Howdy, dear reader!

This issue is a pretty good snapshot of where Indiana’s creative economy is right now: more movement, more money, more attention—and still plenty of work to do around language, measurement, and public understanding.

The biggest news is the READI 2.0 Arts & Culture awards: $62.3 million going to 49 projects across all 15 regions of the state. That is huge! It also gives us a chance to look more carefully at what we mean when we talk about arts, culture, placemaking, and creative-industry growth. They overlap, but they are not the same thing.

Illinois offers another useful comparison. Its new creative-economy study gives the state a much clearer picture of the businesses, workers, assets, and gaps that make up the sector. Indiana has started making meaningful investments. We still need an equally serious accounting of what we are trying to grow.

Meanwhile, Pattern has been moving at full speed. We hosted The Briefing Room with VentureVets, welcomed Lydia Norton into a full-time role after her path from intern to Fellow, brought on three new Fellows, announced Carol Coletta as our Summit keynote, and released our Rocky Walls digital cover just ahead of a sold-out DreamDox.

Next week I’m heading to Chicago for the Chicago Media & Entertainment Tech Summit, then back in Indianapolis Thursday to speak on a panel at DreamDox. I also still owe everyone a recap from the excellent South Bend–Elkhart music session earlier this month. Summer will be over before we know it. Phew!

Thanks, as always, for following the work.

Let’s get into it.

— Polina

When HI-FI received a $1 million grant toward a $5 million expansion in Fountain Square, plenty of people celebrated. Others immediately assumed it was taxpayer money handed to a private business, questioned why it was not being spent on something else, or treated the announcement as further proof that economic development is little more than corporate welfare. Some of that skepticism is understandable. Bad deals, opaque incentives and the current fight over data centers have given the public legitimate reasons to ask harder questions. But there is a difference between scrutiny and reflexive cynicism—and lately, we have become much better at the second.

The HI-FI award is a reimbursable grant funded by Lilly Endowment, not an unrestricted million-dollar check. It helps unlock roughly four times that amount in additional investment and supports a locally built, independently owned music business expected to bring 65,000 more visitors into Fountain Square each year. Using statewide independent-venue spending data, that could mean roughly $2.3 million in new off-site spending annually at nearby restaurants, bars, shops and other businesses. This is what creative-economy development actually looks like: construction, jobs, artist payments, neighborhood traffic and a local venue building enough capacity to stay independent. Before we decide every investment is a giveaway—or ask why the money did not solve homelessness—it may be worth understanding what happened, who benefits and why some projects deserve to be celebrated.

Indiana has awarded $62.3 million to 49 arts-and-culture projects across all 15 READI regions—investments expected to help generate $369.9 million in total project spending. The scale matters, but so does the framing: Indiana has placed arts and culture squarely inside its economic-development strategy.

The portfolio spans a continuum. Projects including HI-FI, Latinas Welding Guild, Arts (260), Pearl Arts and the Uplands Regional Creative Economy Commons invest directly in creative businesses, workers and production capacity. Others focus more heavily on public art, historic theaters and community gathering spaces. Many do both. Indiana needs creative-industry development and creative placemaking, but they are not interchangeable—and shouldn’t be evaluated by identical measures. Workforce initiatives should produce skills, jobs and earnings; cultural destinations should grow audiences and tourism; placemaking projects should demonstrate use, access and community value.

Pattern helped Our Southern Indiana and CIRDA develop their regional arts-and-culture plans and submitted an application of our own, which was not selected. We know firsthand how much work went into this process—and we’re especially thrilled for colleagues in the creative ecosystem including the Athenaeum, Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Big Car Collaborative, the Uplands region and IU Innovates, and the City of Elkhart.

Indiana just committed $62.3 million to 49 arts and culture projects. Across the state line, Illinois has done the other half of serious creative-economy policy: it measured what it has. Commissioned by Arts Alliance Illinois and produced by Sound Diplomacy, the new study defines the creative economy across 12 sectors—not just artists and nonprofit arts organizations, but film, advertising, architecture, software and games, broadcasting, publishing, music, arts education, venues, museums, retail and supporting businesses. It estimates that this broadly defined ecosystem supports 734,269 jobs and produces $148.1 billion in total economic output statewide.

