October Digital Cover Story - Polina Osherov

Polina Osherov: “Creativity is Infrastructure!”

Polina Osherov has become one of the state’s most persistent voices for Indiana’s creative economy. As executive director of Pattern, she’s making the case that creativity isn’t a side dish—it’s infrastructure: essential to talent attraction, industry competitiveness, and the overall vitality of place. Sitting down with longtime collaborator and thought partner Julie Heath, Executive Director of IU Innovates, the two explore the difference between building infrastructure and building momentum, and why optimism—not scarcity—has to drive the next chapter. Their conversation is candid, kinetic, and grounded in realism: two people who’ve seen how policy, investment, and imagination intersect, comparing notes on what it takes to turn Indiana’s creative potential into a serious economic engine.

Per usual, we’ve edited the transcript for clarity and brevity.

If you’re a leader in business, higher education, tourism, philanthropy, economic development, or the creative industries—or a creative entrepreneur shaping your community—join us October 13–14 at the Fishers Arts Center for the Indiana Creative Economy Summit.

Julie Heath: Let’s start with this phrase you’ve been using a lot—creativity as infrastructure. What does that mean in practice?

Polina Osherov: For me, it’s about redefining what counts as infrastructure. Everyone thinks of roads, bridges, and broadband. But we should also be talking about the physical spaces where creative entrepreneurs live, make, and sell. Studios, small-scale manufacturing spaces, film stages, performance venues—those are the creative economy’s power plants. Without them, nothing runs.

The Cultural Trail is a perfect example—it’s physical infrastructure that raised property values, drew tourism, and created a space for storytelling through public art. It’s proof that when you build for creativity, you build value in every sense. But physical infrastructure can—and should—go beyond quality-of-life amenities to include spaces designed for the business of creativity.

Austin’s Long Center is a great example. It’s not just a performance venue; it’s a place where creative work actually gets made, staged, and distributed. By repurposing an old civic auditorium into a multi-tenant hub with shared technical capacity, affordable rehearsal space, and business programming, Austin built a platform that supports the full creative stack—from concept to audience. The Cultural Trail connects and inspires, but the Long Center enables production—it turns creativity into commerce. We’ve dipped our toe in one, but sorely need more of the other—because inspiration without production doesn’t build industries.

JH: Right, and it’s not just physical. At IU, we think of it as knowledge infrastructure—how creativity drives innovation. When we built the entrepreneurship certificate, we didn’t confine it to the business school. It now spans music, informatics, public policy. That cross-pollination is infrastructure.

PO: Exactly. It’s the connective tissue between disciplines. Creativity is what makes those intersections productive.

JH: The barrier isn’t disbelief; it’s structure. People get that creativity matters—they just don’t know how to integrate it into the broader economic system. That’s why the infrastructure framing is so powerful.

PO: Yup! It’s like in Fast and Furious—you hit the nitrous and the car rockets forward. Indiana’s economy is the car; creativity is the NOS. It’s the boost that really gets things moving. (Is that link above going to a compilation of FF racing scenes? Why yes, yes it is! -p)

JH: (laughing) That’s the most Polina metaphor possible. But it works. No one gets excited about problems; they get excited about acceleration.

PO: People shut down when you talk about deficits. But when you show them what’s possible, then they lean in. Take Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe. It started in a repurposed bowling alley and now draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, generating millions in revenue and anchoring a creative district. More than that, it’s a creative hub: immersive storytelling, technical production, artists’ workshops, education programming, and community initiatives. That’s the kind of “programming infrastructure” Indiana needs—spaces that don’t just host art and creative expression, but manufacture it, incubate it, monetize it and funnel it into the broader economy, thoughtfully and equitably.

JH: I love that you’re emphasizing optimism here. We’ve both been in those rooms where you can feel the oxygen leave the moment someone says “lack of funding.”

PO: Right, even though when you look at the data, the lack of funding is a big issue for the creative sectors, but so is lack of cohesive strategy. But to your point, you can’t inspire people through scarcity, so at this upcoming Summit I really want to talk about tactics and systems. Indiana has all the ingredients—talent, low cost of living, accessible networks. We just haven’t organized them into a system yet.

And part of that is because there isn’t a network of champions for this particular cause. People care, but they don’t know how to plug in. The Summit’s about turning that interest into actual leadership by equipping folks with ideas, frameworks, and allies to help do the heavy strategic lift.

JH: Which is why policy matters. It’s what turns enthusiasm into structure and what makes creativity part of the economic engine instead of a side project.

PO: That’s the hope. And we have plenty of examples to learn from. Take Nashville. Policy played a key role in where they are now. By 2010, the city was booming—cranes in the skyline, new hotels and condos rising weekly—but its identity hadn’t caught up to its growth. Developers moved fast, carving up Music Row, the city’s creative core, property by property. Historic studios that shaped American music history were quietly being sold and demolished.

The breaking point came in 2014 when RCA Studio A—where Elvis, Dolly Parton, and Waylon Jennings recorded—was slated for teardown. That near-loss jolted the city awake. Musician Ben Folds and developer Aubrey Preston led a grassroots campaign to buy the building and save it, rallying artists, preservationists, and city leaders in the process. Their success became a turning point: the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Music Row a “National Treasure,” and Nashville’s Metro government began rethinking zoning, preservation, and policy.

