Collaboration Puts Philly Ahead of Creative Curve

When Ben Franklin arrived in Philadelphia as a teenager seeking a new start in a new city, he was met with unsatisfactory job prospects in the printing business and empty promises from government. In response, he started the Junto, a group of like-minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community.

It is probably the country's first organized networking group, yet it had a bigger philosophical purpose and existed because there was no place else to go. Nearly 300 years later, Franklin's spirit and the Junto are alive and well in Philadelphia, where young, creative and entrepreneurial people are flocking and gathering around new ideas, art and technology. And as the nation's industrial economy adjusts to the 21st century's demands for new ideas, the creative class is establishing itself as a sector that has experienced explosive growth and is positioned to drive the recovery of the global economy.

It is Franklin's collaborative instincts that are driving these creatives of today in the city he once transformed. A modern-day Junto, in fact, exists in Philadelphia, where the intellectually curious meet regularly to discuss ideas, problems, and solutions. Philly Startup Leaders started as a handful of entrepreneurs gathering at a bar two years ago and has grown into a powerful group that holds a number of events for 400 members every month. IndependentsHall is a co-working confab concocted in 2007 and made up of young creatives who want to work for themselves, but don't want to or can't afford to do it alone.

"These outlets are grassroots, based on the thought 'if no one else is going to help we have to help ourselves,'" says Neil Kleinman, a professor of multimedia and communication at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a senior fellow at its Corzo Center for the Creative Economy. "They've become collaborative systems and speak to an economic phenomenon. They stimulate other similar groups who run parallel with different purposes."

On Monday and Tuesday, Philadelphia plays host to the second Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where close to 1,000 creatives are expected to feed that collaborative spirit through a wide array of programs and keynote speakers covering entrepreneurship, sustainability, education, social media, and music, to name a few.

The creative economy, by all indications, is robust in Greater Philadelphia, even when considering the homestretch of the recession will make or break some of its pillars. It is a $60 billion industry, generating more than 750,000 workers and $1.2 billion in tax revenue, according to Creative Footprint, a 2008 study of the sector in the region spearheaded by non-profit economic development organization Innovation Philadelphia. It is near the top, behind life sciences, of the region's largest sectors.

"This data makes it easier to get people on board focusing on (the creative economy)," says Kelly Lee, executive director of Innovation Philadelphia, which is hosting next week's summit. "Now it's not a theory, it's a fact and it's a sector worth paying attention to."

Creative Footprint is also significant because it’s the first comprehensive study of its kind to examine how for-profit creativity impacts the region's economy. Organizations like the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance have long been harnessing and measuring the creative power of the region's 400-plus non-profit arts and cultural organizations. Understanding the whole picture, however, has been key to the establishment of creative economy as a measurable entity.

When Lee put together a presentation on the creative economy in Philadelphia for an international economic development conference last year, organizers scrambled to bring in more chairs for the overflow crowd. Part of the presentation included Creativity and Neighborhood Development, a joint study released in December, 2007 from Philadelphia-based non-profit The Reinvestment Fund and the University of Pennsylvania. It cited artists as "expert at uncovering, expressing and re-purposing the assets of place--from buildings and public spaces to community stories. They are natural place-makers who assume--in the course of making a living--a range of civic and entrepreneurial roles that require both collaboration and self-reliance."

Says Kleinman: "They're not using (collaboration) exclusively for business gain. They're trying to create a nourishing, flourishing, self-nurturing community. They'll naturally identify people who can help them become more visible."

Kleinman divides the creative economy into three groups: Attracting, or those that are large, institutional flagships like the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Performing, or local performers and artists who provide cultural juice like the Arden Theater; and Producing, or those who are creating, like the innovative New Paradise Laboratories or interactive design shops like P'unk Avenue or I-SITE.

When Kleinman first arrived in Philadelphia in 1981, examples of those groups were few. He describes the city as a "no-man's land" where those who controlled the economic power through either old capital or sweat equity had squeezed many potential contributors and beneficiaries out of the mix. When he returned to Philadelphia on a full-time basis in 2001, he saw something quite different.

"There was a new class of young, emerging talent, interested in technology, graphic design, and new media," says Kleinman, "and they came into this upside-down layer cake where people who were controlling the establishment didn't know how to address the issues this generation had.

"This group of people did not have a lot of historical roots in the city--a percentage were from outside the city and came here for education or found economies of scale that made it easier for them to start the kind of projects they wanted. I was struck by their real need to work together to support each other."

When it needed creativity, the establishment, Kleinman notes, often went outside Philadelphia to New York or elsewhere to find it, when all the while, it had been simmering here underneath the radar.

That began to slowly change as these creative collaborations took root. Kleinman now finds himself among a growing number of Baby Boomers who are equally fascinated by and engaged with the creative class. Through the Corzo Center, founded and named after former University of the Arts president Miguel Angel Corzo and focused on promoting the creative process as a transformative force for society, Kleinman looks to bridge the gap between creatives and established industry by working together to expand applications for technology.

Kleinman created an applied research lab that links students and faculty with outside businesses. The lab has developed a second-life experiment with a dance studio and is also developing an interactive wall with an architectural firm. Kleinman is also promoting a project to re-design the theater experience along Avenue of the Arts and another to re-think the Philadelphia library system.
Kleinman and Lee are both involved with NxtUp Philly, a branding initiative started by--surprise--a collaboration of creative folks who have set out to connect 300 local events over 12 days this month. The goal is to shine a light on creatives and their contributions to the region.

Those contributions, Lee says, are led by those in interactive media, architecture and engineering, and communications and marketing, in addition to a rich non-profit arts and culture scene. All told, both jobs (12.4 percent) and wages (19.1 percent) in the sector have increased in recent years, according to Creative Footprint. That growth figures to continue as the both the recession and the emergence of new growth sectors--like sustainability--have increased the need for creative services and innovation, as new companies start up and existing corporations look to cut costs.

Other cities are taking notice. In Boston, the entertainment technology sector is booming thanks to state tax incentives. Austin has built a multi-disciplinary creative class around a once-small music festival called SXSW. In Tampa, collaboration between academia and industry has resulted in promising partnerships.

Philadelphia added "creative economy" to the title of Gary Steuer, who was brought in late last year as the city's arts and culture czar. It's a clear sign that the city wants to embrace those creatives, once a lonely few and now a force to be reckoned with.

A sure sign of that force cropped up earlier this week, when The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story on a perceived rift between Alex Hillman, co-founder of Independents Hall, and Innovation Philadelphia regarding his not participating in next week's summit. Hillman blogged extensively about his feelings and while the true source of the dispute is debatable, it's clear that Hillman and Lee are major figures working toward the same end. If history is any indication, they will figure a way to collaborate and the city will be better off.

"I think there's something very nurturing about Philadelphia," says Lee, who was Innovation Philadelphia's third employee when she started there seven years ago after stints in marketing and communications for PECO, the Convention Center, and city government. "It's a community where people are open to collaborating without feeling threatened.

"I think Philadelphia is ahead of the curve."

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Joe Petrucci is the managing editor of Keystone Edge. Send feedback here.

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Photographs of Neil Kleinman by Michael Persico