EVENT BRINGS CREATIVITY, GOVERNMENT, & BUSINESS TOGETHER
Last Friday at MASS MoCA, Berkshire Creative and Mayor Barrett III of North Adams hosted a Round-table discussion between Greg Bialecki, Undersecretary of Business, and leaders of local creative economy businesses. The meeting, also attended by Mayor Ruberto, Rep. Bosely and Rep. Pignatelli, was part of Creative Economy Industry Month. Attendees were not shy about stating the needs of their businesses.
The Transcript’s Coverage: FINDING WAYS TO BRAINSTORM CREATIVELY
NORTH ADAMS — Stimulating the creative economy isn’t about what the state can do for local businesses — it’s about how it can support what they’re already doing.
To understand the needs of the specific industry clusters around the state, along with the geographical challenges, state Undersecretary of Business Greg Bialecki and Jason Schupbach,
creative economy industry director, have embarked on a state-wide listening tour that brought them to Mass MoCA on Friday, where they met with politicians and leaders from around the county.
“Today’s discussion was interesting because it wasn’t a
discussion with a group of artists necessarily — it was with a group
of creative individuals who are very business focused,” Bialecki said
during a tour of several businesses at Mass MoCA. “They were all very
entrepreneurial. It was not a conversation about what the state can do
for them, but about what they are doing. We want to know how we can
plug into that, to connect the pieces of the puzzle. The state isn’t
going to create solutions, but help figure out the support piece.”
Schupbach, who was appointed as industry director for the
creative economy sector about six weeks ago, said the creative economy
is growing by 7 percent each year.
“It doesn’t make sense for us to create a program to support
the industry, without finding out the specific needs,” he said. “We’ve
been traveling and listening to concerns. We’ve been to Salem and Worcestor. The next step, after the
listening tour, is to take all the information gathered at the local
level and formulate a plan over the next six months.”
Mayor John Barrett III, who was one of over 50 local leaders asked to the listening session, said it was a “good” conversation with many people at the table.
“Everybody has his role,” he said. “They need to understand they need to work in turn with the state and other cultural groups in the area. Too often people stay in their own little worlds. It’s about working together.”
Following the meeting, Bialecki and Schupbach, along with a host of other officials including state Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, toured Storey Communications and Consumer Powerline, to see how the museum campus works as an incubator site for new businesses.
“We develop all our book ideas in-house and then we identify and seek out authors who can meet our needs,” Deborah Balmuth, editorial director at Storey Communications, said. “We feel the New York publishing houses are not mining the talent in this area. The Berkshires and Pioneer Valley are rich in resources.”
Consumer Powerline, a company that specializes in redirecting power use to prevent outages around the country, located a satellite office in North Adams in 2006 because of the work force advantages.
“This area has a good, reliable labor pool, low cost housing, good Internet access and it’s a good place to locate high tech industry,” Janette Kessler Dudley, vice president of market development, said.
Bialecki said many of the concerns he was hearing around the state were the same — the need for an educated workforce and the need to attract and retain a talented pool of young people.
“I think that is a big concern here in the Berkshires,” he said of attracting a younger workforce. “The Berkshires has several particular challenges, but at the same time it has amazing opportunities. I think the Berkshires has the best branding in the state. When you talk about arts, cultural and Massachusetts, the answer on both the national and international levels is the Berkshires.”