That moment reframed creativity as economic infrastructure, not nostalgia. They realized condos could wait, but culture couldn’t.

In Indy, we didn’t have that reckoning. In many ways, we already lost our Music Row when we demolished Indiana Avenue, a corridor that once pulsed with Black music, art, and entrepreneurship. Our challenge isn’t preservation now; it’s reconstruction. We need to rebuild that connective tissue through intentional investment, incentives, and leadership. And we also have to get better at spotting and supporting the next wave while it’s happening: things like BUTTER, Chreece, Epicurean. Imagine where we might be as a city if the Indy Jazz Fest had received sustained, intentional investment.

JH: That’s a powerful reminder that policy is people. It’s not abstract—it’s about who gets to build, work, and create. This isn’t about funding art for art’s sake. It’s about economic strategy.

PO: I also want to point out that when I talk about creative entrepreneurs, I mean people generating real value—jobs, commerce, community identity. These aren’t hobbyists. They’re founders who just happen to work in creative mediums. And guess what? Creative entrepreneurs are the ones powering Indiana’s Main Streets. Can’t wait to talk about that at the Summit!

JH: So how do we get more leaders to connect the dots?

PO: By talking ROI. By showing them that creative sectors already contribute billions to Indiana’s GDP—without coordinated investment. Imagine what happens when we start treating them the way we treat tech or advanced manufacturing.

JH: Policy helps, but also focus and faith in what’s possible.

PO: Focus and faith. Yes! I’d love to see a better marriage between physical assets, knowledge infrastructure, attractions, and programming. We already have the pieces, just not working in tandem. I hope we get to a place soon where policy meets imagination. Not sure if the Indiana Economic Development Corp will hang onto their Indiana for the Bold branding, but I hope they do. It’s comical in some ways because we haven’t been bold in a lot of ways, but I like the aspiration. Let’s manifest it. Maybe even within the decade?

JH: We might be closer than we think. The READI 2.0 studies you mentioned are mapping creative assets across the state. That visibility is a first step.

PO: Yes, and once those regional reports are public, we’ll finally have data to rally around. It’ll reveal patterns—no pun intended—of what’s working and what’s missing.

JH: Which connects to the question of creativity outside the arts. How do you see it shaping industries like manufacturing or tech?

PO: Think about an engineer who invents something brilliant. Without creativity, it not only wouldn’t get invented, it wouldn’t leave the lab. Creativity is what makes technical achievement human, through design, storytelling, and visibility. It’s both the heart and the delivery system of innovation.

And for the record, I love how you often describe that chain—innovation drives productivity, and productivity drives prosperity. I’d just add that innovation itself is applied creativity. If we want more of it, we need to be intentional about supporting and investing in its sources.

JH: Agreed! Usually we say entrepreneurs take innovation to market. But there’s a whole creativity stack inside that process.

PO: Pretty much. Without it, you’ve got a dusty prototype. With it, you’ve got something the world can adopt. Sports is another example. It could be just some athletic, competitive people running around on a field, but instead it’s an engine of economic impact—through stadium design, uniforms, photography, hype, spectacle. Creativity transforms the raw activity into an industry and then keeps it going.

JH: What do you wish civic and business leaders better understood about creative entrepreneurs?

PO: That they’re not hobbyists. They’re small business owners, job creators, and risk-takers. They deserve the same seriousness we extend to entrepreneurs in tech or manufacturing.

JH: You said earlier that we already have the ingredients. What will it take to get the recipe right?

PO: Honestly, coordination. A shared agenda. These READI studies are the first step. Once every region can point to its assets, leaders will have something concrete to build around—but capacity to do the work remains a real challenge. It’s time to start thinking about creative sectors through the lens of traditional economic development.

JH: So, looking ahead five years, what do you want people to say about Indiana’s creative reputation?

PO: Five years is tight, so we need to act now. AI is reshaping work. Talent is mobile. Indiana could be the place where creative businesses actually thrive, where regions know their assets and build around them. With AI and automation reshaping industries, creativity is the one skill set that can’t be automated. 

JH: You said it earlier—it’s about showing people what it looks like when you get it right.

PO: I actually think you’re the one who said it. What would it look like if we knock it out of the park?

It would look like a state where creativity isn’t treated as a luxury or a curiosity, but as a growth strategy. Where every region knows its creative assets as clearly as it knows its highways or industrial parks. Our empty buildings would become production spaces again—film studios, maker hubs, rehearsal rooms, design labs. You’d see small towns all over with thriving Main streets, and young people helming those businesses.

You’d see exciting, and nationally-recognized collaboration between universities and creative industries that sparks new companies, products, and jobs. You’d see young people staying, or better yet, flocking to Indiana, because they can make a living here doing what they love.

If we get it right, Indiana becomes known not just for what we make, but for how we imagine. The places people once drove through, they’d start driving to. The rest of the country would look at us the way they look at Austin or Nashville, not with surprise, but with respect.

Stay Connected

This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our friends at Life in Indy.