The arts and culture industry is one of Ontario’s fastest growing sectors, representing $28.7 billion or 3.5 per cent of the province’s GDP and 301,495 jobs.
And arts and culture activities aren’t just good for the economy—they’re good for us.
A 2021 Hill Strategies analysis of the relationships between arts, culture, and heritage activities and health and well-being found that there is a “strong connection between cultural participation and health [and]…solid evidence of a connection between cultural participation and mental health.”
The Lake of Bays Arts Loop, a volunteer-run initiative to promote arts and culture amenities and activities in the Township, hopes to tap into the increasing interest in cultural tourism, especially as we emerge from the pandemic.
The Arts Loop website recently launched with the goal of drawing people off the beaten path to see what local artisans, galleries, restaurants, and theatre groups have to offer.
“There’s about a million cars a year that go out Hwy 60 to [Algonquin] Park… We really wanted to try to capture some of that,” says Rob Stimpson, local photographer and one of the volunteers behind the Arts Loop along with Karen Piovaty of Oxtongue Craft Cabin and Gallery, Jan Jacklin of Dot the T Productions, Dana and Jennifer Pearson, and Lake of Bays Mayor Terry Glover.
A presentation by the group to Lake of Bays Council referenced “A Tapestry of Place”, a place-based cultural tourism strategy prepared for Huntsville and Lake of Bays by consultant Steven Thorne.
In that strategy, Thorne writes, “In place-based cultural tourism, the heart of the visitor experience is encountering the destination as a whole—its history and heritage, its narratives and stories, its landscape, its
townscape, its people. It is discovering what makes the destination distinctive, authentic, and memorable. It is the experience of ‘place’. Simply put, the place is the product.”
Stimpson believes that the Lake of Bays landscape, its culturally significant past—in particular the work of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven who were responsible for Canada’s first national arts movement—and contemporary artists and cultural experiences in the area all combine to make the ideal cultural tourism draw.
The Group of Seven, who formed after Thomson’s death but were heavily influenced by him, believed that a distinctive Canadian style could be developed through contact with Canada’s unique landscape.
Algonquin Park and its adjacent lands were often their muse.
“I think we really need to build on the culture of our country and the art history of our country,” says Stimpson, who was also instrumental in having part of Hwy 60 renamed Tom Thomson Parkway. “I’ve sort of nicknamed the Oxtongue River the ‘river of artists’ because basically all of the Group of Seven, before they were the group, all painted on the Oxtongue River. And you go back to David Thompson, the great British cartographer, [who]went up the Oxtongue into Algonquin and mapped it all.
“Those are the things that are the anchors that we have here. And to this day, we have the contemporary artists who build on those landscapes.”
Stimpson likens Muskoka to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Similar in population size, Santa Fe has long been a leading art destination, in part due to famed painter Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived and created art in that area for many years. Cultural tourism is a billion-dollar industry there.
Cultural tourists tend to spend more than other tourists: a 2013 survey by Hill Strategies found that cultural tourist outspend other tourists by 78 per cent, particularly on lodging, food, beverages, retail goods, entertainment, and recreation.
By highlighting the studios, galleries, museums, restaurants, theatre, and events in the area, the Arts Loop coordinators hope that people planning to visit Muskoka or Algonquin Park will make Lake of Bays cultural attractions part of their trip.
Local artists and businesses interested in participating can learn more or register at artsloop.ca.
Follow the Arts Loop on Instagram @lakeofbays_artsloop and on Facebook here.
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