Wyoming Arts Council

Arts Energize State Economy

Featured News | May 6, 2025

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By Victoria O’Brien for the Cody Enterprise – Apr 30, 2025

Read the original article here

The Wyoming Arts Alliance shared findings from its recent economic assessment on Wyoming’s creative economy during a meeting in Cody, revealing that the arts and culture sector contributes $1.3 billion annually to the state economy or 2.7% of the state’s GDP.

The report was generated by WYAA in conjunction with the University of Wyoming’s Center for Business and Economic Analysis, focusing on data available from 2022. The findings reveal that the arts and culture industry in Wyoming has grown almost 10% since the last assessment in 2016 and show comparable data to other economic sectors in Wyoming: tourism and recreation, for example, generated $2 billion in 2022, or 4.1% of the state’s overall GDP, while agriculture generated over $2.5 billion, or 4.2% of the GDP.

“It was kind of a surprise,” said Ryan Dinneen O’Neil, WYAA interim director, of the data roundup’s results. “Typically when you think of Wyoming, you think of a very traditional, western, agrarian economy – agriculture is the backbone of our state. This is not a competition with ag, but it is very interesting to see the numbers and how close they actually are.”

The 75-page report analyzes the creative economy, breaking down its tangible impacts further: the creative industries generated 14,518 jobs and $929 million in labor income, resulting in $35 million in local and state tax revenue and $3.6 billion in total economic output. In other words, the arts has a ripple effect on the economy, generating not only jobs, but also supply chain and local spending.

“In drafting this report, we wanted to equip people in the creative communities with numbers that speak to people outside of the industry,” said O’Neil. “We want to challenge people to think differently about the arts and to find intersections where the industries can overlap and become supportive of each other.”

Jason Shogren, PhD, a UW economics professor and presidential fellow for the creative economy, is a Wyoming Arts Council board member who participated in the study. He said he sees the data less as a reflection of growth more as a measurement of an economy “that’s always been there.”

“Even when we haven’t had much of an economy, the arts have always been there, cave art and all that stuff,” he explained. “The creative economy has always been a part of human life. When you think about Wyoming, you think of mining and manufacturing, these very classic ideas of industry, but it’s been that in measuring we’ve shown the data in Wyoming is roughly in-line with national averages for creative industries.”

Shogren said that one goal of the analysis is to generate discussion with state representatives about the creative industries and encourage their further growth.

“Right now, what we’re trying to say is that you can invest $18 million into arts and culture and we’re generating $1.3 billion in GDP and, this is important, within that there are so many different people working full-time in the arts and part-time, and people who support the arts, and the people who support the people who support the arts. All those things play a role in generating economic activity and it’s so important that the state coffers are engaged in supporting the Wyoming Arts Council, which gives out roughly $1 million in state and federal grants to every county in the state.

“There are artists in every corner of the state, dollars being generated by this industry in every nook and cranny of the state.”

The grant monies bestowed by the state arts council enable creative Wyomingites to undertake a variety of ventures. Some open businesses, others use the funding to further their own work. In Shogren’s opinion, investing in these people produces a net-good for the state overall.

“The way I phrase it is, ‘Arts attracts smart,’” he said. “When you’re creating an artistic community, you’re gonna attract people who wanna live there. You’re gonna attract smart people who can figure out how to make a living being an entrepreneur, whether it’s in the arts or in something that is related or not even totally related. But if you enjoy the arts, you want to be in a community that has those types of things for you and your family.”

Beth Venn, the executive director of the Neltje Center for Excellence in Creativity and the Arts at UW, echoed Shogren’s sentiments.

“If you’re a business owner in Wyoming looking to attract workers to your business, whether it’s in Cody or Sheridan or Lander, wherever, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to recruit talent to businesses in Wyoming if the communities that you’re looking to attract people to do not have the amenities that other places have,” she explained.

“I listened to a big business owner in Wyoming once talk about how difficult it was to recruit talent to Wyoming because they are typically employing men and those men’s wives do not want to live in a community where there is nothing available to them,” continued Venn. “They want coffee shops, they want dance studios for their kids, they want to be able to go out and listen to music. Why would they relocate to Wyoming if they could relocate to Colorado and have all of those things?”

Increasingly, said Venn, the state must think about the creative economy as “not standing independent” of traditional economic drivers like extraction, manufacturing and agriculture, but rather as a supportive partner in building communities for those industries to continue growing and succeeding into the future.

“Someone doesn’t just come and move to a place to take a job,” Venn said. “They come and move to a place to take a job in a place with their family is also going to enjoy living and being and being part of something greater. I think people have to start thinking of the creative economy as being a workforce-generating part of the economy, not a frivolous thing. If you want to take a ceramics class and that’s something you’re really passionate about, but can’t get in Wyoming, how long are you going to stay where you don’t have that?”

Venn pointed to a 2020 study revealint that over 66% of UW graduates leave the state following graduation.

“It’s shocking,” she said. “It’s tragic that so many young people are leaving the state because even if their families are here, they know that the opportunities are not and they flee the state, which means that the university is funding and educating and preparing a workforce not for Wyoming, but for Colorado and Utah and wherever else they may go. This is the crux of the issue for me and for us in this state: the state has to invest in the kind of infrastructure that will keep people in communities and that, to me, is the arts.”

Also worrying, both Shogren and Venn said, are the recent cuts to arts funding on a national level and how that will impact the growth of the arts economy in the state moving forward. Wyoming Humanities, which received 80% of its funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has been a key partner in the study and supporting the creative economy throughout the state. Between 2019 and 2023, the NEH provided nearly $8 million in support for Wyoming’s arts economy and programming.

“I think the important thing to say about this is that in places like New York or Los Angeles, while they they’re going to struggle with these cuts, their creative economies are going to be fine,” said Venn. “But it’s places like Wyoming where federal cuts will really mean the end of things. They’re not gonna be the end of things in New York or Los Angeles because they have plenty of other funding sources in those places to make up for the federal cuts, but in a place like Wyoming there isn’t, and that’s what concerns me the most.”

Looking ahead, WYAA will continue to conduct listening sessions around the state through the early summer. Over the summer, it will conduct additional focus groups and surveys to learn more about the challenges facing the creative industry in Wyoming and to find targeted access points and areas that could be more effectively supported and expanded. A final report is slated to be published this fall.

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