[P]UTNEY — You think because Robert McBride is an artist he simply creates pretty pictures? As someone who restored and runs a downtown Bellows Falls business and apartment block, he knows better.
“The creative economy is a hidden economic driver,” says McBride, head of the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project. “My goal is to out the creative economy.”
And so McBride invited southern Vermont colleagues Monday to a meeting titled “The Nexus of Art and Economy.” Organizers who had hoped for 40 attendees were surprised when a capacity crowd of 120 people — including local leaders, state legislators and federal staffers — showed up at Putney’s Next Stage Arts Project.
“Arts and culture are embedded in every town,” Karen Mittelman, executive director of the Vermont Arts Council, told the audience. “The creative economy brings together voices that may not realize we are all part of one choir.”
The sector, which includes not only fine and performing arts but also imaginative and inventive fields as architecture and design, publishing and multimedia production, and artisan foods, employs 8.6 percent of all Vermont workers — 32 percent above the national average, according to one study.
The state ranks third in the nation for artists as a percentage of the workforce, second for fine artists and writers, and eighth for musicians and photographers, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.
And Vermont’s arts organizations and their audiences spend nearly $125 million annually in direct expenditures, generating $2.6 million in revenue to local governments and $7.2 million to the state, yet another survey shows.
But many in the sector are self-employed and lack steady pay and benefits such as health insurance and retirement savings.
“We face some challenges,” Mittelman says. “Many artists and arts organizations are living right on the edge.”
Attendees expressed the need for public and private investment as well as “support structures” such as affordable housing and studio space and child care.
But they also voiced hope for current collaborations such as a $52 million revitalization of Bennington’s historic Hotel Putnam building and surrounding 4-acre block, as well as the Windham Regional Commission and Vermont Performance Lab’s “Confluence Project” gathering planners, schools and community groups around the subject of local watersheds.
The state Agency of Commerce and Community Development, for its part, shared a “Think Vermont” video promoting businesses ranging from Burton snowboards to bioscience.
“You all create the authentic Vermont brand,” Wendy Knight, commissioner of the Department of Tourism and Marketing, told the audience.
The next challenge, according to meeting organizers, is to collect more data to create more proof of the creative economy’s potential.
“The numbers would be much higher if we had more people reporting,” Zon Eastes said. “Part of the job is to get more and more folks engaged.”
Monday’s meeting aimed to do that.
“Money is always tight in the Legislature,” said Rep. Valerie Stuart, D-Brattleboro, “but we need to put more funding behind this.”
Added Mittelman: “It’s easy to focus on the economic impact, but ultimately it’s about people, it’s about building community, it’s about transforming lives. We in the creative economy are going to be much more powerful together than we are individually.”
