Arts Everywhere: The SAA Podcast
Arts Everywhere: The SAA Podcast
Episode 18 - Arts Everywhere - "Statistically Speaking" - with Ariana Malthaner
Meet Ariana Malthaner, the research lead with the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance. Ariana, unveils how her path led her from the intricacies of Old Irish linguistics to becoming a formidable advocate for the arts in Saskatchewan. Along with Em Ironstar, they uncover the surprising economic prowess of the arts scene in the province, backed by meticulous research confirming a substantial $74 million economic injection in Saskatchewan.
The SAA is commitment to crafting engaging reports that tell the story of economic impact, and demonstrate the potent role the arts play in fostering a vibrant and robust economic landscape.
Related Links:
https://www.cadac.ca
https://account-compte.cadac.ca/en-CA/explore-our-data/
Thank you to SaskCulture, SKArts, and Sask Lotteries for your generous support.
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STARTING SEASON 2, THEME MUSIC PROVIDED BY:
Patrick Moon Bird: https://linktr.ee/PatrickMoonBird
https://www.facebook.com/PatrickMoonBirdMusic/
Kevin Power: http://www.kevinpower.net/ The Saskscapes Podcast: https://saskscapes.buzzsprout.com/
Your collective voice for the arts across Saskatchewan. This is Arts Everywhere the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance podcast. So let's see, what does one do after completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto and then on to a Masters of Philosophy and PhD at Trinity College in Dublin, and you have a very specific focus of research that focuses on the language variations in Old Irish, and your research interests extend far beyond linguistics and into mythology and folk healing and medicine. What to do, what to do? What to do? Well, you could come to Saskatchewan with an analytic sensibility and put those analytical skills to good use as a research lead with the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance. Now, that's a journey you don't hear about very often, but such is the journey for this episode's guest, Ariana Malthaner.
Speaker 1:These days, Ariana is using her research savvy to confirm what we as artists have always known the arts has a huge impact on the economy. Right, I mean, we know that, right, and we say it often, but we can't always back it up with factual statistics, and that empirical evidence matters a lot when in the trenches of arts advocacy. So this episode will confirm, with statistics to back it up, that the financial, economic impact of the arts in Saskatchewan is fantastic. Like how, about a 74 million dollar economic impact? Fantastic. So how did Ariana arrive at that number? Well, not without some very reliable statistic reports like those provided by CARDAC, and also by analyzing that data with M Ironstar, your host. Statistically speaking, we are making a huge dent in the economy, folks. This episode unpacks a lot of those statistics and with these data, the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance continues its evidence-based advocacy.
Speaker 2:Really excited to be chatting here today with Ariana Malthaner, who is the SAA's research lead, and you will have heard from Ariana in one of the episodes in the previous season. It was the ASO convergence and that was right around the time when you had first started with us. I think that was maybe a month into-.
Speaker 3:It was three or four months, because it was actually around this time last year that I went Okay, so we recorded, I don't remember a couple weeks after we got back and I started in October. Right. But, it was still pretty new because I started and then obviously Christmas happened, which is a break, and then it was sort of right back in, so it's been like a year yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wild. So I thought we would maybe give our listeners out there an opportunity to maybe have to get to know you a little bit better and to also talk about some of the really important and exciting work that you've been leading around the economic impact of, well at this point in time, and particularly SASS guards, which we're hoping to expand, which we can get into. But, yeah, I guess one of the things, especially for someone because you're not from Saskatchewan no, I'm from Ontario. Okay, yeah, so I guess how did a question that I'm sure most people who are not from here get asked? I'm sure you've heard it from not only me and other people but how did you end?
