convert

A B O U T T H I S R E P O R T

I N S I D E

The Center for an Urban Future produced this report in partnership with Mt. Auburn Associates. The report builds

upon the Center’s 2002 report about the role of arts and culture in New York’s economy, titled “The Creative Engine,”

as well as Mt. Auburn’s considerable analysis of the creative economy.

The Center for an Urban Future is a New York City-based think tank dedicated to independent, fact-based research

about critical issues affecting New York’s future including economic development, workforce development, higher

education and the arts. For more information or to sign up for our monthly e-mail bulletin, visit www.nycfuture.org.

Mt. Auburn Associates is a Massachusetts-based consulting firm that focuses on economic development analysis and

strategy. For more information, visit www.mtauburnassociates.com.

The report was written by Robin Keegan and Neil Kleiman of the Center for an Urban Future with Beth Siegel and

Michael Kane of Mt. Auburn Associates. It was edited by Andrea Coller McAuliff, David Jason Fischer and Jonathan

Bowles and designed by Julia Reich with cover design by JEROME. Additional research assistance was provided by Tara

Colton, Doreen Jakob, Suman Saran, Alexis Frasz, Sascha Brinkoff and Dan Dray. We also acknowledge the helpful con-

tributions we received from the members of an advisory committee of creative sector leaders and many others.

The report was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Deutsche Bank, the New York Community Trust, the

Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Independence Community Foundation.

Special research support was provided by the British Consulate-General. Additional program support was provided

by the Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation and the Taconic Foundation.

The Center for an Urban Future is a project of City Futures, Inc. City Futures Board of Directors: Andrew Reicher

(Chair), Ken Emerson, Mark Winston Griffith, Marc Jahr, David Lebenstein, Ira Rubenstein, John Siegal, Karen Trella

and Peter Williams.

Key Findings p. 5

Inside New York’s Creative Economy p. 8

The creative city runs on talent, clusters, audience
and the interaction of non-profit and for-profit work.

Spotlight on City Hall p. 14

What has the Bloomberg administration
done to support the city’s creative ecosystem?

Show Stoppers? p. 17

Challenges to the city’s pre-eminence in the
creative sector include high costs, economic
insecurity and a lack of business skills.

Learning from London p. 25

London has done far more than New York
to harness its creative assets.

Recommendations p. 27

Creative activity may

be the closest thing to

a natural resource in

New York, but it is

also a little-understood

and long-overlooked

asset, and one that

can no longer be

taken for granted.

FROM THE SOUTH BRONX TO MADISON AVENUE,

New York has long been an incubator for cutting-edge

artistic expression, a showcase for important art forms

and a home for dynamic creative companies. But

despite New York’s longstanding status as a global cen-

ter for creative activity, the alchemy that allows the city’s

creative economy to thrive is still largely a mystery.

Several scholars in the United States and abroad

have recently examined the role of the creative econo-

my as an engine of growth, with some studies exploring

the intricacies of various parts of the picture here in

New York. But none have gotten to the heart of what

makes this vital part of the economy work or provided

a blueprint for maintaining New York’s creative pre-

eminence in the face of intense competition.

Until now.

This study, for the first time, provides a full picture

of New York City’s “creative core”—encompassing both

non-profit arts and cultural organizations and for-

profit creative companies, such as advertising agencies,

film producers and publishers. The study also details

what is needed to ensure that this critical part of the

city’s economy continues to flourish, an important dis-

cussion at a time when a growing number of cities and

states are building economic development strategies

around attracting the kind of creative people that have

long congregated in New York.

This report is the culmination of more than two

years of research into New York’s creative economy. The

Center for an Urban Future conducted this research in

full partnership with Mt. Auburn Associates, a national-

ly-renowned consulting firm that previously produced

the first major sector analysis of the creative economy,

titled “The Creative Economy Initiative: The Role of Arts

and Culture in New England’s Competitiveness.” This

report also draws upon a handful of studies about the

impact of arts and culture on New York’s economy, from

the Center’s own 2002 report “The Creative Engine” to

the seminal study by the Port Authority and the Alliance

for the Arts in 1983 (updated in 1993).

While the combined strength of the city’s creative

sector may not trump the impact of the financial serv-

ices sector, it isn’t far off. The city’s “creative core” (see

page 6) consists of 11,671 businesses and non-profits

(5.7 percent of all employers in the five boroughs) and

provides employment to 309,142 people (8.1 percent of

all city workers). In recent years, creative industries

have added jobs at a considerably faster rate than the

overall city economy: between 1998 and 2002, employ-

ment in New York’s creative core grew by 13.1 percent

(adding 32,000 jobs) while the city’s overall job totals

increased by 6.5 percent during this period.

Among the city’s nearly unparalleled concentration of

creative core enterprises, New York has more than 2,000

arts and cultural non-profits and over 500 art galleries,

roughly 2,300 design services businesses, more than 1,100

advertising-related firms, nearly 700 book and magazine

publishers and 145 film production studios and stages.

No other place in the U.S. even comes close to

matching the city’s creative assets. In fact, 8.3 percent

of all creative sector workers in the U.S. are based in

New York. The city is home to over a third of all the

country’s actors and roughly 27 percent of the nation’s

fashion designers, 12 percent of film editors, 10 percent

of set designers, 9 percent of graphic designers, 8 per-

cent of architects and 7 percent of fine artists.

The entities that comprise the creative core range

from mega-corporations such as Time Warner and

vaunted institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art

to small organizations and individual entrepreneurs

throughout the five boroughs. It includes non-profits and

for-profits, full-time workers and freelancers. Indeed, 28

percent of all those in the city’s creative workforce—

roughly 79,000 people—are self-employed.

People working in the creative core range from the

lighting designer who illuminates the Great White Way

to graffiti muralists from the South Bronx who are

commissioned not only to create murals and memorials

locally, but to provide their talent to ad campaigns for

major corporations. Their goals are variously artistic,

social, political and economic. And they draw upon an

unmatched set of strengths that has fueled New York

City’s cultural greatness—starting with abundant talent

in the creative fields.

“The best thing is the talent pool,” says Mara

Manus, executive director of the Public Theater. “It’s

incredible—from every kind of artist to crew member.”

The presence of so many creative people, in so many

different fields, has a significant ripple effect on the

city’s economy. For instance, Department of Cultural

CREATIVE NEW YORK

FROM ARTS ORGANIZATIONS TO AD AGENCIES, NEW YORK’S VAST CREATIVE SECTOR

IS ONE OF THE CITY’S MOST IMPORTANT, AND LEAST UNDERSTOOD, ECONOMIC ASSETS.

Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin says that New York is

home to numerous businesses that are here primarily so

they can easily service those in the city’s creative sector,

from the many curtain manufacturers that sell to local

theaters to firms like Freed of London, the United

Kingdom-based maker of ballet shoes that probably

wouldn’t have a location in Long Island City if not for the

large number of ballet dancers here. “There are a num-

ber of industries that simply must be in New York City

and decide to locate here because of the arts,” says Levin.

But while creative activity may be the closest thing to

a natural resource in New York City, it is also a little-under-

stood and long-overlooked economic asset—and one that

can no longer be taken for granted. In recent years, con-

sumers have become ever more interested in content that

offers value beyond the merely functional. The creative

industries have attempted to respond by generating prod-

ucts—from films and plays to books and computer

games—that speak to this growing consumer demand. But

this trend, combined with the technological changes that

are revolutionizing a number of creative fields (see page

24), also means that they don’t need to do it here.

The opportunity for growth within these indus-

tries—and for the cities in which they are located—is

great. But as changes in communications and distribu-

tion practices open these markets to entrants from all

corners of the globe, it is critical that New York first

begin to understand these industries and their work-

force collectively as a key contributor to the city’s

economy. Secondly, city leaders must begin to develop

programs and policies that address some of the real

obstacles facing the creative core—and potentially

undermining New York’s position as the national

leader of creative content production.

Some concerns, such as the high cost and limited

availability of appropriate work space, are perennial.

“When we work elsewhere in the country, even in D.C.,

people faint when they see the budget line for rent,” says

Muffie Meyer, co-founder and president of Middlemarch

Films, a documentary film production company. “And we

are paying below market. In many cases it affects how

we compete with other companies pitching for jobs.”

