Howdy, dear reader!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've found myself on what feels like a full-speed tour of Indiana's creative economy from every angle at once: real estate, music, talent, civic leadership, public policy, and the always-complicated question of how ideas become actual economic value.

First up: MIBOR invited me to speak with their Community Impact Council and Economic Development Council — my first time delivering what I'd call a full keynote on the creative economy. The group was gracious, patient, and game for a robust conversation afterward. A good reminder that this work isn't just for artists, arts organizations, or cultural institutions. The creative economy has everything to do with how we build places, attract talent, strengthen neighborhoods, and think more expansively about economic development.

Then our team headed to Fort Wayne, just after the city released its new music study and announced the formation of what may be Indiana's first dedicated municipal music office. Huge shout out to Jessa Campbell and everyone who joined that conversation. There's a whole article to be written about what Fort Wayne is doing — and this issue's Deeper Read is my first attempt at it. For now I'll say this: music is having a moment in Indiana. The conversations about venues, audiences, artist support, identity, and tourism are no longer happening only inside the music industry. They're happening inside RDAs and tourism bureaus. That's the shift.

That conversation continues this week in Elkhart. We're hitting music hard this summer, and for good reason: it's one of the clearest examples of how creative activity connects talent, small business, nightlife, tourism, youth culture, and civic energy all at once.

The other big news: the Creative Economy Leadership Alliance is live. CELA is something I've been working toward in some form for about five years, so seeing it become real is both thrilling and slightly surreal. It exists because Indiana needs a more organized way to bring together people who understand that creativity is a workforce issue, a business issue, a policy issue, and a competitiveness issue. I'm serving as board chair, and I'll have much more to say soon. If that sounds like your lane — or the lane you want to help build — take a look.

We also hosted our third KSM x Pattern panel, this time on talent. Julie Heath, of IU Innovates and Ashley Blevins of High Alpha led a wide-ranging conversation about what talent actually means, where it comes from, how it gets developed, and what employers, educators, and civic leaders miss when they talk about workforce. The topic is too big for one morning — which probably means it needs to become a series. If that sparks something, let's talk.

All that activity meant I missed the NIVA Summit, though I followed from afar. The conversations there — independent venues, ticketing, resale, the future of live music — were as urgent as ever. Which tracks with what we keep seeing: the music economy isn't just about who gets on stage. It's about whether the systems around artists, venues, audiences, and local markets actually work. (More on exactly that in The Signal.)

Finally, I ducked out to Columbus, Ohio with the ULI Midwest Product Council to look at adaptive reuse, affordable housing, and how another Midwest city approaches growth. I love getting out to see what peer cities are doing — partly for the ideas, partly for the reminder that Indiana isn't working in a vacuum. Everyone's wrestling with the same questions: how to preserve character while growing, how to make room for talent, how to reuse what already exists, how to build places people actually want to belong to.

Through all of it, I keep coming back to gratitude — for the chance to help look for solutions to some of our hardest problems. Thanks for being with me on this journey.

Let's get into it.

— Polina

In Fort Wayne, Polina spent a morning with venue operators talking about the least glamorous things imaginable: permits, street closures, parking, who runs sound, how you even get a block party approved. It sounds like logistics. It's actually the whole game. Because the thing that stops a music scene from growing usually isn't a lack of talent or ideas. It's that nobody in town is responsible for answering the question, "who do I call to make this happen?" The day before she arrived, Fort Wayne did something about that. It became the first city in Indiana to actually fund a music office, turning a strategy into a job instead of another report on a shelf.

That move is rarer than it should be, and it's the reason Fort Wayne is the first stop in this series. Plenty of places study their music economy. Almost none of them fund a person to build it. Indianapolis learned that the hard way, completing a serious strategy in 2019 that mostly sat still for lack of anyone whose job was to move it. With its creative economy near the bottom of all U.S. states, Indiana can't afford to keep producing good plans that nobody implements. Fort Wayne just showed the rest of the state what doing it differently looks like.

Last year Seattle did something almost too simple to make news. It gave musicians a place to park.

