Fast facts

Funding

• Our region spends $2.31 per person in public support of the arts every year. Las Vegas spends $10.72.

• Over this past year, workplace giving to the Work for Art program has grown by 510%.

• In the past ten years, grant applications to the Regional Arts & Culture Council have increased 67% while the funding available has remained basically flat.

• The average nonprofit arts organization nationally receives 3.8% of its budget from a local arts council. Our region provides less than half that.

• 89% of area voters believe that arts and culture are important to the growth and development of the community.

For-profit Sector

• There are 1,500 firms* and a total of 14,000 employees in Creative fields in Portland.

• Creative industries generate revenues of $2 billion and a payroll of nearly $1 billion every year.

• More than half of the state’s graphic design firms are concentrated in the Portland metro area.

• Employment in high-wage creative occupations is expected to add around 855 jobs by 2014.

• In the US, nearly 68% of authors and more than half of artists and photographers are self-employed.

• In a recent survey of businesses, 56% make at least one quarter of their revenues on products and services that didn’t exist 5 years ago.

• The average salary in the creative industries is $66,663 compared to the regional average wage of $40,639.

Non-profit sector

• In 2006, arts audiences spent more than $151.5 million above and beyond the cost of admission.

• There are over 111 non-profit arts & culture organizations in our region.

• The nonprofit arts and culture sector represents a $318.26 million industry in the Portland metropolitan area, one that supports 10,321 full-time equivalent jobs.

• 6.25 million people attended an arts event last year. Nearly a quarter of them were visitors.

• 72% attend an arts and culture event at least once every few months.

Artists

• Only 4,500 people identified themselves as professional artists according to 2003 tax returns.

Education

• 95% of area voters believe that arts education is vital to the future success of our children.

• As of November 2006, there were just 34 art, music, dance & drama instructors for all 22,082 Portland Public elementary school students.