The worsening economic insecurity of creative sector

workers is another major challenge. “Health insurance is

definitely an issue,” says graphic designer Ari Moore. “I

can’t afford any of the options out there—there’s a free-

lancers union, but it’s still very expensive to get health

insurance through that. I’ve had to not get care, and then,

since I waited so long, I had to get more expensive care.”

Other issues demand the attention of city policy-

makers as well. While New York’s prominence in the

creative industries seems secure enough for the

moment, it is in no way guaranteed. In the film indus-

try, for example, many production companies have

passed over New York in favor of lower-cost locations

from Toronto and Vancouver to Louisiana. There is an

unfortunate precedent for this trend; during the 1960s,

the music industry saw a significant shift to Los

Angeles for the same reasons—lower costs for produc-

tion and other supports not available in New York.

This trend goes beyond one or two industries: from

architecture to dance, cities across the country and

throughout the world are eating into New York’s mar-

ket share and aggressively pursuing our creative talent.

As public policy expert Richard Florida and others

advance the argument that culture is an economic

development asset, cities and states in the U.S. and

abroad are developing policies designed to attract the

creative workers that many policymakers now believe

are key to sustained growth.

The importance of this shift goes far beyond the cre-

ation of “arts districts” in Pittsburgh or artist live/work

space in Minneapolis. Twenty years ago, New York was

home to half of all advertising agency headquarters in

the world. Now it claims less than one third, according to

AdWeek’s “2004 Trends in Advertising” report.

Perhaps the biggest concern is that, as Time Out

New York senior editor Howard Halle puts it, “New York

is becoming more of a market for art, than an incuba-

tor. It’s still a place people want to come and make it,

but more people say: ‘I’ll pass, and stay here in Berlin

and make art and if what I do catches on, then maybe

I’ll eventually come to New York.’”

New York isn’t the only creative capital facing

these challenges, but global competitors like London

and Toronto are ahead of the Big Apple in developing

public and private sector strategies to maintain and

grow their creative industries.

In this rapidly-changing landscape, without a for-

ward-thinking strategy to support creative endeavors,

the city that never sleeps may one day wake up to find

it has lost its edge. The good news is that the city and

major stakeholders throughout the creative economy

are eager to address these issues. But until now there

has been no roadmap. This report—more than two

years in the making, informed by over 200 interviews

with leaders in the creative industries, creative work-

ers, economists, officials, patrons and other stakehold-

ers, and conducted in partnership with the ground-

breaking research team at Mt. Auburn Associates (see

Technical Appendix, page 29)—should help guide poli-

cymakers toward a holistic strategy to meet those chal-

lenges. We present it with confidence that its findings

and recommendations can help preserve and expand

the city’s creative pre-eminence, the special creative

mix that makes New York New York.

❖

■

As of 2002, New York City’s creative workforce comprised
309,142 people, accounting for more than 8.1 percent of all
those employed in the five boroughs. The total includes
278,388 employed in the creative industries, as well as
another 30,754 involved in creative occupations, such as a
fashion designer working for an apparel manufacturer,
which our methodology does not consider part of the creative
industries (see Technical Appendix, page 29).

■

There are 11,671 businesses and non-profits—5.7 percent
of all city employers—in New York’s creative core. In addi-
tion to this figure, the city’s creative core includes 79,761 sole
proprietorships, meaning that roughly 29 percent of the
309,142 in the creative workforce are self-employed.

■

In recent years New York has lost some of its market share in
certain industries, but it is still the unrivaled center of the cre-
ative economy in the U.S., accounting for 8.3 percent of all
creative sector workers nationwide. Internationally, only
London, which counts its creative workforce near 525,000,
boasts a larger creative workforce than New York.

■

In recent years, the creative core has been one of the more
dependable growth areas for the city’s economy. Between
1998 and 2002, employment in New York’s creative core
grew by 13.1 percent (adding 32,000 jobs) while the city’s
overall job totals increased by 6.5 percent during this period.

■

Much of the recent growth in creative industries has been
among the self-employed. During 1998 and 2002, self-
employed individuals accounted for nearly half (48 percent)
of all employment growth in the creative core.

■

Across the sector, the number one reason creative businesses
choose to operate in New York is access to the city’s tremen-
dous pool of talented and skilled workers.

■

New York’s creative core is bolstered by an unmatched sup-
port infrastructure. This includes internationally-acclaimed
educational institutions—from The Juilliard School and NYU’s
Tisch School of the Arts to the Pratt Institute and the School of
American Ballet—as well as a large community of arts-friend-
ly philanthropic foundations and patrons, prominent trade
organizations and a local government that provides a signif-
icant level of attention and support. The city also boasts more
than 15 unions and 50 locals that serve creative workers.

■

New York’s singular mix of both non-profit and for-profit
creative activity contributes enormously to the city’s success
as a creative center. This blend creates an environment in
which individuals can sustain a creative lifestyle, providing
both opportunities to make money and reach a broad audi-
ence as well as opportunities to experiment, innovate—and
even fail.

■

New York faces a number of significant challenges to its cre-
ative sector, including the high cost of appropriate work
space; a general lack of business skills among individual cre-
ative entrepreneurs; pressures to conform to a traditional for-
profit business model; creative workers’ widespread lack of
benefits such as health insurance; barriers to reaching appro-
priate markets; and the impact of changing technology.

■

Contrary to common wisdom, creative businesses and work-
ers in New York cannot simply “colonize” another cheap
space when they are priced out of an area. The continual loss
of work space is time consuming and costly, and significant-
ly impacts the production of creative products. If they are to
succeed, creative businesses require proximity to one anoth-
er, access to their markets and audiences, and most of all,
space that is appropriate to their work. These needs present
real restrictions on where creative businesses and their
employees can work.

■

Under Mayor Bloomberg, the city has demonstrated an
increased appreciation of the creative sector’s importance to
the New York’s economy and improved the delivery of servic-
es to creative firms through agencies such as the Department
of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and
Broadcasting. Yet, the administration has not sufficiently
addressed key affordability issues facing creative workers
and firms, such as the dearth of affordable work and rehears-
al space and the shortage of reasonably-priced housing.

■

Facing many of the same assets and challenges to its creative
sector as New York City, the city of London has created a
centralized body that convenes stakeholders from creative
industries, education and government to think strategically
about how to best promote and support its creative sector
through investments and program initiatives. The "Creative
London" initiative seeks to overcome the traditional fragmen-
tation of the field and devise common strategies for invest-
ment in the creative sector.

KEY FINDINGS

THE BIG APPLE’S CREATIVE CORE

The numbers and notions behind New York City’s signature sector.

IN THIS REPORT, THE “CREATIVE CORE” REFERS TO

industries in which the creative element is central to

both the cultural and economic values of what they pro-

duce. These include businesses and individuals

involved in all stages of the creative process—concep-

tion, production and initial presentation of the product.

(See Technical Appendix, page 29 for a fuller discussion

of the methodology and definitions used in this report.)

As we have defined it, New York’s creative core

consists of nine industries—advertising; film and video;

broadcasting; publishing; architecture; design; music;

visual arts; and performing arts—and includes creative

workers ranging from architects to zither players. With

the charts that accompany this section, we have made

the first major attempt to pull together all the industry

and workforce data available in order to present as

accurate a picture as possible of one of the city’s most

complex assets.

Assembling a clear picture of the creative core is no

easy task. First, traditional data sets do not capture all of

the city’s creative activity in a discrete way: federal statis-

tics don’t treat the fashion industry, for example, as an

industry; instead, it’s subsumed under manufacturing,

wholesaling and retail. Thus, its workers do not get count-

ed as part of the creative industries, but as part of these

other industries. Federal employment data also doesn’t

count many of those in the creative sector who work on a

part-time or project-by-project basis; for instance, only

about 7,000 actors and 10,000 musicians and singers are

counted as “employed” in the city, though combined mem-

bership in the American Federation of Television and

Radio Artists and the American Federation of Musicians

in New York is close to 30,000. In addition, a significant

percentage of the growth in the creative core over the last

decade has been in the area of sole proprietorships—that

is, one-person enterprises—yet not only are these “firms”

not captured in traditional business data sets, they are

typically omitted from analyses of this sector entirely.

In order to best capture the complexity of the cre-

ative economy, we have used both County Business

Patterns and Non-employer data sets from the U.S.

