Creativity is essential to the human race. Without it there is no advancement in our social systems or our economic systems. Without it we are left with a hollow sense of unfulfillment and lack of direction.
In my first article I gave a high -level overview of the Creative Economy and the creative industries that make it up and shared its financial impact. In this article I will approach the topic of key constructs that hold the Creative Economy together and that must be nurtured to ensure full success. This will include how creative industries organize, are funded, and are measured to ensure success.
Individual artists in a creative industry, such as film, music, or visual arts, are structured around “Project Based Organizations” or PBOs. According to Robert Deflillippi, Professor at Suffolk University and a PBO expert, PBOs are a temporary organizational structure focused on achieving a specific result, such as the making of a film, the production of a musical event or the curation of an art exhibit. Represented in the PBO are all the skills, crafts, and technical capabilities necessary to achieve the result. Those represented in the PBO only come together as needed and only for the time they are needed, then they disperse and wait for the next project to come along.
Let’s take the Film Industry for example. In Tom Hanks’ recent book The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece: A Novel, he eloquently portrays the production process of a film from concept to result. In his rendering we see the complexity of such an undertaking, and we are amazed at the breadth of involvement, writers, directors, funders, production management and assistance, location management, studio staff, crew, caterers, housing management, and on and on. Many skilled people working in a temporal vertically integrated PBO.
But to bring this PBO together requires funding. Someone may have a great idea, but without the funding first, nothing gets done. For instance, a film producer may have access to the funding, but anymore these projects are looking for incentives provided by public sources (like state and local governments) in addition to private sources (investors, non-profits, and individuals). Today, 35 states offer incentives including Georgia with local communities like Columbus and Savannah providing additional incentive/funding options.
Finally, measuring the results of such PBO efforts is not easy because the impact of these creative industries is so broad. Continuing with our film project example, Georgia’s film production tax incentive has grown to around $1.3 Billion, while film and TV spending in the state has grown to over $4.5 Billion. In this, we can show the economic direct impact of a given film project through dollars spent on the production and that production’s success in the marketplace, but often we don’t consider the indirect or induced impacts of a given production (how a dollar made from the production makes its way through the local economy). Generally, this induced impact is calculated in a defined multiplier.
But limiting our measurement of the impact of creative industries in Georgia to such multipliers overlooks the broader impact of creative productions; that being the degree of overall innovation in Georgia, cultural clarity, tourism, and the state’s leveraging of this impact. In my next installment I will address this broader impact and show how Georgia has benefitted.
