Howdy dear reader!

The last couple of weeks have been a lot — in the best, mildly brain-melting kind of way.

We launched PATTERN Mag Vol. 28, The Speed City Issue, with Indy Chamber at the first-ever Story Summit. We hosted our second Creative Economy Panel with KSM, this time focused on creativity as infrastructure. I was in Elkhart for IDEA Week, where we dug into what happens when creative activity is abundant but the support systems underneath it are still thin. And almost everywhere I turned, AI was in the room — sometimes directly, sometimes an elephant in the room.

A theme is starting to emerge.

Indiana is getting better at recognizing that creativity matters to growth, talent, identity, and competitiveness. That is real progress and fills me with much hope. But we are still too quick to collapse the creative economy into nonprofit arts and culture, placemaking, or storytelling alone. Those things matter, but they are not the whole picture.

The harder conversation is about creative sectors as industries. Jobs. Companies. Founders. Intellectual property. Venues. Studios. Production capacity. Digital tools. Distribution. Capital. Space. Policy. The systems that allow creative people not only to contribute to a place, but to build sustainable businesses and careers inside it.

That distinction between nonprofit arts and profit-generating creative commerce, matters even more as AI accelerates. Last week Governor Braun announced IN AI, a new statewide initiative focused on helping businesses adopt “human-centered AI,” grow jobs, and increase wages. That’s the right conversation Indiana should be having. It’s also exactly the kind of conversation creative sectors need to be a part of from the beginning.

This week I’m headed to Nashville for ULI’s Spring Meeting, where I’ll be spending time with people thinking about cities, real estate, development, and what makes places competitive. Nashville is always an interesting case study for us — not because Indiana should copy it, but because it understands, in a way we are still learning to articulate, that culture and economic development are not separate conversations.

Also: if you were expecting our next digital cover interview this weekend, thank you for your patience. We’re pushing it to next Sunday so we can give it the space it deserves.

Let’s get into it.

— Polina

At IDEA Week in Elkhart, Polina moderated a conversation on “Creativity as Infrastructure” inside the Midwest Museum of American Art — a former bank turned cultural space that made the point before anyone on stage had to. The conversation surfaced a distinction Indiana needs to get sharper about: a creative ecosystem is the activity itself; infrastructure is the support system underneath it.

Indiana does not lack artists, venues, festivals, nonprofits, creative entrepreneurs, or ideas. What it often lacks are the systems that help that activity endure and grow: affordable space, operating support, business development, policy, procurement pathways, shared data, capital, and coordination. Without that second layer, we keep celebrating creative bright spots while leaving the people behind them to survive on grit.

Indiana is officially entering the AI adoption race. Governor Braun announced IN AI, a statewide initiative led in partnership with the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, focused on helping businesses use human-centered AI to grow jobs, raise wages, and increase competitiveness.

The initiative is designed to help businesses identify practical ways to use AI, connect with university partners, and explore funding tools like INTAP, Innovation Vouchers, and Micro-Internships. For creative companies and entrepreneurs, the opportunity may be less about “making art with AI” and more about reducing the administrative drag that keeps them from growing.

Polina unpacks what that could look like for studios, agencies, publishers, production companies, venues, and other creative businesses.

In this IBJ Q&A, Indianapolis-based urban designer Jeffery Tompkins argues that cities often overcomplicate the very conditions that allow great places to emerge. His critique of zoning, consultant-heavy planning, and overly prescribed development has clear implications for the creative economy: if we want more neighborhood-scale businesses, cultural districts, third places, and locally rooted creative activity, we need systems that make those things easier to start — not harder.

PATTERN Mag Vol. 28, The Speed City Issue, officially launched at Story Summit in partnership with Indy Chamber. The issue is another love letter to Indianapolis, but it also marks something deeper for Pattern: a continued evolution from fashion magazine to creative economy platform.

For 14 years, PATTERN has used print as a storytelling tool, a talent-development pipeline, and a way to document the people shaping this city’s creative identity. Vol. 28 continues that work while connecting it to a broader regional question: how do stories, creative talent, and civic ambition shape the way a place sees itself?

In two weeks, Pattern welcomes its 14th class of summer interns.

Since 2012, more than 250 students and early-career creatives have come through Pattern internships and fellowships, gaining hands-on experience in writing, design, photography, events, marketing, production, and creative entrepreneurship. This program remains one of the most practical ways we support the creative economy: by giving emerging talent real work, real expectations, real feedback, and real connections.

Pattern’s work is expanding because the need is expanding.

Through PATTERN Magazine, the Indiana Creative Economy Summit, our Creative Economy Panel Series, internships and fellowships, Createway, research, storytelling, and statewide convening, we are working to strengthen the systems Indiana’s creative economy needs to grow.

That means more than celebrating creative talent. It means building the connective tissue around it: visibility, data, career pathways, policy conversations, business support, and rooms where creative sectors are taken seriously as part of Indiana’s economic future.

If your company, foundation, or organization cares about talent attraction, quality of place, entrepreneurship, innovation, storytelling, or the future of Indiana’s creative industries, we’d love to talk about sponsorship and partnership opportunities.

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