News release from Wunderkammer Company:
Wunderkammer Company launches Creative Cenus
(September 8, 2014) – Wunderkammer Company is proud to announce that it has received generous funding from the Knight Foundation Fund to produce “Creative Census”, a comprehensive geographically specific creative asset-mapping project, focused on the creative sector employee, and their broader impact within a community. “Through Creative Census, we will gain further understanding of this vibrant business sector in Northeast Indiana, providing our region a map to the development, attraction, and retention of globally competitive creative workers,” said Dan Swartz, Wunderkammer Company President.
The creative sector of the economy commonly referred to as “creative industries” encompass both high growth potential employers as well as high pay potential employment, making it an attractive sector to encourage at both a municipal and regional level. These employees tend to be higher educated than the average US work force, more entrepreneurial (3.5x US workforce to be self-employed), and more competitive within the work force as more employers are looking to seek creative employees, and more employers (85%) looking to hire creative employees are unable to find the applicants they seek. Combining these statistics with the overall workforce trends of Copyright industries accounting for over 11% of the US GDP ($1.63 trillion) and the growing importance of the flexible, contracted worker within the workforce (40-50% of Fortune 500 companies will likely be temp workers by 2020), and the creative sector of the economy becomes a very important indicator for the strength and growth of a community.
Creative Census begins immediately with a research phase, which includes a survey for creative sector employees (full time and part time/contract), followed by a series of focus groups, and individual interviews. To fulfill its objectives, Wunderkammer Company is going to obtain over 4,500 surveys from employers/employees from within this sector. Following this research phase, Wunderkammer Company will identify the three largest geographic concentrations of creative sector employees and begin a planning phase, providing applicable quality of life plans with specific projects designed to further entice the attraction, development, and retention of individuals working with the creative economy. Following this phase, Wunderkammer Company will begin an implementation phase by working with partners within the community to accomplish the most highly defined and easily accomplished portions of the quality of life plans, and determine a roadmap to the accomplishment of larger scale pieces.
This multi-faceted project will be the first in-depth research related to the creative sector of the economy in Northeast Indiana, and act as a bridge between community engagement and economic development, while also acting as a tool to inform planning, marketing, policy development and public/ private creative economy investment strategies.
Currently, the Creative Census survey can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/creativecensus
About Wunderkammer
Wunderkammer Company is a 501(c)3 independent non-profit contemporary art center located in the former Casa D’Angelo’s restaurant building at 3402 Fairfield Ave in the heart of Fort Wayne’s historic neighborhoods in the 46807 zip code. With the mission of revitalizing communities through contemporary art, Wunderkammer Company works with artists, civic-minded organizations, and the community at large, finding new strategies to communicate diverse and challenging ideas, while finding ways to build and share values between all parties involved.More information is available at www.wunderkammercompany.com.
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