Think you’re doomed to be a starving artist?
“The term ‘starving artist’ is fast becoming passé,” said Regina Chavez, executive director of Creative Albuquerque and UNM teacher for Intro to Arts Management. “It’s an old term not used as much, and here’s why: ‘Starving artist’ could also be a starving business person, starving architect, starving bus driver, starving waitress — it could be anything. As long as people self-identify as starving whatever, they’re going to stay that way; it’s a very limiting label.”
She said Creative Albuquerque focuses not so much on the individual person (although she said it does have a good professional development program for artists), but on the bigger picture of the creative economy and how it can stimulate jobs and cultural activities for the creative economy.
With Creative Albuquerque amassing information on our creative economy, we can now examine the hard-fast of the entire creative industry in the city.
At Creativeabq.com, you can sift through all sorts of eye-opening information on all manner of arts-related things, as well as sign up for its weekly newsletter Creativity Matters: Chronicles of the Creative Economy.
“We put in local tidbits and we also talk about stuff going on nationally, globally — anything we feel the creative individuals would want to know about,” Chavez said. “And it’s not very long, because it comes out weekly, so you don’t have to spend an hour reading it.”
Chavez said the creative economy makes up one-third of the workforce, taking in $1.2 billion in revenue and making up about 19,500 workers in Bernalillo County.
This includes architects, landscapers, graphic designers, interior designers, historians, writers, actors, visual artists, musicians, animators, software developers — in short, anyone who solves creative problems with the intent to innovate.
“We are working with three national projects to collect data from the arts and cultural industries, and this data will tell us how many creative workers we have here, how much are they contributing to the economy, what are their annual wages, how many people do we have in what jobs, how many actors, historians, photographers — that kind of information,” Chavez said. “What do we need to do to help this sector grow?”
Sherri Brueggemann, manager of city’s public art program, said she contracted Creative Albuquerque to do three major projects: The Creative Vitality Index, The Arts and Economic Prosperity Report, and the Local Arts Index. She said Creative Albuquerque has the capacity to be in contact with all of the for-profit and nonprofit arts organizations and individual artists, show up to all of the arts events and conduct surveys.
“How much did you pay for a theater ticket? Did you eat at a restaurant? How much did you spend on dinner? Did you pay for parking? Did you get a babysitter?” Brueggemann said. “We’re trying to get a picture of the full economic impact of the arts in our community. They’re taking on the task of doing all of that data collection so we can use that information to better provide services to the citizens.”
She said that, in theory, this data will allow them to work on better offerings at cultural venues such as libraries or special events.
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“We might use the information to provide better parking at venues that are owned by the cities,” she said. “We might use the info to budget funds through the economic development office to help arts businesses and organizations do better marketing for themselves.”
She said Creative Albuquerque’s downtown arts and cultural information center, which is located at 115 Fourth St. N.W., is always having events and receptions, and people are welcome to stop by.