Census to capture the firms and workers that are

employed in the creative industries. However, using

only these two sources, we were not able to capture the

significant amount of creative employment outside of

the creative industries—graphic artists employed by

Wall Street firms, for example. In order to include these

important workers, we also analyzed occupational sta-

tistics from the 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity

data. This data also provides an important window into

the complex nature of workers in the sector.

Other researchers examining the creative economy

have broadly defined creative jobs to include everything

from scientists to hair salon operators, but we purposely

kept our numbers conservative. We include only those

businesses and workers whose main activity is the orig-

ination and/or production of creative products. In an

effort to focus as sharply as possible on those business-

es and individuals that add creative value to the product,

we included only those “introducers” that do the initial

presentation of creative work, and thus are actually cre-

ators and/or producers as well, such as ad agencies, and

museums or galleries that present curated shows.

Not included in our numbers is the secondary eco-

nomic activity related to the creative core. For instance,

we have not counted businesses, such as suppliers and

distributors, that do not add creative value, as described

above, even though they make a crucial contribution to

the creation of a finished good or service purchased by

a consumer. Similarly, our count of the establishments

and workers in New York’s creative core does not

include the vast support infrastructure of service

providers, educational institutions, financing and other

resources critical to meeting the needs of the core.

❖

Table 1:

NYC’S TOTAL CREATIVE WORKFORCE (2002)

The 309,142 workers in New York City’s creative workforce
include employees of creative firms, sole proprietors and those
employed in creative activity within non-creative businesses.

Creative workers employed in creative core businesses

Within firms with employees

198,627

Within firms without employees (sole proprietors)

79,761

Total creative workers employed within
creative core businesses

278,388

Creative workers employed outside
of creative industries

30,754

Total creative workforce in NYC

309,142

SOURCE: County Business Patterns, 2002; Non-employer Statistics, 2002;
Equal Employment Opportunity, 2000, U.S. Census.

Table 2: TOTAL CREATIVE EMPLOYERS IN NYC BY INDUSTRY (2002)

There are 11,671 businesses and non-profits in the creative core. Not surprisingly, there is a strong concentration of both news
syndicates as well as musical groups and artists.

NAICS

Industry

Number

Code

of Firms

Publishing

51111

Newspaper publishers

209

51112

Periodical publishers

453

51113

Book publishers

233

51119

Other publishers

101

Film and Video

51211

Motion picture & video production

1,065

51212

Motion picture & video distribution

51219

Post-production & other movie & video industries

309

Music Production

51221

Record production

51222

Integrated record production, distribution

51223

Music publishers

116

51224

Sound recording studios

148

51229

Other sound recording industries

Broadcasting

51311

Radio broadcasting

107

51312

Television broadcasting

5132

Cable networks & program distribution

163

51411

News syndicates

Architecture

54131

Architectural services

1,138

54132

Landscape architectural services

Applied Design

54141

Interior design services

675

54142

Industrial design services

54143

Graphic design services

1,111

54149

Other specialized design services

340

541921

Photography studios, portrait studios

323

541922

Commercial photography

488

Advertising

54181

Advertising agencies

751

54185

Display advertising

54186

Direct mail advertising

124

54189

Other services related to advertising

213

Performing Arts

71111

Theater companies & dinner theaters

445

71112

Dance companies

104

71113

Musical groups & artists

364

71119

Other performing arts companies

Visual Arts

45392

Art dealers

535

71211

Museums 157

Other

7115

Independent artists, writers & performers

1,375

Total Creative Employers

11,671

Total New York City Employers

205,350

Source: 2002 County Business Patterns, U.S. Census.

INSIDE NEW YORK’S

CREATIVE ECONOMY

The secrets to New York’s creative sector’s success? Talent, proximity to audience and suppliers, a receptive public
and a unique environment in which for-profit and non-profit creative organizations provide mutual support.

UNDERSTANDING THE NUMERICAL DATA ALONE DOES

not give one a true picture of the richness and

complexity of the city’s creative core. The numbers

represent real businesses and real people, and in

order to get a view from the ground as well as one

from the air, we spoke to more than 200 individuals—

top executives at major corporations, heads of

non-profit groups, creative workers of every type, at

every stage in their careers. We asked them what New

York offers in terms of an environment conducive to

creative work. Their answers could be boiled down to:

the abundant talent the city boasts in virtually every

creative endeavor; unmatched concentration that

offers access not only to that talent, but to new ideas

and receptive audiences; and the chance to earn a liv-

ing while following their muse.

TALENT

The breadth and quality of New York’s talent pool

are the essential building blocks for the city’s creative

economy. New York’s creative workers are the origina-

tors, producers and presenters of the vast amount of

content that fuels this sector. They are the artists, per-

formers, sound technicians, designers and many others

whose ideas and unique skills give form to the cultural

life of New York City.

For instance, Michael Pashby, general manager of

the Magazine Publishers Association of America, which

primarily represents consumer magazines, estimates

that 85 percent of the dollar value of the magazine

industry is concentrated in New York—mainly, he says,

because this is “where the talent is.”

The same goes for many other creative industries.

“You have to be here if you want to be in publishing,” says

Denice Oswald, an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “A

lot of writers that we in the industry are looking to court

are here because they are working for the literary press,

like the New Yorker or the New York Times. And New York

is just a breeding ground for young writers. They all want

to come here and seek their fortune.”

New York doesn’t simply attract talent, however,

it also creates it. The city’s top-notch schools and

training programs turn out some of the most highly-

skilled creative workers in the world, and the streets of

New York might offer the greatest laboratory, finishing

school and proving ground of all: a number of the most

important art forms of the last century, including

bebop jazz, abstract expressionism, spoken word poet-

ry, hip hop and rap, and pop art, to name a few, have

emerged from Gotham’s neighborhoods to achieve

worldwide recognition. Some of the city’s creative

workers are the best in their respective businesses;

some are among a handful with the expertise to do

what they do.

The economic realities of the sector, as well as the

need to match the right worker with the right project,

lead many employers to hire creative workers by the

gig, rather than as full-time employees. In part, this is

because creative workers—even equally talented

ones—are not always easily interchangeable.

Increasingly, creative businesses try to hold down

costs by hiring workers on a freelance or project basis,

even for what once were staff positions. The high rate

of self-employment across the creative core (see Table

5, page 23) reflects this trend.

Creative workers are also frequently called upon to

serve more than one function at a time, or to shift roles

from project to project, and may therefore need to be

proficient in a number of diverse skills. “We look for

what we call three-fers, people who have three profes-

sional level skill sets,” says Kevin Cunningham, artistic

director of the non-profit theater and media company

3-Legged Dog. “We are always changing roles and need

people with multiple skill sets to do this. In one, I act as

a production lighting designer and a producer. In

another, someone else is the producer so I can be the

director. We also swap roles in production. I also

require that everyone put on a business hat and has an

understanding of the fundamentals of budgeting,

fundraising, et cetera.”

Some workers welcome this fluidity as an opportu-

nity to express their creativity in more than one arena:

Arin LoPrete, a freelance graphic designer, calls his

“day job” as creative director of a technology company,

Table 3: TOTAL WORKERS IN NYC’S CREATIVE INDUSTRIES (2002)

278,388 people work in New York’s nine creative industries, including nearly 80,000 sole proprietors. Another 30,754 creative
workers work in other sectors of the city’s economy.

People Working

NAICS

People Working Within

Within Firms

Code

Industry

Firms With Employees

Without Employees

Total

Publishing

5111

Publishing

3,747 3,747

51111 Newspaper publishers

11,845

51112 Periodical

publishers

22,036

51113 Book publishers

13,080

51119 Other

publishers

1,911

Film and Video

5121 Motion picture & video industries

3,761

51211 Motion picture & video production

5,825

51212 Motion picture & video distribution

1,958

51219 Post-production & other movie

& video industries

4,204

Music

5122 Sound recording industries

908

Production

51221 Record production

270

51222 Integrated record production, distribution

3,770

51223 Music

publishers

904

51224 Sound recording studios

867

51229 Other sound recording industries

158

Broadcasting

51311 Radio

broadcasting

4,332

51312 Television broadcasting

14,956

5132 Cable networks & program distribution

16,049

51411 News syndicates

2,255

Architecture

54131 Architectural

services

10,505

2,785

13,290

54132 Landscape architectural services

302

140

442

Applied Design

5414 Specialized design services

11,226

9,569

20,795

54192 Photographic services

2,886

4,303

7,189

Advertising

54181 Advertising

agencies

26,765

4,745

31,510

54185 Display advertising

1,367

54186 Direct mail advertising

3,458

54189 Other services related to advertising

1,585

Performing Arts

7111 Performing arts companies

1,764

71111 Theater companies & dinner theaters

10,972

71112 Dance companies

1,938

71113 Musical groups & artists

9,271

71119 Other performing arts companies

666

Visual Arts

45392 Art dealers

1,876

868

2,744

71211 Museums

8,053

327

8,380

Other

7115 Independent

artists,

writers

& performers in creative industries

3,337

46,844

50,181

Total Workers in Creative Industries

198,627

79,761

278,388

SOURCE: County Business Patterns, 2002 and Non-employers Statistics, 2002, U.S. Census. (Table includes sole proprietors, or firms in which the proprietor is the
sole worker. In the data source, this number is only tabulated for the top-level industrial code, not broken down as are numbers for firm-level employment.)