Speaker 3:up in Regina, I was living in Ireland. I lived in Ireland for about seven years, so I moved from Ontario to Ireland. While I was in Ireland I met my partner, who we then had to immigrate over to Canada when we decided that we wanted to come back, and because I am a research person, I did a lot of really obsessive research and one of the things that we saw over and over and over again in our research was that it's really hard for professionals to get their foot in the door here, no matter how much experience or qualifications they have, if they don't have Canadian experience basically, and so that was sort of something we were seeing all the time was like, even with 10 years of experience, he was probably going to struggle getting into you know the sort of the same level of work where he was because he didn't have Canadian experience. But luckily for us, construction project management is in demand in Saskatchewan, and so we thought if this is a place where he's in demand, there's probably a better chance that he will be able to find work. And I mean we weren't super worried about me because I'm I mean I'm a lot more flexible, right I think you know, coming out of a PhD and having sort of varied work experience means you can kind of slot into different spaces, whereas, like, if you have 10 years working in construction project management, there's not too many other directions you can go.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, we landed on Saskatchewan, partly for that and also because he is obsessed with, like, energy efficiency and the environment and he was like Saskatchewan's amazing for solar power and wind energy. He was like, looking at all of these statistics, I mean absolutely nothing to me. And he would be like, do you know how much solar power they can generate? And I was like I don't know. No, and like even if you gave me a number, it would mean absolutely nothing to me. And so, yeah, we kind of landed on Saskatchewan that way.
Speaker 3:And then we were sort of looking between Regina and Saskatoon and I don't know. I think we kind of ended up on Regina because it's the capital and we thought that there might be sort of more. I mean, I had never been to Saskatchewan, he had never even set foot in Canada before we decided to move. Like the first time he arrived in Canada ever was when he moved over. So we didn't really know very much. We were just kind of like, yeah, regina is the capital, it will probably have sort of more things for us both. I don't know if that was misguided or not. People here seem to tell me that Saskatoon is better, but I don't know if that's just bias.
Speaker 2:There are so many good things about both cities, especially as I've been spending more time in both, like it's hard to compare.
Speaker 3:We've really enjoyed it. We're very happy here. We both like Regina.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I know that myself and the Arts Alliance are super jazzed that you ended up here.
Speaker 2:You know, when we were posting and developing the position and hiring for the position, I really was quite convinced that we were going to be, that we wouldn't be finding our candidate in Saskatchewan, and, you know not, not, for I just thought, you know, with there would be a greater pool of people who a it would appeal to and who would have the skill set to be able to do the job Elsewhere. And so when your application came through and I was like China, oh cool, especially somebody we don't know. You know, and that was the thing too, we were going to be, you know, more than willing to work with somebody who could kind of live Anywhere in the province or, you know, we do primarily work in a hybrid, remote environment, so kind of the fact that it, you know, if somebody would have been based somewhere else, it wouldn't have really been a been a huge deal. But yeah, we were, we were like, oh, that this seems like a great fit. So, yeah, what, what?
Speaker 2:What did you study in Ireland? And kind of like, how, what was your journey to end up there? Because that's really interesting.
Speaker 3:I mean, is it really? I do think, I.
Speaker 3:Kind of wish I had a better story, because you know, whenever you're a transplant anywhere, it's what you always get asked right now that we're here, right, I think I I Apparently have some kind of accent that betrays that I am not local, because I am constantly asked like where, where are you from? And Obviously you know my partner has a Swiss accent, so he very obviously is not local. So we get asked all the time, and we also got asked all the time in Ireland, right, like people would be like you're not from here, where are you from? And I wish I had a better story.
Speaker 3:But like the shortest possible version is that when I was like Eight years old roughly, I became obsessed with the Irish language.
Speaker 3:I have no recollection of how this happened or why this happened, but it was this Sort of, really I don't know.
Speaker 3:I was just I was convinced that I needed to learn it and apparently I was convinced that I needed to learn it Independently, because I never expressed this to my parents at all, which is so ridiculous in retrospect, because my parents have always been really supportive and if I had gone to them as a kid and been like I want to learn this language, they would have said okay and tried to help me and instead I was like Getting books from the library that had glossaries of Irish words in the back and like reading.
Speaker 3:We had like a big, I Think ten volume dictionary that had one volume that was just like words with different languages and I was like I was obsessed with that and we had an incident like a. We had a computer program that was an encyclopedia, that had like a language thing in it and I was obsessed with that too and I spent so long memorizing words when it was just how to count to ten, how to say hello, right, it wasn't anything useful or functional and I just I really really wanted to learn Irish and it kind of Drove a lot of decisions. When I think about it and like again, I really wish I had a good reason, because I don't. I don't remember how I hit on this or why I decided that this was for me.
Speaker 2:So as far as the Irish language goes. Like I'm just this is more kind of just for my own personal curiosity like is it a common language? Is it like a language that's in revitalization or kind of what? Like just yeah.
