Grow Wisconsin Creatively
Wisconsin Business/Arts Handbook
Cultural Economic Development Handbook
Building a Case for
the Arts in Wisconsin: Talking Points
Links to creative
economy information and resources
Actions: what can Wisconsin DO about the
creative economy?
What’s it all about?
From New England to New Zealand, public and private investment in culture, creativity and innovation is being acknowledged as essential to education, business incubation, attraction and retention plans, tourism opportunities, and community engagement.
In this environment, Wisconsin and all of its communities are seeking pro-active, sustainable ways to address these critical issues:
- encourage and stabilize healthy communities throughout the state
- incubate, attract and retain a talented, creative workforce
- incubate, attract and retain creative economy companies and industries
- utilize Wisconsin’s competitive economic development assets to their fullest extent
- grow the state’s economy for the future.
It is time to realize Wisconsin’s full potential by intentionally addressing the state’s participation in the Creative Economy. Doing so will help Wisconsin achieve and sustain these goals:
- Stable public and private investment in Wisconsin’s economic development and community revitalization by using the state’s diverse creative resources
- Assistance by the public and private sector in the creation and retention of high-paying jobs based in the creative economy
- Support of a consistently high-quality educational system that uses creativity in the acquisition of local and global knowledge and understanding, and prepares students for the 21st century workforce.
- Development of vital communities throughout the state that attract creative workers and organizations.
To meet the challenges facing the state, it is time for Wisconsin to move forward with a public and private action agenda that uses the arts, culture, creativity and innovation -- the "creative economy" -- as essential tools for the state’s economic, educational and civic success. Grow Wisconsin Creatively will stimulate economic and community development, foster entrepreneurship, create jobs, enhance Wisconsin’s educational system, and sustain community livability and engagement.
What is the Creative Economy?
Creativity – the human ability to invent new ideas, things, and ways of relating to each another -- has been the engine that created our country and that currently drives economic, educational and civic well-being for people and communities nationally and around the world.
"Better than any other country in recent years, America has developed innovative technologies and ideas that spawn new industries and modernize old ones. These creative industries, employing scientists, artists, designers, engineers, financiers, marketers, and sundry entrepreneurs, have generated more than 20 million U.S. jobs since the 1990s and currently account for fully half of all U.S. wages and salaries."
Richard Florida, America's best and brightest are leaving…and taking the creative economy with them, The Conference Board Inc. 2004“Creativity and innovation have always been important, but because of technological advances, speed of communications, growth of information, and the rapid changes of the last decades, the need for creativity is fundamental to devising new products, services, technologies, business models, and ways of earning a living.”
Shira White, Researcher, 2001
In a 2001 article entitled “The Creative Economy,” authors Doug Henton and Kim Walesh describe four basic principles of the Creative Economy:
- Creativity is the source of economic wealth: through creativity content is created, processes are innovated, and through design, products are differentiated.
- People are the key economic asset: in the agrarian age it was land and in the industrial age it was raw materials and machines
- Every single person has the capacity for creativity: this makes creativity a renewable resource.
- Place has replaced the corporation as the fundamental business building block: people now choose the place they want to live and then seek employment there. They base their decisions on whether the community has a “thick” (many different opportunities) labor market, is authentic, and offers lifestyle amenities, diversity, and social interaction.
Dr. Richard Florida, who is currently the Hirst Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, has focused on the workers in the creative economy in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class: How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure Community and Everyday Life:
"Today, nearly 40 million workers – some 30 percent of the
workforce – are employed in the creative sector. These are the people
who comprise the creative class, engaged in science and engineering, research
and development, and the technology-based industries; in the arts, music,
culture, aesthetic, and design; or in the knowledge-based professions
of health care, finance, and law."
Richard Florida, Revenge of the Squelchers, May 2004.
Why is this so important for Wisconsin?
Right now, many U.S. states and cities, as well as other countries, are intentionally, strategically and collaboratively pursuing the creative class as described by Florida and others. These places and their leaders understand that the creatives’ ideas will help to incubate, attract, or retrain business AND translate directly to economic, educational and community development and advancement. Wisconsin must develop its own creative economy to remain competitive. We exist in a region with recognized centers of the creative class (Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul) and with states that are actively pursuing these workers (Michigan's Cool Communities program and Iowa's Imagine Iowa), as well as facing competition in the global marketplace.
Why is this so important? We’ll illustrate with a story: the design department of Oshkosh B'Gosh relocated to New York City’s Soho district, because the company was unable to attract the creative designers they needed to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It is not that Oshkosh is a bad community--it is not. Or that it is not located near thriving creative communities like Milwaukee or the Fox Valley. It is. But the creativity and livability of these communities are a well-kept secret and must compete with the dominant image of Wisconsin – the Cheesehead (we all like to see an enthusiastic fan during a Packer broadcast, but that cannot be the only perception of Wisconsin globally).
"In the Creative Economy, the most important intellectual property isn't software
or music or movies. It's the stuff inside employee's heads. When assets were physical
things like coal mines, shareholders truly owned them. But when the vital assets are people, there can be no true ownership. The best that corporations can do is to create an environment that makes the best people want to stay."
Peter Coy, The Creative Economy, Business Week August 28, 2000.
General Electric, one of Waukesha County’s largest employers, uses the phrase “Imagination at Work” to differentiate its businesses in the Creative Economy marketplace. Its web site entices potential creative employees with this introduction:
What if imagination was reality and
Scribbles became solutions and
World class scientists could play like kids?
Then you would have some of the coolest products ever!
The website goes on to describe their innovative products: airplane engines, lexan plastic resins, wind energy, and the digital hospital. This proactive strategy helps GE attract the creative economy workforce necessary to develop and design those products.
Our larger cities are already pursuing creative economy strategies. Local elected officials and community leaders from Ashland to Marinette, from Wausau to Kenosha, from Hudson to Amery, are aware that the creative economy is an important concept for each of their futures, and Wisconsin's future, and are developing ways to put that awareness to work for them.
Wisconsin must intentionally, strategically and collaboratively act to attract creative people to innovate products, services, and even business practices, or its attempts to benefit from the creative economy resources will remain unconnected, unmined, unpromoted. Other states and countries will race past us, and Wisconsin and its economy will not benefit from the creative, talented individuals being trained at our colleges, universities, and technical schools.
How can Wisconsin reap the benefits of its Creative Economy?
- Add Creative Industries to the current set of the Department of Commerce “Industry Clusters”.
- Evolve current “Technology Zones” to “Innovation Zones” offer incentives to other members of the creative industry (advertising firms, arts incubators, etc.)
- Inventory and support the creative economy assets and strategies that are already working in state agencies.
- Engage local governments, regional economic development professionals, and industry cluster leaders in identifying specifically how the state effectively participate in the creative economy.
- Support local efforts to make communities more attractive to the creative class.
- Encourage communities to work regionally and to tie into the state's regional development efforts such as the "I-94 Corridor."
- Assert the importance of and support educational programs that help students develop critical thinking and creativity.
- Promote these efforts in targeted publications and to current creatives in Wisconsin's universities, colleges, technical schools, and communities at large.
- Promote to creative industry leaders throughout the country that Wisconsin already has significant, world-class creative economy elements – talented people, authentic communities, and world class educational institutions.
These are just some of the possibilities…
(Updated: 06/03/2009)