Rosebud, Alberta – 88 Townspeople Drives 40,000 Tourist a Year

TLDR:

Population: 88

Situation:The town of Rosebud was being downgraded from town to village to hamlet. The Town was down to under a dozen people.

Action:They started Rosebud Camp of the Arts and let the culture grow.

Result:40,000 annual visitors to a town of 88 people.

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.”

Situation

Mining and agriculture were the staple industries for the first 80-90 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.

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.

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.

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.