OVERVIEW
The creative economy encompasses creative enterprises -- both commercial and nonprofit -- and individuals that together provide a significant contribution to local and regional economies by creating and distributing cultural goods and services.
NEFA's current creative economy work includes The Creative Economy: A New Definition, a research report with a special focus on refining the definitional framework used to collect creative economy data. Additionally, NEFA provides reports on the nonprofit component of the creative economy, and web-based tools such as CultureCount: New England's Cultural Database for use by cultural organizations, arts policy makers, economic development officials, and the general public in addition to the state arts agencies.
Since 1978, NEFA's economic impact studies of New England's nonprofit cultural sector have provided case-making data to arts organizations as they advocate to their local governments. In the mid '90's, inclusion of Internal Revenue Service data in these studies revealed the nonprofit cultural community in New England to be a more significant economic force than anyone had yet imagined.
Leaders in other sectors of New England's economy took notice of this new data, and in 1998, founded a partnership of New England's business, government, cultural and educational sectors called the Creative Economy Initiative. With the Creative Economy Initiative, both the commercial and nonprofit components of New England's cultural sector received a comprehensive examination and their significance as a linked economic cluster was clearly demonstrated.
Today, NEFA continues its creative economy work by reporting on the nonprofit cultural sector, the entire creative economy, and by providing services such as CultureCount.
PROJECTS CultureCount
CultureCount, New England’s Cultural Database, is NEFA’s online resource for engaging New England’s creative economy sector. This searchable, organization-level compilation of data is the only comprehensive and consistent data collection resource for New England's cultural nonprofits, businesses, and professionals. Constantly being updated and expanded, CultureCount’s local data supplements the federal data analyzed by NEFA in research reports on the creative sector and fits within the definitional structure outlined in The Creative Economy: A New Definition.
Defining the Creative Economy
As creative economy research becomes more and more widespread, the term ‘creative economy’ has taken on different meanings to different communities. To promote clarity and consistency in creative economy research, NEFA has recently modified its creative economy research model. This new model defines an updated framework of industries and occupations that are measured in NEFA’s creative economy analysis and reporting, and can also be used by others conducting similar research in their own communities.
Research Convening
To inform its efforts in defining a research model for the creative economy (see above), NEFA hosted a March 2006 convening.
Other topics discussed included the wide variety of reasons for defining & measuring cultural activity, such as advocacy, planning, research, and developing partnerships; the pros and cons of a “common” creative economy definition methodology as well as the potential for agreement on a flexible, transparent structure for secondary data collection.
REPORTS
NEFA’s latest report, The Creative Economy: A New Definition, builds on the work of the Creative Economy Initiative by providing an update on the full spectrum of creative economy industries and occupations, which includes for-profit businesses as well as nonprofit organizations. This report includes a new research definition and protocol for measuring the creative economy.
NEFA updates its reports on the nonprofit component of New England’s creative economy regularly, using the IRS and direct survey data in CultureCount. The 2005 report, New England's Creative Economy: The State of the Public Cultural Sector features new methodology for classifying and assessing the economic impact of the wide range of organizations in the nonprofit cultural sector. An in-depth analysis of the organizations that report their financial activity to the IRS by Thomas H. Pollack at the National Center for Charitable Statistics is also included.
