Howdy, dear reader!

It’s May! No, wait. May is basically over. Cue the sound of a race car flying by at 225 mph. Blurrrr. I know everyone felt that. 😅

Here’s what I remember from the last couple of weeks.

I went to Nashville for ULI’s Spring Meeting, where I was reminded that the built environment is never just about buildings. It is about confidence, identity, risk, capital, design, experience, and the stories people believe about a place. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more of the ULI Indiana community, and Nashville gave me plenty to chew on: a city where music, hospitality, real estate, tourism, and brand all seem to understand they are part of the same larger machine.

The highlight was hearing Garth Brooks banter with a couple of his developer partners about Friends in Low Places, his bar and honky-tonk on Lower Broadway. Even if you’re not a country music fan, or haven’t given Mr. Brooks much thought, (As I am not, nor haven’t) it was hard not to like the guy. He kept referring to his wife as “Ms. Yearwood.” He was funny. And he had some surprisingly useful things to say about service, experience, storytelling, safety, and what happens when a creative person is deeply involved in shaping a physical place. More on that below.

But back to Nashville. I’m not suggesting Indiana should try to become Nashville. But we should really pay much closer attention to what happens when creative people are treated as serious contributors to development, not just atmosphere-makers hired after the real decisions are done.

That same idea kept following me around. At the topping ceremony for the new Westin hotel at the Indianapolis Airport, the creative economy was visible in architecture, interiors, space planning, branding, environmental design, and the local art that will eventually live throughout the building. At Landmark Columbus Foundation’s Founder’s Day, the conversation was about design excellence not as decoration, but as civic practice. And at the IU Venture Summit, Todd Wagner’s keynote and the broader IU Innovates work offered another reminder that ideas need systems around them if they are going to become companies, products, jobs, and long-term value.

All of it pointed to a distinction I keep coming back to: making places more interesting is not the same thing as building an economy around creative work.

Pattern cares deeply about the first. We want places to be more meaningful, active, beautiful, connected, and loved. But our lane is the second: what systems, spaces, policies, and capital are needed so creative people can build sustainable businesses and careers in Indiana?

That distinction matters because we don’t merely need more murals, festivals, and cool third places. We need the industry infrastructure underneath them and more people who understand that creativity is part of economic competitiveness.

June is going to be packed, and a lot of what follows in this issue points back to that same idea: creative work is showing up everywhere. But if we want it to become durable economic value, we have to build the systems around it.

Let’s get into it.

— Polina

At ULI's Spring Meeting in Nashville, Polina expected to hear from developers and policy folks. She did not expect one of the clearest lessons on urban development to come from Garth Brooks — talking about egress, sound bleed, staff culture, and whether a building would still be serving people 30 years from now. That conversation, plus a talk from Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow Carol Coletta on designing public space for connection, raised a question Indiana needs to sit with: what actually happens when artists are at the table from the beginning, instead of being asked to make a place interesting after the big decisions are already made?

Nashville is also a cautionary tale. The same creative identity that made the city valuable is getting consumed faster than it's being replenished, and a lot of the people who built it are quietly looking for somewhere new to land. Some of them are looking at Indiana. Meanwhile, Indiana's creative economy sits at roughly 2% of state GDP, near the bottom of all U.S. states. The opportunity is real, but the window is small.

Last summer, San Francisco hosted three blockbuster concert weekends that drew more than 450,000 people and generated an estimated $150 million in economic activity. This spring, the city brought back SF Music Week, pairing live music with artist development, free industry programming, and more than two dozen partner events across the city. More public-facing music activations are scheduled through summer.

It's another example of something cities figure out eventually: when you want to boost morale, jump-start economic activity, or breathe life back into a downtown, creatives are the fastest, most reliable lever you have. The smartest cities don't just pull that lever in a crisis. They build the conditions for it to keep working.

San Francisco is doing both. Alongside the concerts and festivals, the city is making public gatherings easier to produce, including recent permitting changes aimed at streamlining smaller markets, pop-ups, block parties, and neighborhood events. That's a significant paradigm shift in a state known for heavy regulation, high costs, and complicated approval processes. Good for SF! The big concerts get the headlines, but the permitting changes are what help keep grassroots energy alive.

