Howdy, dear reader!

It feels like every time I turn around lately, someone is making another serious investment in the creative economy—and music, in particular, just keeps showing up.

South Bend–Elkhart is thinking about how to turn a collection of music assets into an actual regional strategy. Bloomington is next up on our Indiana Music Economy Sessions roadshow. Huntsville, AL now has eight years of results behind its music strategy. Liverpool in the UK is investing millions to connect music businesses with research, technology, talent and capital. And that's before we get to Austin's $51 million creative-economy investment, Gen Con's enormous footprint in Indianapolis, or a $1 billion effort to finance Africa's film industry.

What's exciting to me is that the conversation is evolving. We're spending less time arguing that creativity has economic value and more time asking the harder question: What do we actually have to build around creative industries so they can grow?

People. Capital. Data. Leadership. Infrastructure. Coordination. Someone whose job it is to connect the dots.

That's a lot of what we're thinking about at Pattern right now—and, with the Creative Economy Summit just five weeks away, the timing feels pretty perfect.

Thanks, as always, for following the work.

Let’s get into it.

— Polina

South Bend–Elkhart is beginning to look less like a collection of creative projects and more like a regional opportunity. Elkhart’s music history, South Bend’s assets, Shipshewana’s entertainment engine, the fairgrounds, universities, venues, festivals and new READI 2.0 investments all point to something larger. But momentum has a shelf life. Plans, studies and pilot projects only matter if someone is responsible for implementation. Whether that role is called a Music Commissioner or something else, the need is clear: someone has to wake up every morning thinking about the whole system.

Gen Con returned to Indianapolis this month with more than 74,000 attendees, nearly 800 vendors and an estimated $83.5 million in local economic impact. Those are impressive numbers, and we have gotten very good at understanding Gen Con as a tourism and convention success. But for four days, Indianapolis also becomes one of the densest concentrations of tabletop game publishers, designers, illustrators, writers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and customers anywhere in North America. That raises a different economic-development question: What if we thought about Gen Con not only as an event that brings an industry to Indiana, but as an opportunity to grow more of that industry here? How do we figure out how to hang onto some of that gaming industry all year long?

Liverpool offers an interesting comparison. The city has long understood music as part of its identity and tourism appeal, but it is increasingly treating music as an industry to deliberately develop. Its regional music economy is valued at £780 million and supports more than 14,000 jobs, with ambitions to reach £1 billion by 2035.

Its five-year, £7.2 million MusicFutures initiative connects businesses and entrepreneurs with universities, R&D, technology, skills and investment, while the new Soundings platform gives leaders detailed intelligence about where creative businesses exist and how clusters are evolving.

Austin, Texas is putting a record $51 million into its creative ecosystem this year, spanning musicians, creative businesses, commercial creative spaces, cultural organizations and other parts of the city's arts and entertainment infrastructure. The number is impressive, but what's more interesting is the breadth of the strategy. Austin isn't betting on one building, festival or grant program. It is putting different kinds of capital behind different pieces of an interconnected creative economy—people, organizations, businesses and the places where creative work actually happens.

North Adams, Massachusetts is experimenting at a much smaller scale with another piece of the same puzzle: execution capacity. A new $2.5 million Creative District pilot backed by the Barr Foundation includes flexible funding and technical assistance, but one of its most interesting components is a full-time fellow whose job is to help local partners actually move the strategy forward. That's easy to overlook, but important. Communities rarely suffer from a shortage of projects they would like to pursue. They suffer from shortages of people, data, coordination and sustained capacity to connect those projects into something larger. Whether the investment is $51 million or $2.5 million, the underlying lesson is similar: creative economies need operating infrastructure, not just good ideas.

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Our August digital cover profiles MORE Magazine founder and entrepreneur Arianna Cruz, who has built an independent publication into a home for personal stories, creative collaborations and early-career opportunity. Six years and 12 issues in, MORE is also evolving into a strategic content agency, while its Seek MORE Internship Program has helped more than 35 students build résumés, portfolios and professional connections. Cruz gets candid about the economics of independent media, learning to step back and what it takes to open doors for others.

On August 24, our team is heading to The Mill in Bloomington for the next stop in our statewide exploration of Indiana’s music economy. Following conversations in Fort Wayne and the South Bend–Elkhart region, this session will look at what Bloomington already has, where the gaps are, and what it would take to build a stronger, more connected music-industry ecosystem.

The public conversation will feature Ed Comentale of IU Bloomington, music attorney and industry professional Robert Meitus, and Mike McAfee of Visit Bloomington, bringing together perspectives from higher education, music business and tourism.

If you’re a musician, venue operator, promoter, educator, music-business professional, tourism leader, economic developer—or simply someone invested in Bloomington’s creative future—this conversation is for you.

On September 1, we’re teaming up with KSM one last time to host the final conversation in our creative economy event series: Indiana’s Creative Economy: Who Leads, Who Funds, Who Acts?

The discussion will move beyond recognizing the creative economy’s value to addressing what comes next: coordinated leadership, sustainable investment, regional capacity, policy, and a strategy that connects Indiana’s scattered momentum.

Panelists include:

• Dr. James Lemler, President, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation
• John Fernandez, CEO, Amplify Bloomington
• Stéphane Frijia, President and CEO, Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership

Breakfast and networking begin at 8:30 a.m., followed by the panel discussion at 9 a.m.

Vinyl records posted their nineteenth straight year of revenue growth in 2025, proof that people still pay real money for tangible creative objects in a streaming world.
[Digital Music News]

The real economic-development opportunity isn’t always creating something new. Sometimes it’s recognizing the industry that’s already sitting in front of you—and building around it.

P.S. Thank you, fellow champions of the creative economy!