Colorado Creative Industries director explains how their division works

Jul. 24—New Mexico is the latest state to implement a Creative Industries Division, joining others such as Colorado and Hawaii. The goal of the division, according to state officials, is to grow and promote New Mexico's creative economy, which includes businesses across a broad spectrum. To better understand how the Creative Industries Division in New Mexico will work — and how a similar division operates in a neighboring state — the Journal spoke with the interim director of Colorado Creative Industries, Christy Costello. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Journal: Let's start with what Colorado Creative Industries is and when it was founded. Costello: The agency has been around since 1967 and our name was Colorado Council on the Arts. So we're the designated state arts agency. And, you know, all of the state arts agencies kind of formed after the National Arts and Humanities Act, which I believe was around 1962. So, we were in the Office of Higher Education up until 2007. And then, we were moved from the Office of Higher Ed to the Office of Economic Development, and that was really an outcome of the Legislature's Interim Committee on Economic Development that recognized economic contributions of arts and culture in communities across Colorado. That was a big moment for us. When we moved in 2008, we commissioned the first state creative economy study here in Colorado, (which) led to legislation that changed our name to Colorado Creative Industries in 2010. Our mission expanded to promote, support and expand creative industries to drive Colorado's economy, grow jobs and enhance our quality of life. And one of the big changes was our ability to support the for-profit creative sector, instead of just prior to that, supporting nonprofit arts and culture. What is it that the Colorado Creative Industries division does on a day-to-day basis? Costello: A large part of our work is grant-making. We also have programs that kind of fall under the business support and workforce development buckets. We have an annual conference and a leadership program to help develop the field. But a large part of what we do is grant-making to both nonprofit arts and culture organizations and for-profits. We also run the state's public art program, and we have a couple of programs that (are) more around developing community and economic development strategies at the community level. So, we have a Creative District Certification program that is really focused on community and economic development at the local level and centered around arts, culture and creativity. And then we have a program called Space to Create that helps develop affordable live-work sector housing for the creative workforce in rural areas of the state. Housing is one of the top issues in our state and one of the top issues of the current governor's administration. So we've been doing that since 2014. We have two projects that are open and operating. One of them's in Trinidad, not too far away from New Mexico. Tell me more about this Space to Create program. Costello: We have several partners in that program — the Department of Local Affairs, we work with Artspace, which is a nonprofit housing developer that specifically develops housing for the creative sector; we partner with the Boettcher Foundation, which is one of our local foundations here in Colorado. (This program) started with a kind of call to different rural regions of the state. We started with a demonstration project, which was in Trinidad, down in the southern part of the state. Artspace is kind of responsible for figuring out the capital stack for the projects and working with the community to identify a location for projects, which a lot of times the local government is involved in procuring and providing. And then Colorado Creative Industries does the application process for the communities, and then we also provide pre-development funding to get projects off the ground and start some of that pre-development work. And then we help convene the partners and other funders to continue to support the project. The local community is responsible for coming up with a significant amount of the resources, but we help facilitate other resources and get partners involved in the projects. More broadly, how many projects does the Colorado Creative Industries division fund annually? Costello: We give out about $2.5 million. Our budget is pretty small, it's only around $3 million. It's hard to say how many projects (we fund) but maybe 500 (per year). Now that New Mexico has a Creative Industries Division, what will a division like this mean to the creative economy here? Costello: I mean, it's not new. State arts agencies have been doing the work that supports economic growth in arts and culture for almost 60 years. But I think that knowing that creativity is one of the top two skills for workers, it's an important statement for a state to make, acknowledging creative industries as an important part of the economy. It hasn't really been acknowledged as an economic driver, I think because there are so many other roles that arts and culture and creativity play than just being an industry sector. It's a statement that New Mexico's making to show everyone else that this is a place where there's creativity, and they're acknowledging creative industries as an important part of the economy.