on a business footing for tourism is a bit it's going to take a little bit of work but there are some steps to do it and one of them is that the Aboriginal community itself has started to really embrace music the music scene in B.C. the last couple of years from First Nations I'm blown away it's fabulous so maybe they need to do an Aboriginal was it an APTM that's the Aboriginal awards they have an awards ceremony maybe get it out of Toronto and have it up a dish I recognize that with respect to the Juno specifically the Aboriginal component in Vancouver was on the Tuesday night I think so five days before the event we all saw on television in North Vancouver at the reserve it was offsite it was I'm told one of the most thrilling musical get-togethers that anybody had ever seen broadly shared beyond the hall that it was in part of the marketing function then asked me how do we embrace that glorious moment and spread it to the rest of the country in much the same way that we did with the opening ceremonies for the Commonwealth the Olympics but you know I think the sense of pride that we felt across Canada with an Aboriginal component in the opening that was really presented exceptionally well with all of it so you're going to have to recognize that there has to be a strategy that allows local embracing but also celebrating at the national level that's a good example for you but that's the reality of how small communities might engage something like the Juno Great thanks, Paul Ratenko did you have a question? Hi, yes I do I've got a question regarding the pilot project of the four that you've mentioned there is there a way that we can be up to date on those all of them sound very interesting and different, I guess, angles that you're proposing there and the second part of the question is more specific with the Alaska Highway one I'm currently working with our provincial parks folks and looking at enhancing the tourism opportunities in our parks along the highway and I guess I would like to know a little bit more of what you are doing maybe we can work on some kind of inter-provincial type connection there I'd just point out there I think on the call at the moment and maybe she might be able to make some comment about how things are going up there as well Thanks Brian and thanks for the inquiry about the Alaska Highway and thinking about working together we just started the project and are looking within the piece of a regional district area and now are looking to take it up to the Northern Rockies regional municipality and if you want to connect with me I'd be more than happy to share more of the information about the project and how all the players can work together If I can just add something to this April is just finishing up a master's degree thesis on the topic and that might be of some use just as a side comment there's a number of people who are presently doing work which is not specifically on community culture tourism but is associated with it and there's a number of people particularly within the ministry who are involved in research which we're hoping to make available through linkBC for the tourism online resource center we expect in terms of resources and up-to-date information which will help add to the case studies which Bruce can maybe refer to there's opportunities there which are for research which is going to be coming out within the next six months so that's something to keep in mind and that's something we might be able to let you all know about once these papers are available for reading Paul you've got a connection there with April and if you'd like you can also talk to me I work with April on that project and we'd love to work with Albert on this we're going to bring in Yukon we're going to bring in Alaska and we'd love to work with you sounds good and I guess April's contacts will be made available after the webinar yeah or if you'd like you can right click on her name on the attendees list and privately chat with her and exchange contact information that way immediately we're going to do for a trip so it might be worth it hey now it's not all that bad you guys better than all the rain in Victoria I think we deserve that one thanks one so Danielle Johnson go ahead and pose your question yes hi I'm with the caribou regional district and some may know that we were recently designated the fourth capital of Canada by the Canadian Forestry Association and one of our goals with that is to really promote the diversity of the forest industry moving a little bit away from traditional stongling and that sort of thing we were at BC Street at the Richmond Ozone doing ecotourism promoting log home building that sort of thing and now what we're hoping to do is put together a little bit of like a geocaching more of a passport of different places in our region so visitors can come go to like wood lot tours birch syrup production in the North Caribou which is into that agro tourism and these sorts of things but we're finding that it's a little bit hard to get over the barrier that we're a local government starting this project versus a grassroots organization or a tourism organization so we feel a little bit of reluctance for people to work with us because we are a government so we're wondering if anyone at the ministry would be able to help us guide us through these kinds of projects as we're forced capital for the next two years or provide us advice to us or these sorts of things Could I ask you to contact me offline and I'll be happy to help you with that it sounds like you've got a good thing and we should find a way to make it work Ah yes, thank you And I'd like to point out that local government is actually our grassroots organization Yes, yes, sorry We're on black, we'll have time for one last question Hi there, I just want to thank you as well for all your information that you've shared today It's been wonderful My question is, it revolves around with the winding up of the cultural mapping and planning funding that went on with 210 Legacies now, is there any thought of where funding may be replaced to work on these kinds of projects? It's a very good question Yvonne In fact, I'm in a meeting tomorrow to talk to Lori Baxter in Legacies 2010 and my executive director we hope to be able to carry on those programs from within the ministry but it's a bit early to say anything for sure Those are darn good programs and we don't want to lose them we hope we can keep them going Okay, thanks so much, Bruce We'll talk then You bet The icon that looks like three pieces of paper there's three extra handouts if you wanted to download them now before we close this it'll also be available on the Royal BC Secretary at Website in about five to seven days Thank you Bruce for joining us today and joining the discussion We will be following up with the things that I mentioned earlier and really welcome I see a couple of people on the line we still have a couple of questions but unfortunately we've run out of time and we'll be available and perhaps there'll be an opportunity to follow up with them directly so we're going to sign off and say goodbye and thank you Bye