(Sole Proprietors)

“yet another stop on my endless quest to design as

many things as I possibly can.”

The creative core’s well-known hybrids—think

actor/dancer/singer,

writer/director,

singer/song-

writer—reflect these workers’ need for versatility of

employability as much as they do the need for artistic

fulfillment. This is especially important in today’s econ-

omy, as a growing number of firms are starting to show

the same kind of label-defining versatility: high-profile

businesses such as Russell Simmons’ hip-hop lifestyle

company Def Jam and Martha Stewart Living

Omnimedia are branching out from traditional cate-

gories like music, fashion and publishing to become

“entertainment” or “media” companies as a way of

reaching a larger market.

CLUSTERS

Because of the unstable and collaborative nature of

creative work, the creative economy is a fundamentally

social economy, in which connections among individuals

and businesses are crucial to success—and even to sur-

vival. Some business owners and individuals we spoke to

belonged to industry associations or other formal organ-

izations, but all relied upon informal networks of peers,

competitors, suppliers and producers to help them find

fresh ideas, collaborators and employees, business tips,

sources of material and, of course, jobs. The benefits of

agglomeration include both the ready availability of sup-

port infrastructure (see page 12), abundant opportunities

for formal and informal networking, and access to

patrons and financial backers. You simply can’t find this

level of concentration, for both workers and employers in

the creative field, anywhere else.

“We use and need and benefit from each other,”

says Morty Dubin, a producer of commercials and

chairman emeritus of the New York Production

Alliance. “We use Broadway a lot for the talent pool,

and Broadway actors need to be here because we give

them work. Otherwise they couldn’t afford to stay here

and keep at acting; we help them make a living.” And

it’s not just actors, he says; it’s musicians and writers

and designers and others as well.

“A lot of it is word of mouth, friends of friends or

colleagues,” adds photographer Stephanie Diamond. “I

will have a studio exhibit and people will bring friends

and then connect through their friends to curators or

other artists. Pitching cold to a gallery or a museum

doesn’t work. You need a name or a connection. It’s all

about developing a relationship.”

In order to facilitate these relationships, creative

workers and firms gravitate toward places within the city

that have particularly high concentrations of creative

activity. “You want to be within an arts community, a

creative cluster. This connection is why you’re paying

the price to be in New York City,” says Sara Garden

Armstrong, an artist and owner of Art Entrée, a small

company providing art-related entertainment and art

tours in Long Island City.

Clustering offers not only formal and informal net-

working benefits, but also helps facilitate business part-

nerships critical to getting a creative product developed.

In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, homewares and lighting

designer Babette Holland partnered with one of the few

remaining metal spinners in the city to collaborate on

the development of a new line of lighting that is now

sold to upscale furniture stores throughout the nation,

including Ethan Allen. Nearby in Williamsburg, Frank

Eagan, the former owner of Sounds Easy Studios saw

how it would benefit his business to be part of a creative

cluster. “Being a studio owner, location is very impor-

tant, because you want your collaborators close to you,”

he notes. “I remember instances where we would need

a certain musician—a violinist—for a project and we

just went into the subway station because we knew the

violinist playing down there.”

These creative clusters frequently have their own

unique characteristics, and some—like SoHo, Bleecker

Street, Williamsburg or Madison Avenue—have even

developed their own international reputations. Even

these clusters do not operate in isolation, however.

Creative work frequently requires individuals and

firms to connect to those in other creative industries,

and the city’s unique concentration of the entire range

of creative activity is essential to their ability to do so.

Advertising is perhaps the quintessential New York

creative industry for this very reason: For a single adver-

tising campaign, an ad agency may use film, television

and radio and employ the skills of writers, artists, pho-

tographers, graphic designers, fashion designers, stylists,

directors, camera operators and producers—all of whom

can be found at the agency’s doorstep.

Even far more self-contained creative industries

such as architecture and book publishing rely upon the

connections to other businesses and industries that can

be made in New York. “Publishing is still a really intimate

business when you get down to it. The relationships at

lunch and so on are invaluable,” says Geoff Shandler, edi-

tor-in-chief of publishing house Little, Brown and Co.

“I would prefer to be somewhere else to do this work, but

it would require everyone else to be there too.”

Perhaps the biggest cluster of all, however, is the city’s

non-profit arts community. These non-profits generate

content that serves as a magnet for tourists from all over

the world. They also regularly export New York-made

products to other parts of the country through touring

productions. Yet, perhaps even more importantly, the

presence of so many non-profit arts organizations helps

keep top creative talent in the city by allowing workers the

freedom and opportunity to experiment and innovate, and

to do projects they find exciting and rewarding—typically

the reasons they pursue creative work in the first place.

They also provide creative workers opportunities to hone

their craft—whatever it might be—in a potentially recep-

tive market, thus increasing their eventual salability.

MARKETS

Of course, every performer needs an audience. And

every creator of art, from writers to craftspeople, needs

a market. New York offers access to a large, diverse and

largely supportive audience.

Writers need readers; visual artists need viewers;

musicians need listeners; performing artists need peo-

ple in seats. And with its eight million residents, and

visitors from across the world, New York not only has

people to spare, it has the right kinds of people—a large

and eclectic mix of individuals, with varied tastes and

interests, who value creative work. This is one of the

things that make the city a fertile environment for cre-

ative endeavors—which in turn helps attract and retain

the all-important talent.

Whether you’re a harpsichordist or a handbag

maker, an appreciative and discerning public stands

ready to appreciate quality work. “I am envious of

artists in Vienna sitting around smoking cigarettes in

cafés,” says artist Joseph Stashkevetch. “But because

there are no dealers there, they might as well sit in

cafés and smoke cigarettes… This is the best [art] mar-

ket in the world.”

MAKING ART WHILE MAKING RENT

Artists, performers, sound technicians, musicians,

architects, designers and ad teams give form to the cul-

tural and creative life of New York City. Despite the

uniquely important role the workforce plays in pro-

pelling this part of the economy, New York demands a

lot of its creative workers. Even for the most sought-

after individuals, the city’s full-time talent search rarely

translates into stable employment.

Indeed, an unusually large percentage of workers

who identify themselves as part of the creative core

report that they are not consistently engaged in cre-

ative work. Musicians are one example: according to a

2000 report by the National Endowment for the Arts,

“More Than Once In A Blue Moon:

Multiple

Jobholdings By American Artists,” more than 39 percent

of musicians nationally hold a second job in another

profession to make ends meet. The same holds true for

creative workers in general.

Theatrical press agent Bruce Cohen points out that

this has always been the case, noting that the city’s amaz-

ing concentration of creative opportunities allows creative

workers at all levels to support themselves while pursuing

less remunerative passions. “George S. Kauffman used to

write play reviews for the New York Times and also wrote

plays,” says Cohen, who also serves as president of IATSE

Local 18032, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents

and Managers. “Look at Playhouse 90 on Channel 13 from

the 1950s, and you will see stage actors in those plays, and

they also did movies in New York. ”

One of the conclusions of this report is that a vibrant

mix of non-profit and for-profit ventures is fundamental

to both the quality and sustainability of the city’s creative

activity. While in most industries there is a distinct line

between non-profit and for-profit work—you are either

a corporate lawyer or a Legal Aid lawyer, not both—for

workers within the creative economy there is an almost

seamless fluidity between the two sides. “No one comes

to New York to be a non-profit or for-profit dancer; they

come to be a dancer,” says Kate Levin, Commissioner of

the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

In fact, many workers choose New York precisely

because they can be both. Says Mara Manus, executive

director of the Public Theater: “You just can’t make

enough in non-profit theater without working in other

disciplines. Most artists have to do voice-overs and

write for soaps or whatever.”