Speaker 3:I would say Not. It's not a common language. It is classed as a minority language. There are a lot of historical reasons for that, and by historical reasons I mean reason, and it's colonization, yeah right.
Speaker 3:You know, the English came in, they made it I Was going to say Disadvantages, but I don't think that that's a word but they made it advantageous to speak English more than to speak Irish, sort of in the run up to the Irish famine. And then because the famine, which In some circles is no longer being called the famine because it isn't actually In some, in some perspectives, is not a famine, because there was food in Ireland, it was just not being given to the Irish.
Speaker 3:Since Irish speakers were Much more affected by the famine than English speakers, it became seen as sort of a bad thing to speak Irish. Right, if you want out of this kind of lifestyle, if you want out of the situation, it's more advantageous for your children to be speaking in English. So the language sort of I Don't know it's kind of been in a revitalization period for a long time because of it. Right At the beginning of the early 20th century we had revitalization efforts right Sort of in the run up to Irish independence and they it's officially I believe it's officially the first language. It is one of two official languages of Ireland. I believe it is officially the first language, but it is still hard to access. So it it is technically classed as a minority language. It is in official government documentation. They have to have it in both languages. The universities officially have to have translations of everything.
Speaker 3:There's some Movement lately, it looks like, towards more people speaking it. More people are enrolling their children in Gwelskullinna, which are like French immersion, but for Irish basically. So I don't know. I mean, I am hopeful for Irish. I think that it's lovely. It's also the oldest vernacular language in Western Europe. Oh, wow me yet, or that we have written records of anyways, okay, well, I'm gonna pivot the conversation.
Speaker 2:No, it's all good.
Speaker 2:No it's super interesting. So, yeah, we're gonna pivot the conversation to have a little bit of a discussion about some of the work that you have Led for the Arts Alliance very recently, and I think it is it's it's work that I'm super excited about. So I've, you know, I'm about, let's say I can two and a half years into this role at the Arts Alliance and you're, you know, a year in a bit. So we're still fairly, both of us are still fairly kind of new, but I know that as soon as you started, I think one probably one of our first conversations was we would love to be able to find a way to articulate the economic impact of the arts broadly, because it's something that is something that would really help us in our advocacy efforts, in garnering more support for the arts in our province. And I'd say, up until very recently, like the fall of this past year, so fall 2023, that's something that has been, that's something that had eluded us in a way and we hadn't really been able to figure out a, a method, I would say, about how to do that, and so I guess we could I'll maybe give a little bit of context of kind of how we came around to Doing this work and then we can kind of launch into to what we did. So you know, I guess credit where credit is due.
Speaker 2:Of course, a lot of the work that we're doing around economic impact of the arts started from a conversation with Erin Dean, who's the CEO of Creative Saskatchewan, because they have developed a really great method of determining economic impact for film production in Saskatchewan. And so Erin is amazing. She's a fabulous ally and was willing to sit down with us and share their process and their method on how they had done that for individual film projects, to see if we could maybe take the same method and apply it in different ways to the arts. And so we decided to start with looking at, just very specifically, organizations who receive operational funding from SaskArts, and so we worked with SaskArts. They were fantastic.
Speaker 2:Michael Jones, ceo there, you know, gave us a fabulous anonymized data set from the Canadian Arts Database, or CADAC. As many people listening out there might be shaking their fists at the sky when they hear me talk about CADAC if they've worked within the system, but here I am to tell you that thank God for CADAC because it really helped us out in this situation to have that data set to be able to understand the expenses and revenues of the arts organizations in our province. So you know, this year, as you're working through your CADAC, just think that you know it's doing some good for the Arts Alliance. So we're behind the scenes like giving you a big round of applause for doing CADAC.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, I mean this wouldn't I don't want to say it wouldn't have been possible without CADAC, because I'm sure we could have found a way to do it, but definitely having the CADAC numbers was such a huge boon and made it so much more straightforward for us than if we were asking people to estimate or if we were trying to like collate from every single organization, be like give us your funds, or like your budgets or finance sheets I don't even know Right, but this was so simple. I mean, it was simple for us. We just got an email with a spreadsheet, right? Yeah, not have been simple, but together, but yeah, it was definitely extremely helpful. And the fact that it's audited as well, yeah, I think is a really big boon in our favor, because we can say these are not speculative numbers, these are hard numbers. We know that these are accurate numbers. We're not working with anything theoretical or fantastical, right? So what we come up with is defensible in that way, which I think is important. I mean, it's important to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, anyways, right, yeah, yeah. So maybe we'll obviously link to the report and the summary report in the show notes, because even the full report, I think, is fairly digestible. But you can get the main facts through the summary report as well, but maybe, just for the sake of the people who are listening, maybe have a bit of a primer, if they're either not going to look at the reports or want to kind of understand a little bit more before they dig into them. How did we do this?
