‘Creative economy’ awareness program coming to Van Buren

The Van Buren Chamber of Commerce and The Center for Arts and Education (CAE) are teaming up to focus on a statewide effort to raise awareness of the “creative economy.”

A program on the creative economy will be held between 5 and 6 p.m., Dec. 1, at the CAE building at 104 N. 13th St. in Van Buren. “A New Strategic Plan to Raise Awareness of Arkansas’s Creative Economy” will be presented by Terrance Clark, co-founder and director of Thrive Inc.

In an effort to support arts and entertainment venue and programs, the Arkansas Arts Council initiated in 2007 a study of “Creativity in the Natural State,” and what the creativity meant in terms of economic progress. The effort, funded through a grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, was joined by the Arkansas Science & Technology Authority and the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges.

According to the study, nearly 35,000 Arkansans are resident artists, writers and other creative “types.” The group accounts for about $927 million in personal income. Also 26,858 Arkansans are considered to be directly employed in a creative enterprise. When compared to other industries, creative employment ranks among the top three industry clusters in Arkansas.

A March 2009, Vol. 4 report in the series noted: “Applying national models to the state shows that Arkansas’s creative economy is not just larger than typically revealed by employment data; it has a huge impact on the state’s growth as well. Without artists and design workers, we estimate that Arkansas’s employment would have increased by only 15 per- cent between 1990 and 2000 instead of the 24 percent growth that actually occurred.” (Link here for access to the four reports.)

The March report identified five strategies to expanding the benefits of creative citizens.
• Strengthening recognition of and support for the creative economy within the state’s economic development community;
• Nurturing the development of creative talent and the pipeline of creative workers;
• Promoting the growth and profitability of creative enterprises;
• Utilizing creative talent and assets to increase competitiveness of other key clusters in Arkansas; and,
• Supporting and expanding the state’s creative infrastructure.

“The creative economy is not made up of just artists and performers. Architects, engineers, graphic designers, photographers, interior designers, chefs, and website designers are just a few of the professions included in the description of the creative economy,” said Jackie Krutsch, executive director of the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce. “These fields are growing and needed in our area.”

A statement from the Van Buren chamber noted that the “creative economy has often been overlooked in economic development literature and undervalued in economic development analyses and plans, largely because much of the wealth it produces falls just under the radar.”

The “creative class” began to more broadly emerge as an economic development topic with the 2002 publication of “The Rise of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Florida noted: “Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steelmaking. It determines where companies will choose to locate and grow, and this in turn changes the ways cities must compete.”

Unfortunately, the book cited the Fort Smith area as one of the “working class enclaves” in the South and Midwest.

“These places have among the most minuscule concentrations of the Creative Class in the nation,” Florida wrote.