Those enormous numbers require some translation. Illinois’ $148.1 billion represents total output, including direct activity, supply-chain effects and spending by workers. Indiana’s familiar $10.2 billion figure is value added—a different, narrower federal measure. Using the same 2023 Bureau of Economic Analysis measure for both states, Illinois’ arts and cultural sector generated approximately $37.4 billion in value added and supported 226,407 jobs; Indiana generated approximately $10.1 billion and supported 92,643 jobs. Arts and culture represented 3.4% of Illinois’ economy, compared with just 2% of Indiana’s. Illinois is unquestionably larger, but the comparison also suggests that Indiana may be substantially undercounting its broader creative sectors by relying on the narrower federal definition alone.

The report’s headline claim of $20.6 billion in tax revenue also needs context. It is a modeled estimate, not a total pulled directly from tax returns: $13.2 billion is federal revenue, approximately $7.4 billion goes to Illinois state and local governments, and almost half is connected to supplier activity and household spending rather than the creative entities themselves. Still, this is hardly fluff. The researchers deliberately excluded audience spending at nearby restaurants, hotels, stores and transportation providers to avoid padding the multiplier with visitor spending.

The point is not that Illinois has produced one perfect number. It is that Illinois now has a clear working definition, an asset map and a detailed baseline for deciding what to invest in next. Indiana has begun making serious investments, but we still lack a comparable accounting of the larger economy we are trying to grow. And we know anecdotally that at least some of Illinois’ production activity begins with Indiana companies crossing the border to shoot projects where incentives and production capacity are stronger. Better measurement will not stop that leakage—but it will finally make it visible.

Our July digital cover profiles filmmaker and entrepreneur Rocky Walls, whose work through 12 Stars Media and Hoodox is helping Indiana documentary filmmakers tell their stories—and find audiences for them. Next up, Hoodox’s sold-out DreamDox conference returns July 23 at IndyFringe, closing with a keynote from acclaimed director and producer Bryan Storkel.

We’re excited to announce Carol Coletta as our Day 1 keynote speaker for the 4th Annual Creative Economy Summit.

This year’s theme is Creativity is BIG Business, and Carol’s work sits right at the intersection of place, talent, civic life, and economic value. A Fellow with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, Carol has spent her career helping cities understand what makes places successful. She previously served as President and CEO of Memphis River Parks Partnership, where she helped lead the transformation of Tom Lee Park into an internationally recognized civic destination, and has held leadership roles with Kresge Foundation, Knight Foundation, ArtPlace, CEOs for Cities, and the Mayors’ Institute on City Design.

Her keynote will help us think about what Indiana should build next — not just physically, but creatively, socially, and economically.

Join us September 15–16 in Indianapolis.

What happens when Sens. Andrea Hunley, Kyle Walker and Scott Baldwin, Westfield Mayor Scott Willis, Marine veterans-turned-comics John McCombs and Chris Cline, liquor, a precautionary gong and 120 phone-free guests walk into Helium Comedy Club? Somehow, a genuinely funny night.

Created by Courtney Zaugg and Polina Osherov, The Briefing Room raised over $11,000 for VentureVets programming & support for veteran entrepreneurs while proving that irreverent humor can lower defenses, expose a little truth and help people connect across party lines. Kyle Walker’s alarmingly natural turn as Indiana’s answer to Zach Galifianakis suggests a sequel may be necessary.

We’re officially welcoming Lydia Norton as Pattern’s new Creative Program Manager. Lydia first joined us as an intern, advanced into a Fellowship and proved to be such a strong fit that we hired her full-time. She will now help lead Pattern’s creative programming including the Indiana Music Alliance work—bringing our full-time staff to five.

Joining her are three new Fellows: Biak Par, a Purdue University graduate focused on digital design; Samantha Cox, a DePauw University graduate working in writing and communications; and Mariana Fletes, a University of Indianapolis graduate focused on digital content strategy. We’re thrilled to have them!

YouTube’s U.S. creative ecosystem supported 540,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in 2025, a reminder that digital creators are not just making content; they are building businesses that employ thousands of other creative professionals.
[YouTube’s 2025 U.S. Impact Report]

We are still using one vocabulary to describe several different things: arts access, placemaking, cultural institutions and private sector creative-industry growth. Better policy starts by knowing the difference.

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