By David Sutherland, Senior Lecturer for University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business
A creative culture attracts creative people, pure and simple. But how do we know Georgia is a creative state? And how does one go about establishing and maintaining such a culture?
There is a need to understand how creative economies generate and build upon a culture of creativity and how “cultural clarity” enables a given economy to move with speed and efficiency.
Culture is a nebulous word, often misconstrued and more often misused. In the business startup world, founders often describe the need for a “creative culture.” When we dig underneath this desire, we realize three things they are looking for: risk willingness, futuristic thinking, and a holistic perspective. When corporations pursue the development of a creative culture, they often are focused on human resource retention and a generative product process.
Like anthropology, an understanding of the foundations of a culture is first found in the visible artifacts. Public art is key. It is a Creative Economy’s body language. You can see the values and beliefs of a community through its public art given that installations generally are agreed to and approved by organizing bodies like arts commissions or planning boards representing that community.
Additional creative culture artifacts include studios, museums, performance venues, and university and corporate innovation centers. Georgia State University says there are more than 300 recording studios in Georgia, while FilmLA Research shows the state has 3-plus million square feet of film soundstage space, second only to Los Angeles. There are more than 290 public museums in Georgia and scores of performance venues. The University System of Georgia offers 32 campus Innovation Centers and 40-plus corporate Innovation Centers across the state.
Surprisingly, Bloomberg’s Innovation Index recently ranked Georgia 26th in innovation. Why? In addition to the slew of creative cultural foundations mentioned above, Georgia has a talented workforce, agreeable cost of living, incentives for R&D, and creative industries like film, television and digital entertainment. Yet it is not considered “Creative Georgia?” As a researcher focused on the Creative Economy, I feel this is a missed opportunity.
This brings us to the notion of “cultural clarity.” While we may have many cultural elements, as a state, we don’t message this. When my graduate students conducted a Semantic Mapping exercise for their Business Analytics for a Creative Economy course, the key concept that surfaced for the question “Why do business in Georgia?” was affordability. This was driven by cost of living, business incentives and real estate costs. The concepts of creativity and innovation were way down the list. This is not to say affordability shouldn’t be high on the list, but if we are not messaging creativity and innovation, we are missing a massive opportunity.
We will never be Silicon Valley, nor should we want to be. Our diverse creative ecosystem and the many strong foundational elements should be highlighted, and the opportunity for collaboration and convergence of ideas should be supported by policy and intentional engagement.
In fact, given its strategic function as part of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Center for Innovation could be the standard bearer and primary messenger. It could deliver key elements of Georgia’s Creative Economy together and provide cultural clarity that could assist rural economic development.
The World Bank shows that 40% of Georgians live in rural areas, while 60% live in urban areas. These numbers have remained nearly steady since the 2010 Census. When you examine the distribution of funds for the arts in Georgia, according to the Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA), only 26% go to our rural areas. That’s 26% of $2.1 million the GCA distributed in 2022, a total of about $806,000—or $0.14 per person—the lowest per capita state arts distribution in the country.
In Georgia, the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDED), and specifically, the Georgia Council for the Arts (a division of the GDED) are charged with understanding and enabling our Creative Economy. The primary areas of focus for GDED are film, music, and digital entertainment, while the Council’s $2.1 million fund has a primary focus on non-profit arts organizations, including art education in the state.
I live in a rural county, and when I travel through other rural parts of our state, I see beautiful communities on the periphery of economic advancement. Small town squares surrounded by shuttered buildings that once housed thriving businesses now longing for renewal. And what I see as part of this renewal is the opportunity for communities to engage in our creative economy to develop enterprise and provide jobs.
Recently I was introduced to a concept called “Creative Clusters,” a part of an “Industry Cluster Mapping” process that identifies small hubs of creative endeavor in rural areas. For example, the State of Texas, as part of its rural economic development program, has identified 36 such rural communities with the intent to support creatives in these clusters with grants, business development coaching and networking these nodes to connect to the larger state capability networks and organizations.
A way to potentially jumpstart this in Georgia would be to use Georgia Film Academy locations as hubs for our Creative Clusters. Among other ideas, we could leverage some of the state tax revenue generated by our film industry to support these rural Creative Clusters, helping rural creative endeavors, including film makers, location managers, electricians, sound engineers, visual artists, designers, caterers, local businesses, and others involved in the film industry.
As the Georgia General Assembly explores rural economic development initiatives, it would be beneficial to include an analysis of our rural Creative Clusters, in addition to the governor’s “Rural Strike Teams,” which focuses on large commercial developments. Bringing rural economic development closer to the Georgia film industry—and therefore our Creative Economy—would benefit all Georgians.
To read more features from the Creative Economy Journal, visit here.
