Creative economy: New England's future success may depend on the arts

[2 October 2005 - Foster's Online - New Hampshire] Can New England's creative arts help to sculpt the region's economy for the century? Five years ago, the business-led New England Council, executives from such fields as manufacturing and banking, took a bold step. In a special report, they celebrated the region's growing "creative economy"" They saw that the region's fine arts, music and drama fields were not only growing, but inspiring such other fields of imaginative design as architecture, photography, film and Web design. The resulting 245,000-job sector, they reported, was growing twice as fast as New England's overall economy. More