Detroit offers a longer view of the same pattern. After decades of decline and a 2013 municipal bankruptcy, the city leaned into design, culture, adaptive reuse, and creative identity as part of a larger recovery story. It did not fix everything. Detroit still faces serious challenges. But its population has started growing again after decades of decline, and its creative reputation has shifted dramatically — from post-industrial cautionary tale to UNESCO City of Design and, more recently, Wallpaper*’s 2026 City of the Year.

The lesson is not that creative expression saves cities by itself. It doesn’t. But history keeps showing us the same thing: when places need energy, meaning, and belief again, creative people are often the ones who help people see what is still possible.

On June 5, Pattern and the Indiana Music Alliance (IMA) are taking the conversation on the road with our first Indiana Music Economy Session in Fort Wayne.

Fort Wayne is the right place to start. The city is home to Sweetwater, The Clyde, the Embassy Theatre, Middle Waves Music Festival, Piere’s, the Brass Rail, and a deep bench of musicians, venues, educators, festivals, and music-adjacent businesses.

The session will focus on venue storytelling: how Fort Wayne’s music spaces can grow audiences, communicate their value, and become more visible anchors for culture, community, tourism, and local identity.

Fort Wayne is the first of four sessions we’re planning this year, with South Bend-Elkhart, Madison, and Bloomington next on the list. Each session is designed to help us better understand the assets, gaps, and opportunities shaping Indiana’s music economy outside of Indianapolis.

IMA is a statewide effort to de-silo Indiana’s music industry, advocate for policies that support independent venues and music businesses, and help create the conditions for Indiana artists and music professionals to thrive.

This is slow work. It is also necessary work. Indiana has the pieces. Now we’re working with regions to help connect the dots. (Want to keep up with this project? Sign up for the IMA Newsletter on the website.)

Thank you to Visit Fort Wayne, Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership and Fort Wayne Philharmonic for their partnership and support!

Look at those sweet faces. Our summer interns are here, and we’re so thrilled to have them.

As usual, we are wasting no time throwing them into the Pattern deep end — magazine work, events, research, storytelling, production support, social content, and whatever else lands in the “can someone help get this done?” pile.

Intern season is one of our favorite reminders that Indiana has no shortage of emerging creative talent. The work is making sure they get real experience, real mentorship, real connections, and a reason to see a future for themselves here.

Last week, IU Ventures hosted its annual Venture Summit, and we were on-site for the IU Innovates Student Startup Showcase. The student pitches were ambitious, and genuinely exciting.

But for Team Pattern, the best part was watching each participant get their hands on a fresh-off-the-press copy of the IU Innovates yearbook, which our team has been working on since January.

The project was a true team lift: interviews, writing, editing, photography, design, production, deadline gymnastics, and all the invisible details that go into making a printed piece feel effortless. Seeing it land in students’ hands was especially satisfying because a publication like this does more than look beautiful. It gives IU Innovates, its founders, and its supporters something tangible to hold, share, and point to when they are trying to show momentum to donors, funders, partners, parents, alumni, and university leadership.

IU Innovates is doing seriously impressive work. Julie Heath and her team are building real momentum, visibility, and pathways for student founders inside Indiana University. We are taking notes. Furiously.

Our next Creative Economy Panel with KSM is happening on June 11

Speaking of Julie Heath and IU Innovates, Julie will be our special guest on June 11 to chat about Talent & Innovation for a Changing Economy, a conversation about making sure that we’re thinking about workforce development with an eye to the future.

Creative talent is often discussed as a quality-of-life asset — something that makes communities more interesting, vibrant, and attractive. But creative talent can also become businesses, jobs, products, intellectual property, and scalable companies when the right systems are in place. This conversation explores how Indiana can better connect creative skills, higher education, entrepreneurship, industry needs, and place-based economic development to help creative talent become creative enterprise.

A city’s “vibe” is usually someone’s unpaid labor, underfunded business, risky lease, scrappy event, or stubborn act of belief. If we want the vibe to last, we have to build better systems around the people creating it.

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