Bring on the tourists
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Mar 09/01) - During a roundtable on culture and tourism last summer Maureen Pirker told a few assembled Yellowknifers that the cultural tourists were coming. A cultural tourist, she explained, wants more than your average vacation.
"They want to have the experience ... and they take away items from the places they visit, either as gifts for others or keepsakes for themselves."
We have the experiences; we're not quite ready for the people who want to experience them.
The Aurora Arts Society, to which Pirker belongs, wants to change that. The society will host a March 23 to 25 symposium that will bring together government, tourism, business, arts and culture.
"It wasn't difficult to move ahead," says Pirker.
"Because (cultural tourism) is real. Whether or not we're prepared or have the knowledge we need, it's coming anyway. That's why we need to pull the community together."
Pirker became acquainted with the work of two specialists in the field of culture and tourism, Steven Thorne and Brian White, when she attended a workshop in Victoria, B.C. last May. She decided then that Yellowknife needed to be exposed to their ideas.
Both men will lead workshops at the symposium.
Thorne heads the Okanagan Cultural Corridor Project in B.C. The "cultural corridor," he explains, is a very simple idea.
"You take all the arts, all the heritage and all the agri-tourism (in the Okanagan's case, wineries) of a region, and market them as a collective. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
"Look at Europe. Europe is all about culture, heritage, arts, museums, festivals, cuisine..." Thorne agrees getting tourists to the NWT can be a challenge, but he insists that the larger issue is to identify the products.
"I do know every region has cultural resources."
Products, in this case, are heritage and cultural experiences, as well as arts and crafts, foods and natural experiences specific to a location.
"Hopefully we'll encourage the community to regard cultural resources as economic assets," says Thorne.
"With the right strategy and investments, there is the possibility to accrue economic dividends."
Thorne applauds the efforts of the Aurora Arts Society but notes that "culture is too important to be left solely in the hands of the arts community.
"Culture is fast becoming the cornerstone of the economy. In the past four years cultural industries have grown 60 per cent. It's value has increased four times as quickly as other export sectors."
Pirker agrees.
"It has to be a collective approach," she says.
She hopes the symposium will open a dialogue between government, the tourism industry and the arts and cultural communities.