In New York, this relationship isn’t just about

struggling artists trying to make the rent. It is also

about providing those who have achieved commercial

success with opportunities to stretch their creative

legs—or prove their artistic chops. “There are dozens

and dozens of examples of a Willem Dafoe who

makes ‘Spiderman’ by day and works with experi-

mental theater at the Wooster Group at night,” adds

Cohen. “In the English-speaking world, the only

other place to do this is London, where you can work

on your movie in the morning, then at 4 p.m. get on

the Underground and go act in a theater. And this

dynamic applies not only to actors but playwrights,

set designers and costume designers.”

The other great value-add of New York’s dynamic

non-profit arts sector is that it offers venues for creative

products—such as plays and musicals—to prove their

appeal to audiences in smaller venues. In recent years,

productions like “Proof,” “Urinetown” and “Avenue Q”

have caught the attention of critics and theatergoers in

tiny Off-Broadway houses, then moved on to Broadway

and national acclaim. Dozens of actors, writers and

other creative workers have built careers for them-

selves in the process; without the chance to refine their

work in non-commercial surroundings, they might

never have achieved that kind of success.

❖

SUPPORTING ACTORS

(AND GRAPHIC DESIGNERS. AND CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURS.)

New York’s universities, philanthropic institutions, unions and trade associations, suppliers and distributors, and city
government agencies all make it a bit easier for creative workers and entrepreneurs to “make it here.”

NEW YORK’S CREATIVE SECTOR RELIES ON AN

array of support services—from research and advocacy

to training and financing opportunities. Indeed, the

city’s extraordinary support infrastructure for creative

industries is another major factor in fostering a hos-

pitable environment for creative work. It is both a reason

that creative individuals first locate in New York—to

avail themselves of training opportunities, including

the city’s outstanding higher education institutions—

and a key factor why these individuals are able to

remain in the city despite the high cost of live and work

space. Creative workers—whether employed within

firms or self-employed—rely on skills training and

upgrading, funding, networking opportunities, mentor-

ships, work and rehearsal space, business skills train-

ing, and work supports like insurance and health ben-

efits in order to thrive in their career. In fact, the fluid

and unpredictable nature of these industries and work-

ers—the project-oriented nature of the work, and the

large numbers of freelancers, individual artists, sole

proprietors and small companies that populate the sec-

tor—makes having a strong infrastructure of services

and supports all the more important.

EDUCATIONAL AND TRAINING INSTITUTIONS

The large number of top-flight and often highly spe-

cialized educational and training institutions is one of the

key components of New York’s creative infrastructure.

The Juilliard School offers arguably the best

training in the world for dancers, musicians and

actors. Visual artists can look to NYU’s Tisch School of

the Arts, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute

for instruction. If you’re an aspiring dancer, the

School of American Ballet is as good as it gets. Fashion

designers have the Fashion Institute of Technology

and Parsons School of Design, while architects can

turn to quality schools and institutes such as the

Architecture League, the Municipal Art Society, and

the Center for Architecture.

“We are blessed [in NYC] by a fairly extraordinary

institutional infrastructure for architecture,” says

Michael Sorkin, principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio

and the director of the Graduate Urban Design

Program at City College of New York. “This is impor-

tant,” he says. “One of the sources of good architecture

is a good architectural culture. If you believe that life-

long learning and expanding creativity is important for

new work, then those institutions are important, the

same as viewing paintings in a museum are for artists,

or all of the rock-and-roll clubs are for musicians.”

As can be expected for such a central locale for

the creative industries, the educational and work-

force training scene for the creative sector is vibrant

and complex. New York City is home to dozens of

higher education institutions with arts programs.

Most of these focus on teaching the art form, though

several are increasingly teaching the business of art

alongside or in addition to these programs. These

schools, along with a host of vocational training insti-

tutions, also provide a number of certificate and con-

tinuing education programs to people in the creative

industries. Additionally, every primary and secondary

school within the New York City public system now

includes a newly instituted system-wide arts curricu-

lum—a great way to create not only tomorrow’s

artists, but their audience. And New York has a rich

array of arts services organizations and trade associ-

ations that provide training to individual artists and

creative workers, arts organizations and firms—on a

myriad of topics.

At the same time, this educational infrastructure is

the training ground for new creative workers and the

testing ground for new art forms and products. The

schools offer ample venues through their galleries, the-

aters, lecture halls and visual arts studios for emerging

and established artists across disciplines. Importantly,

higher education programs within the arts and creative

fields are, like the non-profits, akin to an informal R&D

arm for the creative industries as creators of new com-

panies and entrepreneurs; among their other functions,

the schools allow for new ideas to be tested before they

reach the marketplace. Professionals within the cre-

ative industries serve as educators in many of the pro-

grams and courses, passing on the benefits of their

experience while continuing to hone their crafts and

refine their ideas.

PHILANTHROPIC AND FINANCIAL COMMUNITY

New York’s creative enterprises and individuals

derive tremendous value from being located in a

nexus of strong philanthropic, government, corpo-

rate and individual support. New York is home to

global foundations such as the Rockefeller

Foundation and the Ford Foundation as well as cor-

porate foundations at Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan

Chase, all of whom have a history of funding creative

endeavors both nationally and in New York. Another

critical element is the significant support of the indi-

vidual donor community.

The crucially important non-profit sub-sector

has been the greatest beneficiary of this philanthrop-

ic support. According to a 1999 study by the Alliance

for the Arts, a prominent research and advocacy

organization for the cultural sector, of the $1.5 billion

operating income of 575 non-profit cultural organiza-

tions in New York, more than 38 percent of this

income came from private sources and 11 percent

from government grants. (The remaining 51 percent

came from revenues for performances, exhibitions

and merchandise.)

In addition to private and corporate philanthropy,

New York has an unparalleled concentration of

investment banks, venture capital firms and other fin-

anciers that are well-positioned to support the city’s

creative industries.

TRADE ASSOCIATIONS AND UNIONS

Trade associations like the American Institute of

Graphic Arts, the Association of American Advertising

Agencies, the National Visual Artists Guild and the

New York Production Alliance provide support services

to creative businesses and entrepreneurs. These serv-

ices range from training in new technologies and busi-

ness skills to advocacy for the industry and networking

events. Additionally, New York is home to myriad arts

services organizations, both national and local, that

provide a host of services from training in specific

skills, to developing art and audiences, to accessing

health care and financial support, to meeting the gen-

eral needs of a wide spectrum of creative workers and

arts organizations.

Labor unions also play an important role. Though

the creative sector probably isn’t the first field to

come to mind when New Yorkers think about unions,

organized labor has a powerful presence and an

important role within this cluster of industries. A large

portion of New York’s creative workers are represent-

ed by unions, especially in the set of industries com-

monly referred to as ‘entertainment’—film, theater,

and television.

More than 15 unions and at least 50 locals repre-

senting creative workers operate in the five boroughs,

including the Actors’ Equity Association, the American

Guild of Musical Artists, the American Guild of Variety

Artists, the American Federation of Television and

Radio Artists, the American Federation of Musicians

Local 802, the Communications Workers of America,

the Directors Guild and the International Alliance of

Theatrical and Stage Employees.

While exact numbers are hard to come by, the

scope is large within certain segments of the creative

sector: virtually 100 percent of the work performed and

undertaken on Broadway alone is done with union

labor. Membership in the American Federation of

Television and Radio Artists and the American

Federation of Musicians in New York is close to 30,000

people, though many of these are members of other

unions and may be working under this union only on a

part-time basis.

These unions and their locals support the creative

workforce by providing skills training, organizing

around intellectual property issues, health insurance

and other social supports. Notably, union contracts

allow the legions of creative workers who are employed

on a project-by-project or freelance basis to enjoy most

of the same benefits that are available to “9 to 5”

employees—including pensions, health insurance and

workman’s compensation.

At the same time, many industry leaders say cer-

tain unions drive up costs of many events and pro-

ductions in New York. This places a particular burden

on small venues, organizations and companies trying

to deliver a product while keeping their costs in

check. And in some cases, it has caused business to

flee the city for cheaper locales. For example, it is a big

reason why dozens of film and television production

companies opt to shoot New York scenes in Montreal,

Vancouver and other locales.

