Creative Tampa Bay Sunday, June 18, 2006 Tampa Bay, Florida has embraced the strategy of promoting its creative industries as an economic development driver. Here is some background. Read more. you can visit their web site here. by moving in this direction, Tampa Bay is embracing an economic development trend that started in Europe. In the late 1990's -- before Richard Florida wrote his book on the Creative Class in 2002 -- a number of cities in Europe started to embrace the concept of creativity as of organizing principle for their economic development strategies. See, for example, the Web site of Creative London. The Blair government in the United kingdom stimulated this development with a report on the creative clusters which appeared in 1998. (The so-called Creative Industries mapping document.) By 2002, an annual creative clusters conference promoted continuing developments the U.K. Learn more. By 2000, the New England Foundation for the Arts we aligned with the business community to launch a creative industries initiative. Read more. Now w're saying places like Providence, Philadelphia, Vermont, Savannah and Tampa Bay focusing on this strategy. (Here is a report that appeared recently on activities in Vermont. Read more. Here's a summary of a conference in Philadelphia. Read more.) posted by Ed Morrison |		This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. links Some Background on EDPro Weblog The purpose of this weblog is to help economic development professionals -- EDPros -- keep up with the changes sweeping our profession. Strap on your goggles. It's a whole new game. There are no experts any more. The only place to learn about economic development is from other EDPros who are doing it. One other point: the prevaling approach (paradigm, if you like) in economic development is shifting from competition to collaboration. There are a lot of reaasons underlying this shift, but here's the important insight: You, your community, and your region will do better by collaborating and sharing information. So, spread the word...Share the knowledge. Tell a friend about EDPro Weblog. If you are using a news reader, here is the link to syndicate this site: Here's the link if you are a bloglines subscriber: Speaking and workshops on Open Source Economic Development As the idea of Open Source Economic Development starts spreading, more people are asking about it. Visit the I-Open web site to learn more. My colleagues and I are happy to explain the basic concepts in a talk or a workshop. E-mail Susan Alshuler if you'd like to learn more about workshops and speaking. Background on Ed Morrison Download some background information on me here.

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