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Toronto Creative City CreativeTHE City A WORKPRINT April 2001 Culture 1 WORKPRINT A lively cultural community and a healthy economy are like an equation. From various studies and reports already completed, we have learned that Toronto is the premier engine of the Canadian economy. We have identified our cultural communities and creative industries as key elements that give Special Events, the Department provides a unique Toronto a competitive advantage in the global opportunity for cross-divisional collaboration on marketplace. We know that our cultural diversity creative ideas and solutions. The synergy between is our great strength. We know that culture the divisions both enhances and provides a enriches the day-to-day quality of life of our context for the work of the Culture Division. residents and plays a critical role in the look and During the consultation process that lead up feel of the City. We also recognize that whatever to amalgamation, the City's cultural community plan we devise, it must first support and enhance had expressed a strong desire for the the working lives of the creative individuals who development of a Culture Plan for the new City, a are the heart of Toronto's cultural experience. strategic map for the future, encompassing A lively cultural community and a healthy The Backstory cultural industries, the arts and heritage. In 2000, economy are like an equation. As the Economic Council directed the Division to create one - to Development Strategy put it in July, 2000: "The set the cultural agenda for the City over the next quality of our neighbourhoods, parks, ravines, In 1998, following the amalgamation of seven ten years. schools, theatres, museums, galleries and urban municipalities, Toronto entered a new class of When it's complete, this Plan will show how design as well as our employment areas, roads, select global cities. As part of its reorganization, City actions can coordinate with and augment streets, sidewalks and public transit have a direct City Council created the Culture Division to bring the work of senior levels of government, to impact on our quality of life and therefore on our coordination and focus to the City's arts, culture strengthen our cultural community. The Culture competitiveness."1 and heritage portfolio. Plan will build on other key City policy This preliminary Cultural Workprint represents While all former municipalities promoted documents currently under development, the research conducted by City staff in recent and enhanced cultural activities to various including the Strategic Plan, the Official Plan, the months. It not only sets out the opportunities and degrees, the amalgamation of Toronto presented Economic Development Strategy and the Tourism challenges that we face, but it also provides some an unprecedented opportunity to provide a new Strategy. preliminary strategic directions and focus and image for Toronto, The Creative City. The goal of the Culture Plan is to position recommendations to position Toronto as a leading The Culture Division is part of the Economic Toronto as a Creative City, a leading international international cultural capital. The Workprint will be Development, Culture and Tourism Department. cultural capital that keeps its brightest and best submitted to Council and to the public for review With its four operating divisions of Culture, at home while putting out a siren call to the rest and input in spring 2001. The full Culture Plan will Economic Development, Parks and Recreation and of the world. follow by the end of 2001. 2 TORONTO CULTURE / CULTURAL AFFAIRS / ARTS SERVICES / MUSEUM & HERITAGE SERVICES / PRESERVATION SERVICES WORKPRINT The goal of the Culture Plan is to position Toronto as a Creative In the year 2001, the City of Toronto is poised at the edge of greatness, but City, a leading international cultural capital. with opportunity comes challenge. Explosive growth and change are here. How can they be channeled into a spectacular future? The Fung While smokestacks, large scale manufacturing, agriculture and Task Force Report's proposals to reclaim the banking gave us our first flush of wealth, they alone waterfront, the possibility for rejuvenation through the 2008 Olympics, the shortfall in will not carry us forever. revenue and lack of new financial instruments to meet the downloading of major social services from the Province, all have galvanized the City. Last spring, understanding that Toronto information and communication technologies.2 must become more than the sum of its "The growth areas of the City now," according to amalgamated parts, that fascinating cities don't Toronto Competes, a recent study published by just happen, they are envisioned and wrestled the City's Economic Development Division,"are into being, City Council asked its just created activities that leverage, and link to, the City's Culture Division to develop a cultural plan for research, educational and cultural institutions and Toronto. The Division evaluated its mandate, communities, to produce innovative and explored issues, searched out