SUPPLIERS AND DISTRIBUTORS

Another strength of New York’s creative core is

the depth of the city’s “value chain,” or production

cycle. The presence of suppliers, distributors and

other providers of economic support for the creative

industries are a major reason those industries are so

strong here.

For instance, filmmakers and photographers

depend on the array of film and camera supply com-

panies that make it possible to get a new lens for a

camera within an hour, allowing companies to save

both time and money. Similarly, New York theater

companies have access to some of the finest costume

making companies in the country.

❖

SPOTLIGHT ON CITY HALL

The Bloomberg administration has provided key support and assistance to the non-profit arts and film industries, but
could do more to support the broader creative economy.

CITY GOVERNMENT ITSELF IS ANOTHER KEY PIECE OF THE

infrastructure that supports New York’s creative indus-

tries. Businesses and workers in the city’s creative core

have long enjoyed a much higher level of attention and

support from city government than is the case in most

other American cities. Indeed, the NYC Department of

Cultural Affairs (DCA) has a larger annual budget than

the National Endowment for the Arts.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, the city has demonstrat-

ed an increased appreciation of the creative sector’s

importance to New York’s economy and improved the

delivery of services to creative firms through agencies

such as DCA and the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre

and Broadcasting. But the administration has done lit-

tle to address the key affordability issues facing cre-

ative workers and firms—most notably the lack of both

affordable work and rehearsal space and reasonably-

priced housing.

New York City’s budget for arts and culture non-

profits and individual artists is unrivaled in the country.

In fiscal year 2006, DCA’s expense budget is $131 mil-

lion, the bulk of which gets disbursed in the form of

grants to the city’s Cultural Institutions Group, the 34

museums and other institutions across the five

boroughs that are located on city-owned property. A

smaller, but still significant, chunk of the DCA pie pro-

vides program support to more than 600 arts and cul-

tural groups across the city.

DCA also has an $803 million capital budget to

spend over the next four years, a sum that will sup-

port infrastructure-related projects at 169 cultural

organizations around the city. This is more than dou-

ble the number of groups that received capital funds

from the city five years ago. In recent years, DCA cap-

ital funds have helped support the development of a

76,000 square foot facility for the Alvin Ailey

American Dance Theater and the restoration of the

Brooklyn Academy of Music’s landmark building on

Lafayette Avenue.

In recent years, the Bloomberg administration

supplemented city government’s longstanding sup-

port for non-profits with increased support for sever-

al key creative sectors. City agencies like the

Department of Small Business Services (SBS) have

improved their delivery of services to creative busi-

nesses, showing a greater understanding of the role

creative industries play not only in the city’s economy,

but also in developing strong communities throughout

the five boroughs.

There have also been new partnerships between

agencies. For instance, the Department of Cultural

Affairs worked with the city’s Economic Development

Corporation (EDC) to redesign the Industrial

Development Authority Bond program to better allow

non-profit cultural institutions to take advantage of the

program’s benefits. Groups like the Dance Theater

Workshop have already made use of the IDA program

to finance a new facility. EDC also teamed with SBS and

the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting to

spur development of Steiner Studios, the city’s first

built-from-the-ground-up production facility, in the

Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Importantly, as the Center for an Urban Future

recently described in its June 2005 report “Beyond the

Olympics,” the film office also has shortened the wait

time for permits and created new incentives packages

for production companies that film in New York. Many

believe these enhancements have already begun to help

the city's film industry remain competitive with Canada,

New Zealand and other lower-priced locations.

Silvercup Studios CEO Alan Suna says that his

Long Island City-based studios produced five televi-

sion pilots for the Fall 2005 season. “New York [has]

never had five pilots for a season, let alone our com-

pany,” says Suna. “[Only] one of them would have been

done in New York City if it wasn’t for those tax credits.”

Smaller production companies in the city offer

praise as well. Muffie Meyer of Middlemarch Films, a

documentary company, says the city’s film office has

practically rolled out the red carpet. “We were work-

ing on a children’s history series. For a segment on

1870, the point we were making was about how there

was no garbage collection in all of the city. There were

100,000 horses in the city, dumping manure on the

streets. There was no mechanism to get rid of it,” says

Meyer. “The city actually let us take over a street and

helped us to access tons of manure from the police

stables and put it on the streets. And then, because we

were a non-profit, shooting for public television, they

helped us pick it up. We weren’t paying big fees. But

they did it.”

Even as the city has earned praise for this level of

responsiveness, some in the field worry that New

York has left itself vulnerable to changing conditions

and new technologies. “Government orientation to

production seems to be all in old media like feature

films and TV shows that are conventional,” says

Richard Winkler, partner and executive producer at

Curious Pictures, a production and animation studio.

“We do a lot of digital, and we’re in a blind spot. The

city and state seem slow to recognize the existence of

what my company does.” Even though small busi-

nesses, artists and sole proprietors have driven much

of the creative core’s growth in recent years, many

among these smaller firms and individual creators

feel that city officials don’t understand their needs as

they do the needs of exhibition-oriented institutions

and larger companies.

On a broad level, Mayor Bloomberg has pushed

for the creation of 65,000 units of new housing across

the city and his administration has supported the cre-

ation of space for cultural organizations as part of new

developments in lower Manhattan and other parts of

the city. In addition, DCA has made it a priority to sup-

port non-profits that are developing studio or

rehearsal work space for artists. Still, many believe

the administration could be doing more to address the

lack of affordable space to live and work.

“What has historically been the incubator for this

talent pool has been cheap space,” says Theodore

Berger of the New York Foundation for the Arts. “Not

that there aren’t pockets left, but they are going fast.

The creative economy always has to replenish itself

with new talent. I am not sure that talent coming out of

schools these days is heading to New York. And mature

artists are more and more likely to leave. If we can’t

keep them here, then we will have real problems keep-

ing this sector strong.”

❖

SOURCE: 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Special Tabulation, U.S. Economic Census;
and New York State Department of Labor (occupation numbers are based on workers residing in NYC.)

17-1011 Architects, except landscape and naval

1,079

12.21%

27-1011 Art directors

610

12.70%

27-1013 Fine artists, including painters, sculptors and illustrators

235

14.42%

27-1014 Multi-media artists and animators

691

18.33%

27-1021 Commercial and industrial designers

398

51.02%

27-1022 Fashion

designers

2,596

63.63%

27-1024 Graphic

designers

2,991

33.12%

27-1025 Interior

designers

568

34.02%

27-1027 Set and exhibit designers

304

26.17%

27-2011 Actors

9,557

33.52%

27-2012 Producers and directors

833

13.35%

27-2031 Dancers

692

54.93%

27-2032 Choreographers

769

78.52%

27-2042 Musicians and singers

4,543

41.08%

27-3041 Editors

3,540

27.55%

27-3043 Writers and authors

866

12.81%

27-4021 Photographers

179

6.06%

27-4032 Film and video editors

303

12.32%

30,754

Table 4: CREATIVE WORKERS EMPLOYED OUTSIDE OF NYC’S CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

In addition to the 198,627 workers employed by firms within the nine “creative core” industries and 79,761 freelancers and sole
proprietors working within those industries, we found that there are 30,754 creative workers who are embedded in other (non-cre-
ative) industries. For instance, fashion designers merit inclusion within the creative workforce, but are normally counted as part of
the apparel manufacturing, wholesaling or retail sector. As the chart below shows, we determined that roughly 64 percent of all
fashion designers and 51 percent of all commercial and industrial designers work in non-creative industries. (For more details,
please see the technical appendix on page 29.)

SOC
Code

Total Creative Workers

in Non-Creative Industries

Who Are Not Self-Employed

Percentage of

Creative Workers in

Non-Creative Industries

Chart 2: GROWTH IN NYC’S CREATIVE WORKFORCE (employees within firms and non-employers) (1998-2002)

The creative core added approximately 32,000 workers between 1998 and 2002, a growth rate of 13.1 percent compared to a
rate of 6.5 percent for the city during this period. Notably, self-employed creative workers accounted for nearly half (48 percent) of
the creative core’s growth, with the biggest increase among specialized design services; independent artists, writers and perform-
ers; musical groups and artists; newspaper publishers and specialized design firms.

SOURCE: County Business Patterns and Non-employers Statistics, U.S. Census, 1998 & 2002.

