NORWICH – Local professionals were encouraged to examine the benefits of incorporating the arts into their business practices Thursday morning when the Chenango County Council of the Arts hosted its third annual breakfast meeting.
The annual turnout, titled “The Business/Arts Connection,” hosts business professionals and Council of the Arts members throughout the area in a discussion of the benefits of merging the arts and business. It’s a practice that ultimately makes the community a more inviting, splendid place to live, said Victoria Kappel, executive director of the Chenango County Council of the Arts.
“We think about what we want in our community and what types of places we want to live in,” Kappel said. Through promoting the arts, “we’re going to continue to make this a great community to live,” she added.
This year’s event featured guest speaker Randy Cohen, vice president of research and policy at Americans for the Arts. Cohen’s presentation, “When Arts and Businesses Partner, Everyone Profits,” encouraged the group to see the arts as an opportunity to benefit employers, employees and the community as a whole.
“You pull a lot of weight in the community,” Cohen told the group. “The arts are fundamental to our lives,” he said. “The arts are the fuel that drives businesses to success.”
In his presentation, Cohen revealed the Partnership Movement, a campaign of the Americans for the Arts to promote the benefits of integrating the arts in business. As part of the campaign, Cohen went on to say that many urban industries have been encouraged to promote arts and culture to potential employees, making the community more alluring. “They want people to see that it’s not such a bad place to live,” he said. “Employees want to live and work in a vibrant community.”
Among his arguments, Cohen added that many business leaders now see creativity as a coveted characteristic in their employees. “Arts leads to creativity and creativity leads to innovation,” he said. Cohen used Boeing as an example. “The company hired engineers to design their new 787, but they couldn’t do it alone ... artists were then hired to work with engineers to help design the fuselage and make the overall design, the lighting and everything else in the plane more comfortable.”
According to Cohen, a national survey shows that the arts not only benefit businesses and employees, but also the community as a whole. Students involved in the arts earn higher SAT scores, said Cohen, and a community’s local economy can also see some benefits.
“An average $27.79 is spent per person, per show,” Cohen said, explaining how the arts is also profitable to local businesses. This price, he added, does not count the cost of the admission ticket. “More money is spent on lodging, meals, transportation and child care ... When you partner with the arts, you partner with the whole city.”
“The arts are an engaging thing ... If you make it easy to access, it will be prove very beneficial,” he told the group.