Speaker 3:How did we do this? So I guess the background is. Yet we talked to Erin at Creative Sask right and she had said that what they had found really helpful were these they had called the stats Canada multipliers. I mean their official name is the input output multipliers and we used territorial and detailed yeah, input output multipliers. Provincial and territorial level, detail level sorry, I'm just looking at my screen now making sure I don't mess it up and I still did.
Speaker 3:And it's essentially released by stats Canada. They are multipliers, so just numbers that you multiply your expenses against by, multiply your expenses by. Oh, I don't know, I don't do math. Normally I shouldn't say that on an episode where we're talking about me doing math. I am arts and humanities, brain and the but. So stats Canada releases these multipliers and they cover a variety of variables, they call them. So there's economic output, gdp, taxes, subsidies, labor income, wages and salaries, social contributions, jobs, international imports, that kind of thing, and they sorted by industry and the idea is to estimate, I will say because I don't think they ever use the word estimate, but I think that that's sort of the most accurate word to use because it is an estimation right. They have generated these numbers to calculate the impact of certain industries and the impact specifically on GDP the amount of jobs generated, the economic output generated, the amount of taxes generated by an industry.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that I will add in there that makes this model, I will say, really interesting, is that it is used across other industries, and so when we're looking at trying to determine the impact of the arts in our province and of course, specifically we're looking now at operationally funded organizations we are able to use a method and a model that is recognizable to people outside of the arts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because they do. I didn't say they do have different industries. So when you are using the multipliers, you can generate the variable for, let's just say, economic output and you can choose total industries, which calculates everything within Canada, or you can get more specific, right? So we've got crop production except for cannabis. It says specifically green except cannabis, greenhouse nursery and floor culture production. Right, they get very specific cannabis, licensed cannabis production and unlicensed cannabis production.
Speaker 3:I'm just looking at the list. It goes alphabetically, I assume. Right, those are two separate things oil and gas, animal food manufacturing, soft drink and ice manufacturing, breweries, soap manufacturing, plastic product, like really everything is very specific. It is very specific. They have these sort of general categories and they have this is something I don't think most Canadians who were born here probably know. If you immigrated you might know this but the Canadian government has they call it like a national job classification system where every single type of job has a specific code associated to it and they really break it down. They have different levels, right, and different positions. You know they give different codes for managerial, but everything has a classification system and so they use this classification system to generate the industries and then the industries are what they use to generate these multipliers.
Speaker 3:I mean, I had no idea, and still until we started looking into immigrating. And then it was like you need to know his code if you want him to immigrate economically and it's got a number right. I don't remember what it was, it was something like 7011 or something, and yeah they, I didn't know that we did this, but we do. I don't know yeah who decided?
Speaker 3:but yeah, I mean it is used across other industries. You can put in basically any industry you can think of and, at least as far as we're aware, you know, businesses use this. It's not just us.
Speaker 2:So maybe we should delve into just briefly what multipliers we use, because it's my understanding that there's two kind of separate multipliers that relate to the arts, and they're kind of weird.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the total industries. So if you are on the website and you type in arts, I mean you start with all the ones that include the word parts, because you know, and so the two industries that we have, there's arts, entertainment and recreation, which is the one that we ultimately ended up using, and then performing arts, spectator, sports and related industries, and heritage institutions is the other one that comes up as an arts and culture option. So I mean, when we were sort of choosing, we kind of thought we should not use the performing arts and sports one because of the inclusion of sports and heritage institutions. Obviously, neither one is perfect for our purposes, right?