50%

45%

40%

35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

Actors

Fashion designers

Film and video editors

Editors

Set and exhibit designers

t directors

Graphic designers

Producers and directors

Architects, except landscape and naval

Fine ar

tists, including painters,

sculptors and illustrators

Musicians and singers

Dancers

Choreographers

Multi-media ar

tists and animators

riters and authors

Photographers

Commercial and industrial designers

Interior designers

Independent ar

tists,

writers & per

for

mers

Musical groups & ar

tists

Cable networks & program distribution

Newspaper publishers

Specialized design ser

vices

Radio broadcasting

Architectural ser

vices

Book publishers

Integrated record production, distribution

Motion picture & video distribution

Post-production & other movie & video

Museums Art dealers

News syndicates

Adver

tising agencies

Other publishers

Other per

for

ming ar

ts companies

Dance companies

Landscape architectural ser

vices

Sound recording studios

% of the U.S. Jobs in Occupations Held by NYC Residents

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

Chart 1: CREATIVE OCCUPATIONS WHERE NYC HAS A LARGE SHARE OF THE NATIONAL MARKET

More than a third of the nation’s actors are based in New York, as are roughly 27 percent of the fashion designers, 12 percent of
film editors, 10 percent of set designers, 9 percent of graphic designers, 8 percent of architects and 7 percent of fine artists.

SOURCE: 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity, U.S. Census.

Growth in Number of W

orkers

BOTH THE STATISTICAL AND ANECDOTAL RESEARCH

show that New York’s creative core is a thriving and

complex creative ecosystem. But within even the most

vibrant ecosystem, relatively small changes can have

unexpected and broad-ranging effects, and the creative

economy is facing more than small changes—it is

undergoing a veritable revolution, spurred by factors

including new technology, globalization and business

conglomeration.

The city has begun to feel the consequences of

these changes in its diminishing market share within

creative fields like advertising. Twenty years ago, New

York was home to half of all advertising agency head-

quarters in the world. Now it hosts less than one third,

according to AdWeek’s “2004 Trends in Advertising”

report, London, where creative stakeholders have come

together to expand that sector’s economic reach (see

“Learning from London,” page 25), has quietly claimed

much of what NYC has lost. In the field of motion pic-

ture and sound recording, New York faces risk from the

introduction of new technologies and cheaper equip-

ment, which have allowed both individuals and major

studios to perform these functions themselves.

Certainly each industry and area within the cre-

ative core has its own complex structure and unique

needs. And non-profit arts organizations and for-profit

creative companies undoubtedly contend with differ-

ent obstacles. Nonetheless, as we began to look at the

creative economy as a whole, we found that all of these

businesses, non-profits and individuals faced some

common challenges and shared some collective needs

that seemed well-suited to a broad-based, sector-style

economic development approach.

Below we have identified some of the major chal-

lenges that industries and individuals are facing across

the sector.

COST OF APPROPRIATE WORK SPACE

It is hard to run a business if you can’t afford a place

to work. In New York, complaints about high real-estate

costs and too little space are hardly unique to the creative

industries, but these issues are particularly acute for a

sector with such specific space requirements and such a

high percentage of small enterprises and self-employed

workers. The high cost and scarcity of studio time for

musicians and visual artists, and rehearsal space for per-

forming artists, regularly requires them to make heroic

efforts to pursue their art in the city. In a worrisome

trend, increasing numbers of artists and creative workers

are deciding it’s simply not worth it to stay—especially as

other cities, from London to Paducah, Kentucky, are

bending over backward to get them to relocate.

Doug Culhane is one such creative worker. A sculp-

tor by trade, Culhane is also a freelance legal copy editor

in his day job. Most years he makes approximately 15

percent of his living off of his artwork, which is shown in

galleries nationally. He has been living in Williamsburg

for the last 12 years, and is now moving out of the city

because he can no longer afford to meet his need for a

live/work space. “When I moved into the neighborhood,

there was one store, some prostitutes and crack dealers

on my block. Twelve artists moved into this building.

Now we are being evicted.” He is not sure exactly where

he will go, but feels confident that it will be better than

New York. “Cities everywhere want artists and are mak-

ing room for them. I will probably go to Troy or Hudson,

New York, or maybe Providence or Pawtucket, Rhode

Island. There is a lot of live/work space available there

and there is a really nice-sized artists community.”

Culhane is not the only one from the building plan-

ning to leave the city. Many of his neighbors, who

include an architect, a video artist, a painter and a cou-

ple that own a design company and employ a few work-

ers in their firm, are considering a relocation from New

York. One particular neighbor, a successful painter from

Beijing who has been in the U.S. for more than 18 years,

is planning to return because he feels that it is better for

artists to be in Beijing than in New York right now.

SHOW STOPPERS?

Despite everything New York’s creative sector has going for it, a number of daunting challenges—most notably the high
cost of work space, the expense and difficulty of “market-making” and the widespread lack of health insurance and other
benefits for creative workers—threaten the city’s pre-eminence.

Twenty years ago, New York was home to half of all advertising agency

headquarters in the world. Now it hosts less than one third.

London has quietly claimed much of what New York has lost.

Hope Forstenzer, a graphic designer and glass

blower, worked for more than a decade in creative

industries in New York until she left two years ago for

Seattle, where the cost of living—and, importantly for

her, the cost of studio space for glass blowing—is con-

siderably cheaper. Many of Forstenzer’s graphic design

clients are still based in New York, but in today’s digital

age she is able to live in Seattle—where she can prac-

tice her glass blowing relatively cheaply—and work

remotely. She comes to the city for a few days every

month to meet individually with clients.

Before she left the city, studio space she rented at a

facility in Brooklyn was going for $45 to $50 an hour. In

Seattle, the price is $30 a hour, a rate that goes down if the

space is booked for an entire day.

“I love New York. I had enough work. I was making

a living,” says Forstenzer. “But I couldn’t change my life

in any way to make it more secure. I couldn’t even move

apartments because I couldn’t find one that I could

afford. That is true of a lot of small business and inde-

pendent contractors in New York. You can get by okay,

but you can’t get ahead.”

To be sure, a dance company may have different

physical space needs than a woodworker or crafts arti-

san. And while affordable space is key, it is often more

important for certain companies—non-profit or for-prof-

it—to know that they have a long-term lease arrange-

ment. For many, this stability is worth the price.

Further complicating matters is the fact that much

of the areas where creative types were able to ‘pioneer’

space ten years ago, simply are no longer available. The

rapid escalation of real-estate prices in the late 1990s,

which continues today, caused a well-known migration

of creative and other businesses from their more

expensive Manhattan locales to areas throughout

Brooklyn, Queens and the South Bronx. The city’s deci-

sion to rezone several longtime industrial neighbor-

hoods around the five boroughs—from downtown

Brooklyn and Port Morris to Long Island City—for resi-

dential development threatens to displace creative indi-

viduals and the businesses whose presence initially

helped transform these areas into creative destinations.

These businesses need to be near their markets,

and their workers have to be in reasonable proximity to

the businesses. Brian Coleman, CEO of the Greenpoint

Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC), a non-

profit that developed a facility full of woodworkers and

small furniture-making businesses, says of his tenants:

“They need to be in the marketplace they are serving.

They cannot be on exit 8 in New Jersey. They need to be

in New York City.”

Unfortunately, the reality is that these critical clus-

ters of creative producers—from the more than 300 visu-

al and performing artists that occupy more than 24 build-

ings in Long Island City to the dense creative fabric of

Williamsburg—are in immediate danger of being lost to

speculative real-estate developers.

Over the last decade, city government has helped to

spur the development of new buildings for the creative

industries throughout the five boroughs, such as the

Brooklyn Academy of Music Local Development

Corporation (BAM LDC) cultural district’s first building,

80 Arts, a shared office space for non-profit arts and cul-

tural organizations. But the sustained increase in real-

estate costs means that many of these projects are likely

no longer replicable without the city playing a key role.

For instance, GMDC developed three other factory build-

ings in Brooklyn for light manufacturing companies and

artisans in addition to their flagship facility for wood-

workers, but then the organization could not acquire any

additional factory buildings in Greenpoint or East

Williamsburg, since private developers solely interested

in converting those properties to apartments were always

outbidding them. “Buildings in this area are going for $20

million. We just cannot do these deals and still offer

affordable rates to our tenants,” says Coleman.