efficiencies and is specialized products and services for export."3 mapping the way forward. This document, our Global cities have a chemistry that must be first draft of a new Toronto story, raises questions nurtured - quality of city life attracts knowledge and makes suggestions about how the old workers and knowledge workers will drive this industrial Toronto can be reinvented as a global, new economy. Those things we do that recreate Creative City. and illuminate our own lives, and our very The Culture Division's task in re-imagining particular past, also call the world's attention and Toronto is particularly important. In a world of interest. and inspiring buildings. Many of these ingredients global sameness, competition now occurs on the Torontonians have always known that. In the have little to do with money and everything to do field of meaning: the great cities of the future will City's Official Plan consultations, we were told with the way we organize. Together, they amount be driven by the unique efforts of their cultural or that quality of life is the number one priority for to a formula for making The Creative City work. creative industries, not their steel mills. More than most residents. Eight out of 11 of the quality of So we set ourselves a task - to think our way 10 per cent of employment in Toronto, and a very life indicators our residents identified fall within through the dangers and opportunities of significant part of tax revenues, already come from the mandate of the Culture Division.4 They interesting times, to incubate the number one creative works - films, television, theatre, visual include: diversity of cultural and art quality of life in the world. arts, dance, galleries, communications, publishing, opportunities, top community cultural services architecture and design. The culture sector and public institutions, being at the leading edge contributes about $5.3 billion to GDP, much more in the world of ideas, rich neighbourhood life, if we include the contribution of burgeoning interesting and vital public streets, public spaces TORONTO CULTURE / CULTURAL AFFAIRS / ARTS SERVICES / MUSEUM & HERITAGE SERVICES / PRESERVATION SERVICES 3 The most important asset we have is neither material nor specific to any group: it is our shared civic culture, the widespread knowledge of how to organize community affairs in democratic and transparent institutions run for the public interest. of our first mayor and rebel, which all tell a portion of the Toronto story. The City itself owns 107,396 artifacts, 20,000 reference and rare books, and close to a million archaeological specimens; 180 works of public art; an art collection of over 2,500 pieces; a wide range of THE BIG PICTURE owned and operated, and owned and leased theatres; 10 museums; galleries; and cultural centres. These assets, in combination with the City's large public library system, three important The future is grounded in the past, in the universities and five colleges of art and design, material world we have inherited, in the stories plus hundreds of privately owned galleries, public we tell ourselves about who we are and where we and private schools, heritage and cultural came from. The City's current cultural assets are associations, make us what we are. extremely varied, starting with Torontonians, the But the most important asset we have is most diverse population of any city in the world, neither material nor specific to any group: it is making us immeasurably rich with the experience our shared civic culture, the widespread of every known human culture. We come knowledge of how to organize community affairs together now in vital neighbourhoods where in democratic and transparent institutions run for people respect each others' differences. All our the public interest. Our heritage sites, non-profit stories have fallen on peaceful and fertile ground. theatres, galleries and our granting agency, the Our physical assets include: vibrant non- Toronto Arts Council, are overseen by and benefit profit theatres, galleries and dance studios; from the volunteer time of numerous members of community cultural centers; grand civic art the community concerned with the arts and galleries and small community exhibition spaces; culture. Any plan for a Creative City must first many museums; some 5,500 heritage sites, from engage these knowledgeable and civic-minded Mies van der Rohe's impeccably modern Toronto persons, but it must also reach out to newcomers, Dominion Centre, to Mackenzie House, the home and gather them into all of our institutions. 4 TORONTO CULTURE / CULTURAL AFFAIRS / ARTS SERVICES / MUSEUM & HERITAGE SERVICES / PRESERVATION SERVICES WORKPRINT Asset rich but cash through the Toronto Arts Council for the development of non-profit theatres. These are poor essential incubators of talent for the large commercial theatres, and the film and television The City owns and leases out 34 cultural facilities industries. The City does not own these theatres, including theatres, galleries and heritage but it has a great deal invested in their health.
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