Jeffrey Mitchell, senior research scientist at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, focuses on community economic development. Mitchell has studied the differences of the arts and cultural economic communities in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
DL: What is the common theme in your research? How is it all connected?
JM: The common theme there is basically how these communities can sort of develop economically within the context of global and national changes in the economy, and so we are a very "bottom-up" type of approach to economic (development). And (we) try to find out what resources and assets exist within a community and how you use these to create an advantage for these communities, as opposed to other types of economic development strategies that are often what we would call "top-down." . We are much more focused about how communities themselves are able to find and marshal resources to their advantage, and sometimes we also look at some of the downsides in these things. Let me give you an example. We just finished how Albuquerque can develop a stronger arts and cultural economy, so, how we can work to help artists and film, performing arts and various communities in the city develop a stronger economy and make a greater contribution, and (see) what kinds of policies the city and state do that can help that effort.
DL: Do some other communities surrounding Albuquerque have a greater arts community?
JM: We first did it in Santa Fe about three years ago or four years ago, because, for obvious reasons, Santa Fe is very large and well-known to the arts community. The people in Albuquerque and, particularly, people here in UNM at the College of Fine Arts, were interested in looking at 'What types of jobs are we training students to take?' and, 'What's the future look like?' So, we did that analysis in Albuquerque. Now, we are starting to do very similar things in smaller towns. Right now, we are also working in Silver City, Las Vegas, Los Alamos, Farmington, etc., so now we are at another level where we are doing it in smaller communities in New Mexico. (It's) all about how we can use people's talents and people's skills, the history, etc., to build a more sound cultural economy.
DL: Does Albuquerque have a cultural influence in New Mexico?
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JM: What we actually learned in the case of Albuquerque is that, for a city our size, the arts and cultural economy is surprisingly strong by national comparisons. The issue here is that we are so close to Santa Fe, and Santa Fe is really an anomaly. Santa Fe is the odd one. It's so vibrant and active economically - the arts are - that we sort of compare ourselves to Santa Fe and say, "Well, why aren't we like that?" The truth of the matter is that there is really only one Santa Fe . but by more sort of reasonable comparisons, Albuquerque is very vibrant. There's a lot of artists, a lot of people doing really interesting things, and they are doing that kind of work in different fields - from performing arts, poetry, to visual arts, painting into new mediums like film and game development . trying to put it in new ways to distribute the art.
~Abigail Ramirez
