Creative approach to growth. Professionals within South Florida's arts communities have been ignoring county lines in pursuit of mutual success

South Florida CEO, June, 2005 by Amy Drew Thompson

Back in 1989, when Chuck Elderd became the Palm Beach County film commissioner, his counterparts around the state complained they were not getting enough business or enough leads.

"I said, 'You can't depend on the state. You should never depend on anybody else to do your job. We have to take responsibility for our own jobs,'" Elderd recalls.

He suggested forming a statewide association to attend trade shows and collectively increase the member counties' marketing potential. It would be a cohesive group, communicating on a regular basis to plan strategies.

"We'll have a marketing plan. We'll have a business plan. We'll have all these plans and we'll all work together. Whaddya think?" he remembers asking his colleagues.

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According to Elderd, they gushed over the idea, then quickly relegated him to the assignment of writing the by-laws. Elderd pushed ahead anyway, and formed the Film Florida group.

Thanks to Elderd's initial efforts, film commissioners statewide now work closely together along with the Governor's Office of Film & Entertainment and their Los Angeles-based liaison. Regionally, Elderd regularly coordinates with offices in Broward and Miami-Dade counties to make it easier for filmmakers to shoot in multiple locations across counties. Business is up thanks to the increased cooperation, regional film industry leaders say.

Members of South Florida's creative industries are finding that erasing county lines not only results in happier patrons, but it also pumps up the creative energy in the area.

"Cities and regions which are open to forward-thinking and creativity have the characteristics that attract innovative, inventive and entrepreneurial people," says economist and best-selling author Richard Florida. "So this idea of openness to new things, offbeat ideas and the creative class is exactly the ecosystem you need to build robust high-growth, high-tech economies."

While projects within the arts community certainly make South Florida more appealing and culturally valid, Florida, who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class and, more recently, The Flight of the Creative Class, believes the first step to growing the "creative class" in the regional economy is not found on a painter's palette, but in a scientist's Petri dish.

"One of the best pieces of news for South Florida is the movement of the Scripps Research Institute to the region," he says. "Scripps is the first piece of the puzzle that made San Diego one of the top-ranking regions in the world on the high-tech and creativity index."

Scripps, one of the largest, private, non-profit research organizations in the nation, is internationally recognized for its scientific research.

Economist Florida argues that attracting the creative class--a formidable 30 percent of the nation's workforce in industries as varied as journalism, law, and biomedical research and information technology--is a factor in helping regions to thrive. He points to three "Ts: talent, technology and tolerance." that translate to how many high-tech companies an area has, how many people are engaged in creative occupations such as science, entertainment, culture, engineering and how segregated or integrated the population is. The creative class, Florida argues, is the key to future economic growth in any region.

The better the creative scene, Florida claims, the more likely an area is to attract the creative class. What South Florida needs to do, he says, "is see itself as a region. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties will live or die together, not separately."

* Working For the Arts

Increasingly, members of South Florida's art community--from museum curators to stage managers to musical directors--and the county agencies that market these venues and attractions are working together for the collective success of the region. In few places is this more evident than the flourishing field of the visual arts.

"Our job is to recommend the best solutions to problems for our clients, even if that means shooting scenes in areas other than Miami-Dade," says Miami-Dade County Film Commissioner Jeff Peel. "In the long run, this approach will bring producers back to us again and again because they know we are working together to help them to achieve the best production outcomes."

Palm Beach's Elderd concurs. "We've had CSI: Miami shoot up here and I know they've shot in Fort Lauderdale. We've had Miami Vice shoot up here. [The Burt Reynolds television series] B.L Stryker was based up here, but shot in Miami and Broward all the time. You never look at this territorially," he says. "It's not good for business."

Proponents of the area's performance arts are similarly minded and sometimes ahead of the curve. In 1994, the Greater Miami Opera Association and the Opera Guild of Fort Lauderdale merged to create Florida Grand Opera. Both companies had long histories in the region, but the merger proved a positive evolution. The company performs at both the Miami-Dade County Auditorium and Broward Center for the Performing Arts.