A new economic prosperity impact report, organised by the non-profit organisation Americans for the Arts, reveals that San Francisco’s arts and culture sector annually brings in $1.45 billion and supports over 39,000 full-time jobs. According to the report, the City by the Bay accounts for nearly 1% of the $166.3 billion generated by the sector nationwide, and San Francisco is just one of 341 regions across the country studied by the organisation.
In the fiscal year of 2014-15, San Francisco’s arts organisations spent around $780.6m while residents spent around $667.7m on cultural events, which in turn produced $1 billion in household income for residents and over $131.1m in revenue for the state and local governments. The findings mark a significant spike from a previous study done five years ago, when there was an estimated $59.3m in economic activity.
“The arts are vital to San Francisco’s unique character and a key component of our tourism industry, expressing our city’s values and contributing to an environment that fosters innovation and creativity”, the city’s mayor Edwin Lee, who is largely credited with spiking the economic growth of the sector, said in a press release. Since being appointed to office in 2012, Lee has increased the city’s public funding for the arts by 14%, approved a 50% or $2m increase to the city’s cultural equity endowment, allocated $1m in annual funding for grants in the sector and invested $6m in programmes that aim to strengthen non-profit arts organisations in the city.
