How Rosebud earned the score
Population 88 residents in the hamlet (112 for the Rosebud Designated Place, StatsCan Census 2021).
Situation Mining and agriculture carried Rosebud for its first 80 to 90 years. When the school closed in the 1970s the population fell to under a dozen people.
Action In 1973 a group of young adults launched the Rosebud Camp of the Arts, reopened the school by 1977 in abandoned downtown shops, and grew it into a college that later opened the Rosebud Theatre.
Result The arts community now draws 35,000 to 40,000 visitors a year, roughly $4 million in town revenue, about $45,500 per resident.
Let’s Meet Rosebud, Alberta
History
The hamlet of Rosebud was founded by James Wishart in 1885. Reportedly, he and his family were following the Gleichen Trail headed towards Montana. When they came across the valley filled with roses, they decided “Here’s the promised land, we go no further.” The rose filled valley gave the hamlet both its name and its first sense of place, and the family went no further because there was no reason to.
The situation
Mining and agriculture were the staple industries for the first 80 to 90 years. Throughout the town’s history, there had always been artists and travelers who came to take in the natural beauty. Hard times came in the 1970s when the school of Rosebud was shut down and kids were bused to a neighboring town.
The town, mainly supported by outskirt farmers who still worked the field, helped keep a community of just under a dozen people alive. That is the important detail to hold onto. By the early 1970s Rosebud was a hamlet whose population had all but collapsed, down to fewer than 12 residents, kept going by the farmers on its outskirts and by the artists and travelers who still wandered in to take in the natural beauty of the surrounding badlands valley.
The action
In 1973, a group of young adults started a summer camp of 40. Housed in an old shop along main street, the group came to be known as “Rosebud Camp of the Arts.” The camp received support from local groups and government agencies. This would become Rosebud’s creative city development.
By 1977, Rosebud was able to bring back the school into their community. Using various abandoned shops in the old downtown as classrooms, they opened the Rosebud high school. The school emphasized the arts in all its forms: music, performing arts, visual art, and practical skills like welding that could be used to make art. By the 1980s the school was shifting its focus into post-secondary education, becoming more like a college. Later the school opened the Rosebud Theatre.
The theatre was not planned. People were simply living behind their town’s identity, and in the natural progression of that commitment, the theatre came about. It now seats 232 in a converted grain elevator Opera House that operates year-round. Nothing about that path was a strategy on paper. A summer camp became a high school, the high school became a college, and the college opened a theatre, each step following the last because the community had committed to the arts and kept building on what it already had.
The result
Today the art community of Rosebud attracts 35,000 to 40,000 guests per year. They come to see any of the five award-winning productions held at the Rosebud Theatre, the art galleries, or one of the local B&Bs to let the surrounding badlands valley sink in. There is even a recording studio in Rosebud that, fingers crossed, will one day bring a musician to celebrity status.
Using their creative city development, Rosebud built their town around the arts and theatre, drawing in 40,000 visitors a year. The back-of-envelope math holds: if each visitor spends $100 on non-room-and-board items, that is roughly $4 million in town revenue. For a hamlet of 88 people, that works out to about $45,500 per resident. No number to dismiss lightly. It is worth sitting with what that ratio means. A place that was down to fewer than a dozen residents now hosts 35,000 to 40,000 guests a year, and it does so without a mine, without a factory, and without a highway interchange. The draw is the theatre, the galleries, the B&Bs and the badlands valley around them, and that is enough to put the visitor-to-resident ratio in the same conversation as far larger destination towns.
Summary
What can we learn from Rosebud’s creative city development?
- Let people be creative. Starting a summer camp in an old mercantile might not be everyone’s instinct for economic development, but for the people involved it was a unique and grounding experience.
- Don’t give up hope. The town of Rosebud is tiny but very profitable. It is positioned as a future Leavenworth, Washington in terms of visitor-to-resident ratio, and at one point it was down to under 12 people living in Rosebud.
- Use what you have. The school was opened using abandoned downtown space. It is a little out of the ordinary, but it gives people something to talk about. And 40,000 people a year to a hamlet of 88 is, in fact, something to talk about.