News & Events

The Daily Yonder is a wonderful resource for keeping up with the issues, challenges and opportunities facing rural America. We are pleased to have Bill Bishop, who is the main force behind the Daily Yonder, as a board member here at RTS.

Our founder Stuart Rosenfeld has been working with the state of Mississippi over the last couple of years both looking at their creative economy as an economic and cultural engine but also at designing programs and policies to build a stronger creative economy within the state. Stu’s new article in the Daily Yonder gives a great overview of the creative economy in Mississippi and how it weaves into the state’s economy. A must-read for those interested in the creative economy.

A juke joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It’s part of the annual Juke Joint Festival.

The America COMPETES project of the US Commerce Department focuses on how we can out innovate, out educate, out connect, out produce and out empower the rest of the global economy. The project is a two year effort with an impressive advisory board. It culminated in the final report “The Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States” delivered today to Congress. You can download the full report or go to the main website to see videos or investigate the various elements of the effort.

The Investment & Innovation Forum is a Canberra, Australia-based organization created by Rod Brown of the Cockatoo network. More info on them is available here.

With members in 33 countries, the focus is on best practices in innovative economic development. The latest issue of their Cockatoo newsletter highlights our recently released work for the State of Mississippi on its creative economy. There is a link to the CraftNET Sketches here.

You can subscribe to the Cockatoo Newsletter by email at apdcockatoo@iprimus.com.au.

We just released the October 2011 issue of CraftNet Sketches.

In this issue
Community College News: Kentucky School of Crafts at Hazard Community & Technical College, Haywood Community College, Montana Arts Council, Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College, Western Piedmont Community College
Research, Events, and News: Mississippi Creative Economy Summit, South Arts Reports, Creative Economy Assets in Rural Communities, Culinary Improvisation, the Science of Guitar Building, EU Capitals of Culture Evaluation
CraftNet Member Profile: Western Piedmont Community College

About CraftNet:
CraftNet is an international alliance of community colleges in North America, Europe, and Africa that work together to enhance their own arts and crafts-based teaching programs and to develop local and regional artisan-based economies. It was conceived and is managed by Regional Technology Strategies.

Parliament is an interesting collection of, as they call themselves, “Working Class Creatives” helping to build a stronger and more interesting creative milieu in the Charleston, SC metro area. They certainly seem to sponsor some really interesting events! To keep up check out their blog.

And we say all this not just because they partially funded and devote a page to the work we did on the creative economy in Charleston.

The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce just released a report on the role of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) in the future workforce. They find that STEM jobs will be the second fastest growing occupational category after health care. The reports, state-level data and a webinar are available at their website.

While the report focuses mostly on the 4-year and graduate degrees our research and discussions with companies also finds that STEM skills are increasingly needed for those in manufacturing production occupations that do not require a 4-year degree. Manufacturers consistently describe the need for STEM backgrounds in the increasingly high-tech environment of modern manufacturing, whether in reading blueprints, working in production teams or solving problems within the production process.

A proposed policy response is to push the STEM focus further down into the k-12 system with geometry and algebra introduced in general middle school classes.

The Mississippi Economic Council in cooperation with the state’s citizens and private sector is building a collaborative vision for moving the state’s economy and community forward.  The process, known as Blueprint Mississippi 2011, has led to the development of a series of goals and recommendations on education, the economy, diversity, financial resources, health, infrastructure and other key areas.

A top focus is the creative economy.  The following creative economy strategies are based in large part on the study we completed with the Mississippi Development Authority and the Mississippi Arts Commission Development. The reports are available here and more on the effort is on the Mississippi Creative economy website.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Support the goals in the report, Mississippi’s Creative Economy, released by the Mississippi Arts Commission with the Mississippi Development Authority:
  • Facilitate efforts that make communities throughout the state more creative and vibrant.
  • Promote entrepreneurship and small business growth among creative firms.
  • Help communities preserve and generate added value from cultural and historic heritage.
  • Enhance the competitiveness of the state’s businesses and industries through increased use of art and design.
  • Enhance the support and networking infrastructure for creative talent across the state.
  • Build capacity to grow and retain creative talent living and working in Mississippi.
• Develop tools and strategies to support growth throughout the tourism industry.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger has an interesting article on the work we recently completed for the State of Mississippi.  We are presently preparing additional vignettes and updating the data in a follow-on contract with the state.

On August 11th the Mississippi Development Authority and the Mississippi Arts Commission released our report on the state’s amazing creative economy.  Information on the strategies for the creative economy is found on the state’s new creative economy website. The report demonstrates that the creative economy generates more than 60,000 jobs within the state. You can find project director and RTS founder Stu Rosenfeld’s presentation on the report here.

The report examines the various segments of the creative economy including visual and performing arts, design, film, literary and publishing, culinary arts and museums and heritage.  We also detail the support structure for the creative economy such as organizations, education and training, creative spaces and the investments that the state has made to build the creative economy.

Working with the Authority and Commission, we also developed a series of recommended goals and strategies intended to help the state reap the full benefits of its creative people and creative economy.

The report has three parts.  A short Executive Summary succinctly presents the main elements of the study. The Main Report provides all the detailed data and information on the creative economy and is a great resource. Finally we produced a series of vignettes on the state’s creative assets titled Red Hots and Deep Blues: Stories of Mississippi’s Creative Economy that provides a rich feel for the depth and variety of creativity within the state.

Be forwarned that the files are pretty large, especially the vignettes, so be patient with the downloads!

RTS and its Board of Directors announced today that Chris Beacham, Director of Economic Development Programs, has been named principal, joining Trent Williams and Dr. Stuart Rosenfeld in this role. Chris is the fourth principal  in the 20 year history of the organization.

The full press release is here.