Speaker 3:Entertainment and recreation you know there's going to be other things in there that don't quite fit with the arts but spectator, sports and related industries just felt a little bit too far, I think, and specifically because it only uses performing arts. Right, we don't want to extrapolate what's happening with galleries to under a performing arts umbrella, because it's going to be very different, right? So we did end up using arts, entertainment and recreation. The numbers are the multipliers themselves are fairly similar. There are a couple of discrepancies and we've done that analysis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know that breakdown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's the most like. In some instances the performing arts one is higher than the arts entertainment recreation. The major difference is that performing arts, spectator sports and related industries tends to have less jobs in the output, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but that's. That was the only major difference. The other differences were fairly minor and I think also when we have looked at economic output as put out by stats, can their reports, like the GDP and jobs and things like that. Sports tends to be significantly under the arts numbers in terms of pretty much everything. As an industry, it tends to be much smaller. And now, so it didn't it? Just it didn't feel like it would be an accurate reflection, and now obviously the numbers aren't that different, so we probably could have used it and come up with relatively similar results.
Speaker 2:But and and we may, we made kind of depending on the data that we can get and get a breakdown. You know, of course it requires us to go back to Sask Arts and requires, requires them to do a bit of work, which I think they're willing to do, and to pull out some of the performing arts organizations out of the data set that we used. We will likely run a further analysis using the performing arts multipliers for the performing arts organizations and the arts and entertainment multipliers for the remaining organizations. But we, that we, you know, and we haven't really done that breakdown as of yet. But that's too calm. We recognize that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because we got the data and then we got the financial data in anonymized form. We didn't know which ones were performing arts, which ones were music, and of course, we don't need to know who's spending wash. But yeah, I think Sask Arts is willing to do that for us and I expect that they will. It just is a little bit more legwork for them, and so we will run that analysis, but I don't anticipate that it will change overall too much numbers, because the multipliers are very similar. Jobs are really the only thing where it might take a hit. But again, it also depends on what percentage of the organizations are performing arts. Yeah, it's only a 10%. You know, then it's not going to be probably a particularly interesting difference. It'll probably be negligible. But yeah, we will eventually do that and then maybe make an updated report.
Speaker 2:I don't know, yeah, so another really interesting thing that we've done over the last few weeks is we Sask Arts was gracious and sent out a short survey that we created to all of the organizations whose data we used, because one of the things that we wanted to clarify was how much of the money that these organizations, how much of their expenses, are spent within Saskatchewan and also how many of the jobs within these arts organizations are in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 2:Now we had an idea we thought we knew, you know, because it stands to reason that probably a vast majority of arts organizations in Saskatchewan spend their money within our province. And we also knew that you know, just kind of, given the landscape, that most of the jobs in Saskatchewan arts organizations are going to be jobs in Saskatchewan. We had an amazing response to our survey. I think it was sent out to 62 different organizations and I think right now we're hovering around that 60 mark. That responded. So excellent response, right, thank you out there folks, if you, if you, submitted the survey. We appreciate your response. That gives us a really accurate data to go on. What was the results of that?
Speaker 3:I mean the results are unsurprising to us, I think, but they're very strong. So, in terms, we asked both what percentage of your organizations expenses are spent within the province and from the organizations. The average is 90.3%. Most organizations reported upwards of 90%. Quite a few reported 100. We just had a couple that were under that, but I mean, I think that was to be expected, right, those are organizations that source people, materials, artwork from out of province. As for the second question, which was what percentage of your organization's salaried employees are Saskatchewan residents, and the reason we ask that question is because when calculating, when using the multipliers, we use total expenses and salaries are obviously included in those expenses. So the vast majority of organizations said 100%. There were only a couple who didn't, but nevertheless, what we have right now, 99.4% of employees, salaried employees, reside within the province.