Under the city's new Music Venue Zone program, qualifying venues can apply for up to three dedicated curb spaces — reserved 24/7 for musician parking and loading, marked with a sign, enforced with a tow. The permit costs a venue $250 a year. Seattle is the first city in the country to do this, and the unglamorous mechanics are the whole point: a working musician hauling gear at midnight is a worker with a physical job and an operational need, not an atmosphere-maker who appears when the lights go down.

That's the shift worth watching. For years cities have praised musicians as the soul of a place while quietly treating them as decoration. A parking sign says something different. It says the city understands that culture has logistics — and that if you want the music to keep happening, you have to make room for the people carrying the amps.

It's the same instinct Nashville has been organizing around, and the same one we keep arguing for here: creative work has infrastructure underneath it, or it doesn't last.

Seattle treated musicians as workers. Vermont went after the transaction itself. On May 26, Governor Phil Scott signed H.512 — now Act 109 — capping ticket resale at 110% of face value, banning speculative listings for tickets a reseller doesn't yet own, and barring the lookalike URLs that trick fans into thinking they're buying from the venue.

What makes it a Signal isn't the cap. It's who showed up to ask for it. Vermont-born artist Noah Kahan testified for the bill, framing it as protection for the small venues and fans in his own state — an artist using his leverage on behalf of the rooms that made him. Vermont is now the only state with an enforceable resale cap, and the fight over whether caps help or backfire is real and unsettled. But the direction of travel is clear: artists and venues are no longer waiting to be protected. They're writing the policy.

Dave Neff didn't grow up thinking of himself as creative. Now, as president and CEO of the 500 Festival, he runs one of Indiana's most recognizable civic institutions — and makes the case that festivals aren't a nice-to-have. They're infrastructure. The 500 Festival generates an estimated $22 million in annual economic impact and reaches a third of Indiana's fourth graders, but Neff's bigger argument is about connective tissue: how shared experiences turn a single-day race into a statewide season of community, talent attraction, and civic pride. Our June digital cover.

Okay, look. Here's the thing. Politics is funny — or it should be. Everyone's so uptight these days. But here's what we discovered: ex-Marines have a wicked sense of humor. So we're putting that theory to the test.

Between Two Corns (get it?!) is a one-night civic comedy event on July 14 at Helium, presented by VentureVets in partnership with Pattern. Picture a row of Indiana elected officials seated under two ferns — well, two ears of corn — for the flattest, driest, most gloriously awkward interview this state has ever attempted. Veteran stand-ups Chris Cline and John McCombs open. A veteran band plays. Then policymakers (confirmed: Sen. Scott Baldwin, Westfield Mayor Scott Willis, and Sen. Kyle Walker as interrogator) answer the questions no press conference would allow.

Proceeds support more military veterans pursuing comedy as an outlet. Phones get checked at the door — we'll let you draw your own conclusions. RSVP ASAP, because this one sells out fast.

This one's for our music industry supporters in northern Indiana. Hosted at the beautiful Lerner Theatre, we're going to get into it with Jon Hunsberger (Elkhart County CVB), Grif Eaton (founder and CEO of Juke), and Carl Thompson (GM of The Lerner) on June 16.

Elkhart County already has the pieces: venues, festivals, restaurants, hotels, tourism partners, educators, musicians. The question is how to connect them — so music becomes more visible, more findable, and more valuable to everyone it touches. How do people discover live music? What makes someone take a chance on an unfamiliar act? And what would it take for the region to be known as a music place?

This is session two of our statewide Indiana Music Economy tour with the Indiana Music Alliance, following Fort Wayne. Same goal: figure out the assets, the gaps, and the small next steps that actually move things.

Global recorded music revenues reached $31.7 billion in 2025, a reminder that music is not just performance; it is IP, platforms, subscriptions, rights management, data, and global distribution.

We keep talking about creativity like it is a personality trait. But It is also a market, a workforce, a talent strategy, and a reason people choose one city over another. The places that understand that are moving faster.

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