CultureCount: New England's cultural database

By Joseph Normandin

The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) has been a staple of the New England arts scene for over 30 years, especially for nonprofit arts-based organizations like cultural centers. NEFA currently operates with an annual budget of over $5 million, and more than half that money (roughly $3.3 million) helps endow dozens of arts programs at various cultural centers around the region, according to Ann Wicks, marketing and communications manager for NEFA.

To Wicks, cultural centers provide a sense of identity for ethnic populations and a beacon for attracting new "creative" businesses to the area--like a shop near the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association that sells traditional Chinese art.

"Cultural centers help define their communities and often add to the diversity that makes a community strong," Wicks said. "From an economic standpoint, arts organizations, along with artists and creative businesses, which together make up the 'creative economy,' are very real economic drivers who also bring vitality to their community."

To better inform New Englanders about the impact these organizations have on their region, NEFA founded CultureCount, a cultural database that contains financial, geographic, demographic and other information about cultural nonprofits, businesses and professionals in New England.

CultureCount boasts several different features to help users discover not only what cultural organizations have to offer, but also the economic impact they bring to their surrounding community. Some of these features are: a calendar listing art exhibits/performances and events at cultural organizations, a search option that allows users to look for nonprofit cultural organizations in their community, a tool that lets users view annual funding amounts by donors, and a search option that prompts users to select a distance from where they live so they can see how many different cultural organizations are nearby. However, to use these features, you must register for a free account.

For Wicks, perhaps the best way to look at the "economic significance of cultural centers" is by using another CultureCount feature--the Impact Calculator. The Impact Calculator provides estimates of the influence of cultural centers on their local economy.

For example, the Impact Calculator illustrates how in 2005 (the most recent data available for public viewing), the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association (GBCCA) in West Newton had a total economic impact of $828,544, while the Irish Cultural Centre of New England (ICCNE) in Canton tallied a total of $1,124,186!