Memphis Supports Creativity. But Are We Capitalizing Creative Enterprise?
Memphis talks a lot about its creative economy.
We should. Creativity is one of this city’s greatest economic assets. Music, film, design, architecture, fashion, publishing, media, live entertainment and other creative industries are part of both our identity and our economy.
But there is a fundamental question underneath that conversation:
When we say we are investing in the creative economy, are we actually practicing economic development — or are we primarily funding arts support?
Those things overlap.
They are not the same.
Memphis has developed an extensive network of arts organizations, cultural institutions, grants, programs, educational initiatives and nonprofit intermediaries. All of these can contribute to a healthy creative ecosystem.
But economic development asks another set of questions:
Where is the capital for the production company?
Where is the financing for the record label?
Where is the investment in the game studio, publisher, designer or entertainment company?
Where is the money that allows a creative enterprise to build something, own it, sell it, employ people and grow?
The problem is not that Memphis supports the arts. The problem is that we too often treat arts support as though it were a complete creative-economy strategy.
Supporting the arts is not the same as capitalizing the creative economy
Nonprofits, education, philanthropy, government and civic institutions all play important roles in a creative ecosystem.
They preserve institutions, provide education, operate venues, offer services, create public programming and support creative people.
But those are primarily support functions.
Capitalizing a creative enterprise is different.
It means financing the equipment, employees, production, intellectual property, facilities, marketing and distribution that allow a business to produce something and earn revenue from it.
The economic cycle looks more like:
Capital → production → products and intellectual property → revenue → jobs → reinvestment → more economic activity.
A healthy creative economy needs both support and capital.
The problem begins when the system designed to support creativity becomes the primary system we use to develop the creative economy.
Economic development through an arts lens
This may be the larger structural problem.
When Memphis looks at logistics, manufacturing, technology or bioscience, we naturally speak the language of economic development:
Capital. Companies. Workforce. Infrastructure. Production. Ownership. Markets. Exports. Growth.
But when the subject becomes music, film, design, media or other creative industries, the vocabulary often changes:
Grants. Programs. Artist support. Cultural programming. Nonprofits. Community engagement.
The underlying businesses have not stopped being businesses.
We should not stop practicing economic development simply because the product being created happens to be culture.
Creative industries are businesses
A record label, film company, game studio, publisher, design firm or entertainment company may produce culture, but it still needs the same basic things other businesses need:
capital, employees, equipment, customers, markets and growth.
When a creative business needs financing, another workshop or networking program may be useful — but it is not financing.
Programs can build knowledge. Capital builds capacity.
Eventually, somebody has to finance the thing being made.
We may be measuring the arts and calling it the creative economy
There is also a problem with the way creative economic activity is often discussed and measured.
Arts-impact studies frequently focus on nonprofit cultural organizations and their audiences. Those studies tell us something important about cultural institutions and the spending they produce.
But they do not necessarily describe the entire creative economy.
Film companies, recording studios, publishers, designers, game developers, media companies and other commercial creative enterprises can disappear from the picture.
If most of the data we collect measures nonprofit arts activity, and most of the institutions participating in the conversation come from the arts-support system, it becomes easy to mistake that system for the creative economy itself.
It isn't.
The creative economy also includes entrepreneurs, employers, producers, intellectual-property owners and companies selling creative goods and services into markets inside and outside Memphis.
The people doing the work are already telling us what is missing
Recent research into Memphis’s creative community identifies many of the same problems conventional businesses face: financial instability, inadequate business infrastructure, limited market access and difficulty building sustainable revenue.
In one recent Memphis study, more than half of participants reported owning a business, yet fewer than half said that business provided their primary income. Entrepreneurs specifically identified the need for seed capital, legal and financial advisory services, branding assistance and access to broader markets.
The same research found that networking was considerably more common than direct financial support among those receiving assistance. Respondents also identified needs for startup capital, business-development funding and production infrastructure.
That distinction matters.
The problems being described are increasingly economic. The solutions we reach for are still often programmatic.
That is the gap.
Support infrastructure can grow without productive capacity growing at the same rate
A nonprofit can provide training.
A foundation can make grants.
A cultural organization can create opportunities.
A government office can convene stakeholders.
An educational institution can teach business skills.
All of that can be useful.
But if nearly every response to a creative-economy problem becomes another program, workshop, grant, initiative or intermediary organization, we can strengthen the support system without strengthening productive capacity at the same rate.
We can have:
More programs.
More organizations.
More workshops.
More initiatives.
More networking.
Without necessarily creating:
More businesses.
More production.
More ownership.
More intellectual property.
More revenue.
More jobs.
That is the imbalance Memphis needs to examine.
What would creative economic development look like?
The answer is not to dismantle the arts-support system.
It is to build something alongside it.
Creative economic development could include:
Seed capital.
Low-interest production loans.
Equipment financing.
Working capital.
Investment in locally owned intellectual property.
Production facilities.
Distribution support.
Procurement opportunities.
Export development.
Investment in companies capable of bringing outside revenue into Memphis.
That changes the central question.
Instead of asking only:
How do we support creatives?
We should also ask:
What would allow this creative enterprise to produce more, own more, employ more people and sell more outside Memphis?
That is economic development.
Follow the money
Ultimately, this is a capital-allocation question.
How much money is being spent in Memphis in the name of creativity?
How much supports institutions and programs?
How much provides technical assistance?
How much supports cultural activity?
And how much actually reaches productive creative enterprises as capital?
Those numbers matter.
A city can spend a great deal of money around creativity without necessarily increasing the productive capacity of its creative economy.
This is not an argument for choosing businesses over nonprofits.
A healthy ecosystem needs individual creatives, businesses, nonprofits, philanthropy, education, government and civic institutions working together.
But those parts of the ecosystem perform different functions.
We should stop expecting one part of the system to perform all of them.
The larger problem
Memphis has built much of its creative-economy infrastructure through the institutional traditions of arts and cultural support rather than through the traditions of business and economic development.
That helps explain why, even when we recognize that creative entrepreneurs need economic development, the solutions that emerge so often become grants, programs, workshops, training, technical assistance and nonprofit intermediaries.
Those things are not inherently wrong.
They are simply not substitutes for productive capital.
Memphis does recognize that its creatives need economic development. But we continue trying to deliver economic development primarily through an arts-support framework.
That is not the same thing as building a capital system for creative enterprise.
Memphis does not lack creativity
There are people in this city right now with ideas, products, intellectual property and businesses that could grow.
The challenge is not convincing them to become more creative.
It is creating the economic conditions that allow their creativity to become sustainable production.
Finance the production.
Buy the equipment.
Hire the employees.
Develop the intellectual property.
Build the product.
Market it.
Take it outside Memphis.
Bring revenue back into Memphis.
That is economic development.
Memphis has spent decades building infrastructure for supporting creativity.
The next step is building infrastructure for investing in creative enterprise.
If we genuinely believe creativity is an economic asset, we have to do more than support it.
We have to capitalize it.
Memphis Support VS Capital
The Creative Economic Ecosphere