Speaker 2:So yeah, pretty high, yeah, really good to be able to verify our assumptions.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, I mean, we we had assumed it would be fairly high. I don't think. I don't know. I think we were kind of like is anyone living outside of the province? But we don't know, yeah right. So yeah, that was good to verify and good to know, because that means, even if we use these sort of reduced numbers, which I don't think that we need to, it's not going to have a huge overall effect on the outcome of the report. Right, it would maybe be a little bit lower, but it's not going to be massive by any means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just realized we should probably give a quick, you know, high level summary, like what we discovered in running these, these multipliers and and these numbers, is that the economic impact of the organizations that are funded by SaaS guards is quite massive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we did. I wanted to have as many numbers as possible because we can. The multipliers allow us to have all kinds of options right, so we have the direct impact of money spent, which is essentially the salaries of employees. That's counted as direct impact. Indirect impact is money spent in other organizations, right? So if a theater company needs to buy lumber from Home Depot, right, that money is an indirect impact. And then the induced impact is the impacts of both the direct and indirect impacts. I'm not great at explaining this because I'm not an economist and this is just my terrible understanding, but so, sort of like, the direct impact of a theater company is the salary director, who is the permanent fixture. Their salary is a direct impact. Money spent by the organization in other organizations is an indirect impact, and then the induced impact is the result of that. So, because the director spends $20,000 to build a new deck, right, that's $20,000 that is being used to employ the deckers Deckers, is that the right word? But to employ the construction crew.
Speaker 3:and that goes back to, you know, the lumberyard where there's the people employed who are cutting the lumber or whatever you do with a lumberyard. I assume it's like sawing and stuff. I mean, I've been to lumberyards, I promise I just don't know what they do on a day to day. So that's so. We had those numbers, so we had direct, indirect, induced and then total, so all of it together and because I just thought it would be fun, we broke it down into direct, indirect, induced and total within the province. Yeah, direct, indirect, induced in the rest of Canada and the total across Canada. So with the, the multipliers provide a within province multiplier to calculate that within Saskatchewan number and they do have a different multiplier for every province in every territory and then they provide they call it the all provinces number, which is for all of Canada. We use that for the total, direct or indirect, induced and total total numbers and then for the rest of Canada and just subtract is the All the Saskatchewan number from the all provinces number, because the all provinces number is obviously higher because it includes the whole country and I didn't want to Misrepresent and make it look like we were doing so much more than we were outside of the province. So we have those sort of three categories.
Speaker 3:Within that we have four categories, categories, but so, in terms of the impact that we found, we, you, we looked at economic output, so the overall economic output, the jobs that were generated and the GDP. So, within Saskatchewan, the total provincial number of economic output for organizations funded by Sask Arts is 74 million dollars. Wow, it's like just slightly over it, it's like 74 million 14 thousand eleven dollars and sixty-eight cents, but 74 million, and the total economic output within all of Canada is 92.2 million. Yeah, jobs, within the province it's 819.1, the total is 903.4. And GDP it's 41 million dollars within the province and 50 million dollars outside of the province. Wow, so those are huge numbers.
Speaker 3:They are all things considered, yeah, because I think most people tend to think of the arts as not a particularly Prosperous industry. I think is a way to think of it. I think people outside of the arts, yeah, often have the perception of sort of artists with their hands out begging for government money, begging for donations and you know, funding and that kind of thing. And I mean, to an extent it's true and that the arts needs more funding, right, but yeah, and the arts needs public support, yeah, the arts needs public support and the arts needs more funding. But I think this has demonstrated that it's not sort of a black hole where money gets put in and nothing gets put out.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a significant return on investment.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and we did Calculate that. Oh, I don't know, do I have that here?
Speaker 2:on this one.
Speaker 3:Yes, so economic output for $1 invested. So, for every dollar invested by the provincial government, the organizations funded by SAS guards generate $13 and 70 cents. Yeah, an economic output unreal. Yeah, yeah it's. And for GDP it's $7 and 62 cents per dollar invested. Right, that's. I mean that's a huge return on investment. And if we're thinking purely in economic terms which I think we kind of have to when we're talking to the government and to people outside of the arts, right, that's a pretty significant. I mean, it feels pretty significant to me.
Speaker 2:I don't know what other industries have but that, yeah, that's something I think that we're interested in, in trying to figure out it's. It's a it's that it would be an interesting challenge in itself, and we talked a little bit about that. You know, like, can we, could we find a way to Compare our numbers to different industries? And we're thinking on that. I think the other thing, too, that I'd like to note is, like when we first, when you were first working on this and developing this, and we, you came with some of the initial numbers, like I was like wow, and I and I started to think, and I started to backtrack a little bit in my own, in my own mind, about, you know, are these, are these sounding correct? And and you know, really, when you start to break them down and go back, they really are.
Speaker 2:You know, like we think about, like, if you, just for myself anyway, I just took like a simple calculation and I went you know, let's say, 819 jobs, that's the, that's what the, what the multipliers have kind of output it as what they, you know, Think the jobs that are generated from that amount of investment.
