In Island Pond, the village in Brighton branded as Vermont’s snowmobile capital, traffic dwindles during the off-season months.
The downtown suffered, eateries closed and vacancies grew, Brighton Selectboard Chair Mike Strait recalls.
But in the last three years, the tiny Essex County hub has gone from one restaurant to six, and empty spaces have almost disappeared.
Strait credits the town’s decision to invest in the creative economy — an umbrella term for jobs and industries that market in arts, culture, crafted goods and more.
And Brighton isn’t alone.
The concentration of creative industries in the Northeast Kingdom is about a third higher than the nationwide rate — led by fields like specialty food, stage shows and wood furniture — according to one report. Kingdom leaders believe the region’s creativity can draw tourists and grow wealth.
Individual artisans, mostly those working in traditional arts and crafts, are skeptical. They haven’t seen much economic benefit themselves, and most of the potential seems tied to the region’s growing food and drink business.
Many believe the creative economy could be a path forward for the rural region. But to be successful, they say the sector needs access to start-up capital, better infrastructure and youth recruitment through schools.
“If we want to compete for workforce in the future, we need to invest in this area and not make it as it’s historically been, which is ancillary,” said Jody Fried, executive director of Catamount Arts and chair of the Vermont Creative Network.
“If we don’t,” he said, “we’re going to be in real trouble.”
Nature, culture fuel creative fields
The Kingdom’s creative economy includes 3,327 individuals, according to a report released in December 2018 by the Vermont Arts Council — or 9.4% of the region’s total workforce. That ratio is 31% higher than the nationwide figure, the report said.
According to Fried, who worked on the report, the creative economy in the region yielded more than $75 million in earnings, $28.9 million in property income and $11.2 million in tax revenue in 2017.
For the same year, the creative economy resulted in a more than $115.2 million gross regional product.
The report pegged three explanations for why there are so many creative professionals in the northeastern corner of Vermont: the relatively more artisanal nature of some industries in the Kingdom and more available food-sector data; an influx of creatives into the region over the last five decades; and the area’s topography and culture.
“Regions like the Northeast Kingdom that are rich in nature and history often attract and inspire those who are creative,” the authors of the report said.
Many artisans moved to the area in the 1960s and ‘70s to work undisturbed among the forests and mountains, and “that legacy has lived on,” Fried said.
Amy Cunningham, deputy director of the Vermont Arts Council, sees a connection between the creativity in the Kingdom and the region’s agricultural traditions.
“The thread between the innovation and the persistence needed to work in the creative sector … there’s a similar kind of thread and ethos to the agricultural community,” she said.
Design is the largest creative sector in the region, according to the report, accounting for about 34% of creative economy employment. That includes the area’s large woodworking companies, like Lyndon Furniture and Ethan Allen, as well as graphic design and architecture firms.
Specialty food and culinary arts make up the second-largest sector, according to the report, centered on the international renown of cheesemaker Jasper Hill Farm and beermaker Hill Farmstead Brewery.
“We have some amazing assets,” Fried said. “We’re just at the stage where it’s being recognized that it’s a legitimate component to economic development in the area.”
Arts a boon to one downtown
Strait, the Brighton Selectboard chair, considers himself part of a creative economy success story in the Kingdom.
In the recent past, Island Pond businesses faced instability when relying on the short-seasoned, weather-dependent snowmobile industry. Downtown establishments took a beating when snow wasn’t on the ground.
“The only thing that was really keeping the town alive had been Friday Night Live in the summers,” said Strait, referring to a longstanding music series.
The success of the summer series gave Strait an idea: Why not host events like that throughout the year?
He helped found the Destination Island Pond Event Series three years ago, which holds all-weekend events once a month. Examples include the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Weekend,” which featured a dinner tour, spa services, painting and a wine tastings. Some are geared toward tourists, while others rely on a steady base of local support.
“It’s been pretty staggering what’s happened here,” said Strait, who also co-owns Hearth and Home Country Store, which sells specialty foods and local souvenirs.
The series keeps customers coming all year. Businesses began opening. “Everything … downtown has been rented or sold,” he said.
The project includes themed concerts and festivals, such as the recent Holiday Magic weekend, that partner with local businesses. It’s a two-way street. Local joints provide catering or staffing for events and in turn get attention — and, the hope is, new customers.
“It’s made it not such a risky market, like we were three years ago,” Strait said, referring to the snowmobile economy. “It’s kind of guaranteed traffic.”
Strait said the yearlong series costs about $100,000. Half of those funds go toward production costs — including fees for performers and talent — while a third is spent on staffing. The remainder is earmarked for marketing and promotion.
