This commentary is by Jody Fried, steering team chair of the Vermont Creative Network and executive director of Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury. It’s part of a series about the CreateVT Action Plan’s three vision statements. This one: “Vermont communities thrive through creative expression and enterprise.”
If you didn’t know better, you might think the recently published CreateVT Action Plan, developed by the Vermont Creative Network, was generated in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan calls for creative, collaborative solutions to economic challenges highlighted and exacerbated by the pandemic.
CreateVT, however, has been years in the making, and if its release this month seems particularly timely, perhaps that indicates a renewed appreciation for Vermont ingenuity and community-mindedness. The creative resourcefulness we’ve learned to rely on during the pandemic is key to our little state’s long-term vibrancy well beyond post-pandemic recovery and into a healthy, equitable, sustainable future. Creativity, in expression and enterprise, makes Vermont communities thrive.
In the past year, we’ve seen our communities, leaders and changemakers work together to support Vermont in crisis. We saw arts centers converted to mask-making facilities, school cafeterias operating as food banks, and our own households repurposed as classrooms. Every sector of Vermont — from arts to health care, education to industry — applied versatility and innovation to bust out of their silos and leverage varying assets toward collective achievement.
The CreateVT Plan envisions a future where this type of multisector creativity is the heartbeat of thriving Vermont communities. It challenges policymakers, investors and leaders to support imaginative approaches to community-building, nurture collaboration, and make smart use of Vermont’s creative talent to promote economic development.
Vermont has the resources, and CreateVT offers the strategies: embrace creative economic development opportunities; engage creatives in community leadership; and promote cross-sector collaboration.
When Vermont communities embrace creative engagement and enterprise, local economies thrive. Vermont is celebrated worldwide for arts, food and recreational resources. Creative enterprises such as the Brattleboro Words Trail, Montpelier’s Sculpture Garden, and Northern Stage’s Courtyard Theater enhance quality of life and spark community pride, but make no mistake about it: They also drive economic development.
Arts and culture draws downtown traffic, directly supporting local food and shopping as well as travel and tourism. Furthermore, as Vermont faces the demographic reality of a rapidly shrinking workforce, prioritizing arts, culture and creativity will attract young professionals and families. Communities that invest in their unique cultural identities are rich in experiential opportunities, a well-documented priority for millennials and young people deciding where to live.
When Vermont engages creatives in leadership and community-building, we all benefit from innovative problem-solving, varied perspectives and broad-reaching relationships. Communities with healthy infrastructure and support for creatives — such as affordable, accessible work and performance opportunities, networking and education events, and arts-friendly policy — enjoy increased civic participation.
White River Junction’s TipTop Media and Arts and Dreamland buildings were the brainstorm of a 29-year-old first-time developer who thought he was bound for New York City. The properties now rent space to puppet-makers, yoga teachers, theater suppliers, a TV station, and Google, all within walking distance of cafes, restaurants and trendy boutiques. With Northern Stage Theater, the renowned Center for Cartoon Studies, and the eclectic Main Street Museum, White River Junction’s former identity as a struggling railroad town is ancient history.
Visible, multisector engagement of creatives at every level of community-building is especially important to advance equity. Creative engagement is absolutely necessary to develop comprehensive support for populations that have been traditionally underserved. Projects like the Clemmons Family Farm’s Vermont African Diaspora Arts Registry and Windows to a Multicultural World center Vermont’s African American and African diasporic artists in the development of leadership, education and collaboration strategies to promote deliberate systemic inclusion of all community members.
When Vermont promotes cross-sector collaboration, we strengthen our communities as well as our economy. Although the term “creative economy” may bring to mind concerts, art shows and craft fairs, arts and culture feeds every sector of our economy, drawing tourist dollars and promoting partnerships among local businesses and organizations.
As Vermont’s ski industry demonstrates, drawing tourists to town for one activity inevitably prompts others: hotel stays, restaurant visits, shopping, and real estate activity. When we add year-round arts and culture events, we also create exponential opportunity for fruitful partnerships. And the benefits go both ways: When people come to Burke or Stowe to bike or ski, they can also enjoy the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, River Arts, or a show at Spruce Peak Arts. Diversifying the offerings of towns known for outdoor recreation means their economies are neither weather-dependent nor seasonal.
Catamount’s Levitt AMP Series, for example, draws thousands to St. Johnsbury’s Dog Mountain. They come for the music, but discover gorgeous hiking trails, the nation’s best-loved dog park, fine art and sculptures, and local food and drink merchants, as well as booths introducing area agencies and businesses ranging from Umbrella to Passumpsic Bank.
Collaborations among all these sectors — art, recreation, food and drink, social services, and even banking — promote the entire community for those who live here as well as visitors.
The creative sector is organic fertilizer for all other sectors, amplifying Vermont’s existing industries and creating a catalytic effect on all of our enterprise and endeavors. Investment in Vermont’s existing resourcefulness, creativity and community-mindedness is a no-brainer, and
will establish and rebrand Vermont as a thriving center of vibrancy, resilience and inspired collaboration.
Learn more at vermontcreativenetwork.org.