Speaker 2:If we take that and we multiply that by you know, maybe we would. I think I said forty five thousand dollars, it's almost thirty seven million dollars, yeah, so I mean it really and that if you think about you know I think it was that forty one million dollars Number, that is the GDP, gdp, like the numbers when you kind of try to backtrack them in a way, they they work, yeah, and and also to I think the other important thing to note is that you know, I think this, this is a model, this is a framework to be able to give us some way of talking about the economic impact of the arts, because it is huge. It is such a hard thing To think about how to articulate yes. So you know it's, it's not it's I will say it in my opinion anyway and you know it's not an exact science. It's a way for us to try to have an understanding of the impact and and Relay it in a way that is comparable to other industries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think, any industry working with it. It's just, yeah, model, it's an estimate. Right, we're not able to say, yes, right, these organizations produced seventy four million dollars. Right, we don't have the ability to do that because it is sort of a messy when you think about the way that they consider economic output, with these indirect and these induced impacts. Right, how, how would we possibly measure that? And that was something that we had kind of talked about before we found the multipliers, right, is, you know? We were saying, well, here's the salaries of all of these employees, and those salaries Directly get put back into the economy.
Speaker 3:Right, like, if you're living here, you are paying a rent or a mortgage, you are paying utility bills, you are buying groceries? Yeah, you are paying gas? Right, all of that money goes into the economy. But then, yeah, there's that you know, if I'm sticking with my theater company example, right, a theater company spending $20,000 to build a set, yeah, that's going to employ people Outside of the theater company itself. And how do you measure that? Right, I don't know. Yeah, right, that's something that becomes massive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it becomes massive and it also becomes really complicated if you're trying to do it without this model. Because I mean, where does it end? Yeah, right, where do you stop these sort of knock-on effects of you know what? How far can we attribute Anyone, any spending, to a single industry? Yeah, right, I mean the economy is kind of a circle in a way, right, money sort of goes from one person to another person, back and around, right, how do we, yeah, you know, like I buy something that pays for somebody else's job. Then they buy a lottery ticket that has now paid for my job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for real. Right, go sask lottery? Yeah, exactly, right, that's what I mean by it being a circle. We sort of get around it and like it's like the six degrees of separation, right, we're all only six degrees away from the money that we spent, and so, yeah, it's just an estimate, because how far, how far do you take it? But I think, yeah, it's a good way to conceptualize and it's something that other industries use and other organizations use to Estimate impact. Right, arts action Calgary did it for arts development.
Speaker 3:Sorry, arts develop. Their website is arts action. That's what okay. Yeah always gets me yeah, arts development Calgary did it for Calgary organizations, just Calgary organizations, and they use the multipliers as well. Right, yeah, kelly Hill just did one using the multipliers for French speaking artists, I believe it was. Haven't read that one yet. They need to, but right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will say you know we have been Consulting with experts. We've consulted with Kelly Hill about this. Shout out to Kelly Hill all the time. Also, quick plug for the SA if you're an SA, a member, you can get a Free access to the premium version of Kelly Hill's work. So you know, if you're interested in that, please give us a shout. Also, we've been consulting with a couple of economists from the U of s and from the U of r. So you know we're not Especially myself, we're not economists. Oh my god, I'm absolutely not no economist.
Speaker 3:I haven't taken math since the 10th grade, yeah.
Speaker 2:I but? But we have. We have the ability and the the Resources to be able to consult with those experts to make sure that we are doing.
Speaker 3:You know, we are on the right track with our work and so and and we are yeah, yeah, so far nobody has told us that we're on the wrong track, right, everybody has kind of agreed with our thinking and confirmed that we're in the right place.
