Executive Director of Creative Industries Jaymie Lathem is fond of saying, “The creative industry contributes more to the GDP in Ontario than forestry, mining and agriculture combined.”
Lathem repeated this mantra as she presented before North Bay City Council last Tuesday, in a search for funding that will lead to other funding.
Lathem explains financial support, $50,000 yearly over four years, will “allow us to leverage that funding into larger federal and provincial funds that we can sink directly into North Bay.”
She says demonstrated financial support on a municipal level is crucial to obtaining grants from larger funding groups and the other levels of government. “A larger operating budget [aided by a contribution from the City] unlocks larger tiers of money pools,” says Lathem.
According to its website, Creative Industries “is an organization that aims to boost the growth of the creative sector while promoting North Bay as a livable community.”
Lathem adds the goal of Creative Industries is to build up programming, hire more people, and “within four years, establish a micro-granting system where we can directly begin to fund local arts organizations, groups, festivals, and individuals.
One of the slides used in the Creative Industries presentation to council lists the various studies and plans investment on a municipal level in the arts and culture sector has been recommended in. They include the Entertainment District Study (1999), Cultural Plan (2011), North Bay Tourism Commercial Attraction Feasibility Study (2013), City of North Bay Community Improvement Plan (2014) and the Baylor Community Study Recommendations of 2016. The final line of the slide reads: “Creative Industries is ready to implement these recommendations with ACTIONS.”
Summing up, Lathem says, “The City has funded the Capitol Centre and has recently made a funding promise to the [North Bay] Museum, which is fantastic, but other than that, there has been no direct funding or monetary support to the creative sector at all.”