State meals and room tax data, commonly used to measure tourism and recreation, shows an upward trend since the 2015-16 fiscal year.
For that period, the combined tax revenue from meals and rooms in Brighton was about $1 million. The figure grew to more than $1.2 million the next fiscal year.
Data is incomplete for the 2017-18 fiscal year, but the total revenue from Brighton for the current year was nearly $1.7 million.
Still, there are challenges.
“Number one is [that there’s] always not enough people to help run the event,” Strait said.
It’s difficult to attract more popular talent to a place like a tiny village in Essex County, he said, and most of the series’ events aren’t self-supporting, relying on grants instead.
The Kingdom’s outdoor recreation opportunities are of economic benefit to the region, he said, but “it’s here whether you advertise or not.”
To make the region’s creative offerings a draw requires new investment, which Strait believes is worth it.
“The arts have had an impact in town,” he said. “It’s made a difference here — the only thing that’s changed here is adding the event.”
‘Do the artists benefit?’
Isobel Marks, a director of the Memphremagog Arts Collaborative in Newport, sculpts with polymer clays.
Her works — brightly colored pendants, keychains and more — dot a sale table inside the organization’s gallery on Main Street.
From her view, change hasn’t trickled down.
“There’s a lot of talk of the creative economy and its importance, but it’s a question of, do the artists benefit?” she asked.
For the individual artist or craftsperson, especially those in traditional art fields, the Kingdom is a hard place to earn a living, Marks said.
“People are working as hard as they can to sell their work, but the number of outlets in Vermont is limited,” she said. “Unless you go far afield, it’s really hard to increase your livelihood.”
Only a few of her group’s 55 creators turn much of a profit. The organization has been holding events, hoping attendees will patronize the gallery store. Collaborative members have also tried stripping away the highbrow sheen around art and advertised the works more practically as Mother’s Day gifts.
The report’s broad scope — bringing in fields and jobs not traditionally grouped with the arts — makes the economic outlook for the region more viable than it may be for individuals creators, Marks said.
Amanda Weisenfeld, a founding member of the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild who works with felt, had a similar thought.
“Every single one of the people out here has one or two other jobs,” she said, referring to the artists represented in the nonprofit’s St. Johnsbury gallery.
Financial support is the main barrier to growing the creative economy, said Fried.
“What has lacked and is going to be the greatest challenge [is], making the transition so that there’s actually going to be investment made,” he said.
With more and more people leaving the region — and Vermont in general — leaders need to attract new employees and entrepreneurs and appeal to what they want to see in their workplaces, he said.
“We have to have an environment that is rich in creativity,” Fried said. “There’s a change economically, and what we need to do is, clearly communicate to the world that we have a place that people are going to want to bring their businesses.”
By anticipating what future employees will look for in a workplace, the Kingdom has a chance to recruit those folks, he said.
The region needs better infrastructure too — especially more widely available broadband internet — and better funding mechanisms for “the smaller entrepreneurial businesses that creatives run,” he said.
Most business funding available through commercial lenders is based on collateral, and intellectual businesses don’t often have much, he said.
The Vermont Arts Council report suggested creating an investment fund, started with maybe $100,000, to help underwrite the costs of product and business ideas in the outdoor recreation, clothing design, wood products and artisan crafts industries.
In the future, the report said, financial support will need to be sought out from federal programs and private investors.
Cunningham, from the statewide arts council, acknowledged the need to better support individual creatives and their access to capital.
But she said it’s important to squash the stereotype of starving artists and to expand the definition of “creative economy” beyond those small enterprises.
“It’s hard work, and it’s deeply personal and intense work, but this notion that it’s fluff or it’s extra — the numbers don’t show that,” she said. “It’s a substantial economic driver in this state.”
She believes the creative fields need to take more steps in “telling the story of the existing vibrancy of the sector.”
Part of that strategy will be capitalizing on the region’s identity and brand, said Weisenfeld, the felter with the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild.
“People, often, who are from out of the area … want to know, ‘Was it made in the Northeast Kingdom?’” she said.
“Because there’s a quality of life here. By buying art from people in this area, they get to take home a piece of the essence of the Northeast Kingdom.”
She holds hope for the creative economy, even though most of the success seems to flow to food and alcohol producers.
“For the rest of us here in this creative economy, it’s a struggle,” she said. “But I think it’s a struggle we’re willing to do.”
Correction: This story initially incorrectly identified Amy Cunningham with the last name Cummingham. A photo in an earlier version of this story misidentifed Isobel Marks. It has been corrected.