Speaker 3:Right, we're waiting to hear back from somebody now. But I mean, the last person that we talked to was just sort of like, yeah, you're right, yeah, really validating, because I mean, when we first looked at the multipliers, I was stumped by how simple it seemed. You know, you take the expenses, you times it by this and this is the number that you have. It just felt like a trap, right, I. I kept saying this is Criminally simple. This is suspiciously simple. It seemed like there should be so much more to it. Yeah, and it doesn't seem like there is. Yeah, watch, somebody's get. Come out of the woodwork now and be like you've been doing this completely wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just quickly because I know we're probably coming up on time. I don't like to have them run too too long, but I did want to. I did want to mention we have some tentative plans for expansion for this research.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, we sort of we need to flesh out what exactly we want that to look like, right, and how to go about it. I mean, really the only thing that we need is Expenses. If we continue to do this the same way, right, we just need Expensive expenses, and if they can be Accurate and not speculative or budgeted, that would be the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't know, it's hard to find that data set.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, I mean, caddock was, you know, sort of a treasure chest and that way right. We kind of we didn't necessarily stumble upon it, right, but it was really so useful, right and and just exactly what we needed. But does that exist for Right, because we were talking about doing it with independent artists? Yeah, do they? Yeah if they don't complete caddock, how do we get verified right?
Speaker 2:They're fight and also a little bit more complicated in terms of yeah, so that that is the next thing that we're hoping to do and and you know there are those kind of issues that you've raised about. You know, maybe the numbers aren't quite as verified as they are with caddock, but again, we're just we're, we're experimenting with a model way of framing something and so, yeah, we really would like to Apply this same model to the independent artist program at sask arts. It's their second largest funding program, compared of compared with the professional arts organization and the organ and the operational funding that goes to organizations. It's that and then independent artists. So if we were able to apply this model to the independent artist program, we would have a really good understanding of the more holistic economic impact of sask arts, and I think that would be really interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it would be really interesting. I think it would be. Yeah, I mean, it would also be really interesting to just get sask arts Numbers right because we have the organizations that they fund right. But if we want to really Measure the impact of sask arts, that would be part of that picture as well.
Speaker 2:Hey, good thinking ha ha.
Speaker 3:But I mean, yeah, I would have to think on that because do we.
Speaker 3:I don't. Do we add that? I would think not. We wouldn't add that to these numbers. It would be part of those. It would be their own numbers. But yeah, I just right I mean because we could, because obviously this is what we've been looking at is funding that they give out to Other organizations, or hopefully independent artists, right, but I mean they also have their own expenditures that will be generating an economic 100% that isn't Related to these organizations at all. Right, like their staff is going to yeah. Count, yeah right for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of potential and Really excited about it. Thank you for all your work on this, like it's been. It's been really interesting, I think it's. You know, we've worked on other things with us, of course, but I think it's kind of been the first thing to really like fully sink your teeth into in a way and and yeah, I mean I think it's.
Speaker 3:It's one of the most exciting things I think that we've done, because it does have such a wide application. Yeah, right, because with I've done sort of a lot of little ad hoc things, right. Or like we did the university spending study which is published on our website and which is brilliant, right. But this is like we can take these numbers to the government and kind of say, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:It's directly informing our advocacy work. That is, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 3:And I think and you know, it also a generator to report for us and there's so many other avenues that we can take it. So I think, in that way, it's sort of the biggest project, yeah, without necessarily being like the biggest thing that we've done, because obviously the university spending study was a lot more data. Even the artist survey was a lot more data, which I am still waiting through because there's a lot, it's a lot of it and there it's also you know how do we break that, this down into, yeah, a Digestible report, because I would like everything that we put out to be accessible, but and I also don't want it to just be Me sort of shouting numbers at you, right, this percentage of people said this. Yeah, it's not very exciting to read.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's, it's on its way though. Yeah, yeah, I will just encourage if anybody has been listening to this or they read the reports or any combination. If you have any questions or you'd like to talk about this, please reach out to Ariana or myself, or both of us, like super were super jazzed about it and and would love to. If you have any questions or Comments or anything like that, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah cool, that was a great conversation, thank you, that was fun.
Speaker 1:The next episode of arts everywhere is coming soon, so keep checking this is catch when arts Alliance website and their social media pages for more information, and if you're listening to the podcast through your favorite podcasting app, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode. The arts everywhere theme music is composed by Saskatchewan musician Patrick Moon Bird, dancing to lo-fi, from his album entitled 2021. Check out the show notes for links to Patrick's music. The Saskatchewan arts Alliance would like to thank our funders, sask culture and Sask arts, both of whom benefit from lottery ticket sales through Sask lotteries. Proceeds from Sask lotteries fund cultural organizations all across the province, and we wouldn't be able to do the work we do without your support. See you next time.
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