“Studio space and shooting space are a huge issue,”

says photographer Eric White. “Because, a darkroom, it’s

a pretty small thing. [But] a studio is a lot of space to do

a shoot. I don’t have a studio. I have a fairly large space in

Brooklyn, where I live. So, I’ll move everything in this

room, which is like the living room/kitchen—I’ll move

everything to one wall and shoot in my apartment.”

Cost is not the only consideration involved, howev-

er. Not all work space is equally appropriate to all cre-

ative pursuits. Common wisdom on the subject is that

artists traditionally “pioneer” areas with few amenities

and large amounts of cheap space, and when they are

priced out of a neighborhood, they simply forge another.

However, in a survey conducted for this report of 71 cre-

ative workers and business owners in three of the city’s

creative hotspots—Williamsburg, Long Island City and

the South Bronx—we found that the reasons creative

activity clusters in certain areas are more complex.

The high cost of work space and housing in New York has prompted increasing numbers

of artists and creative workers to decide it’s simply not worth it to stay here—especially as

other cities offer enticements to relocate.

When asked how they chose their particular loca-

tion, availability of appropriate space—not necessarily

cheap space—was the number one factor among all

those surveyed in each neighborhood. Among the

three areas, however, rent was considered least impor-

tant in Long Island City, which is dominated by visual

artists, designers and architects. These workers and

businesses frequently put a premium on space that

can accommodate industrial production methods, such

as glass blowing and metalsmithing.

Take Michael Davis, a former dancer who owns a

stained glass studio, and who needs to run his glass oven

24 hours a day, seven days a week. For him, finding Long

Island City, with its industrial zoning, was a tremendous

relief after a long period of rejection. Before he found his

current space, he says, he had looked for space in

Harlem, but landlords refused to rent to him as soon as

he mentioned what type of business he wanted to set up.

While there have been some successful attempts to

address this problem—such as GMDC and the Alliance

of Resident Theatres/New York and BAM LDC’s shared

office spaces for arts non-profits—as space in the city

becomes scarcer and more expensive, and more and

more industrial space close to Manhattan is rezoned for

residential use, the creative economy is increasingly

feeling the squeeze.

ACCESS TO MARKETS

Answering the question of how to ensure that a cre-

ative product will reach the right market or audience

goes way beyond the simple formula of physically “being

there”—in Manhattan, or in the city at all. When we start-

ed our research, we expected to hear that workers “had”

to be in New York to have any chance of capturing the

attention of the city’s critics and tastemakers, and to

improve their chances of advancing in the city’s market.

What we learned, however, was much more complex.

Apparently, New York’s tremendous talent pool and artis-

tic community can be a double-edged sword: though the

city boasts a large number of exhibition spaces, bars, gal-

leries, retail outlets, restaurants and media that provide

access to new markets, the reality is that the costs of run-

ning these outlets mean that they are often too expensive

for emerging talent to enter. Further complicating mat-

ters is that interviewees across every creative discipline

observed that this unmatched density also creates an

environment of unparalleled competition for opportuni-

ties to reach those markets. Admittedly, this competition

is simply a part of doing business in New York City, but it

translates into a lot of very marketable and potentially

lucrative arts businesses never gaining the attention or

spotlight they need to turn a profit.

“When I was in Minneapolis/St. Paul, I was one of

four artists doing my type of work,” says Elaine Giffney,

a textile artist, designer and high-end bag maker. “Here

I am one of 500.”

This level of competition for access to consumers

undoubtedly helps preserve the high quality of the city’s

creative offerings. But it also drives down wages, making

it extremely difficult, even for those with great talent but

no trust fund, to sustain themselves long enough to find

their audience. As if the competition within a crowded

market weren’t enough, creative workers in field after

field now fret that the traditional “entry points”—oppor-

tunities for them to reach an audience—are closing up.

“You don’t have as many places to go as you used to,”

says Sam Pollard, documentary filmmaker and CEO of

Two Dollars and a Dream production company. “There

are plenty of subdivisions of major companies so there

are actually many more channels, but they all report to

the same set of CEOs. Before there were something like

eight places to pitch; now there are five. For example,

A&E is now under the same umbrella as the History

Channel, so now I can only pitch once to them.”

Jonah Zuckerman, owner of City Joinery, a furni-

ture design firm in Brooklyn, says that there is “a lack

of a place to show products,” but also cites a need for

businesses to do their own collective marketing. “It is

often too expensive to do a shared showroom or enter

another retail outlet,” he explains. He wants to see

something for furniture designers similar to the collec-

tives of fashion and accessories designers that have

been popping up in NoLita and the Lower East Side.

These collectives—including Emerge NYC, TrunKt and

the Market—share space and do collective marketing.

The city’s craft and artisan community echoes this

need for market access. In a 2004 survey by NY Creates

of more than 619 crafts and folk artists and artisans, 61

percent of respondents said that access to sales and mar-

keting outlets was their biggest need. In response to this

feedback, NY Creates, a collaborative research effort of

the New York Foundation on the Arts, the New York City

Arts Coalition, the Municipal Art Society and the

Consortium for Worker Education, has begun to establish

a number of fairs that showcase the wares of crafts and

folk artisans—most recently at Atlas Park in Queens—

Despite an increased focus on the economic potential of creative content,

the city’s creative workers frequently lack even basic business skills,

as well as information about how to develop them.

Brooklyn Designs, a project of the Brooklyn Chamber of

Commerce, has emerged as a successful model for showcasing
new designers along the same lines as the Creative Industries
Development Service (CIDS) in the United Kingdom (See
“Learning from London,” page 25), even though CIDS is aimed
at supporting all of London’s creative industries, while Brooklyn
Designs is singularly focused on the design industry.

Part of the challenge for emerging and even established

creative entrepreneurs is tapping into the marketplace and
accessing new audiences for their products. The Brooklyn
Chamber had been doing this for years with Brooklyn Goes
Global and Brooklyn Eats, programs that market the borough’s
food businesses. When the Chamber identified a growing sec-
tor of furniture and homewares designers, it created Brooklyn
Designs as a way of showcasing these businesses.

Started three years ago, Brooklyn Designs is already a

must-attend show for Brooklyn’s designers. The show provides
access to a growing audience of more than 4,000 buyers,
architects and consumers. Participation in Brooklyn Designs

also gives designers access to editors from top design maga-
zines like

Interior Design

and

Metropolitan Home

, who serve

on the jury to select entries into the show and provide a critical
audience for designers aspiring to launch a product from
Brooklyn to international prominence.

Brooklyn Designs offers the opportunity to get a product to

market with minimal investment. Other trade shows like the
International Contemporary Furniture Fair costs $7,200 for a
200 square foot booth. Brooklyn Designs’ fee is $1,000 for the
same square footage.

In addition to participation in the show, participating design-

ers who are also members of the Chamber have access to serv-
ices including help finding space, employment assistance, busi-
ness advice and evaluations on business development. Karen
Auster, coordinator of Brooklyn Designs, often assists designers in
helping them to evaluate how to balance the business end of their
design work. According to Auster, she finds that, “as a creative
person they often need help to gauge how much of their time they
need for business tasks, how much for the creative part.”

BROOKLYN DESIGNS A MARKET

and is exploring the possibility of a more permanent

storefront for these artists.

As the recent rent roil over the future of the iconic

rock venue CBGBs shows, there is a shrinking number

of music venues in New York that provide a testing

ground for new musicians. Ed Greer, a musician and

former senior vice president of club operations with

the Knitting Factory and now an independent festival

producer, explains how the economics of his industry

have changed: “Venues are not making money on tick-

et sales. This all goes to pay the band, if you’re lucky.

Venues make money off the bar and increasingly on

spin off products like recordings. They can’t take a

chance on the unknowns as freely.”

As with many of the challenges facing creative

enterprises in New York, the problem of marketing

crosses virtually all industry lines. The many trade

shows and festivals held in the city each year offer such

collective marketing opportunities, but these forums

are often prohibitively expensive, especially for indi-

vidual designers. The Architectural Design show, for

example, costs upwards of $3,500 to enter. And the

International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the stan-

dard fair at which to launch a furniture design busi-

ness, is not only too pricey for most emerging designers

and other creative producers, but it is also not geared

towards marketing products to the public.

Some creative workers and businesses are coming

up with innovative solutions to the problem, such as

independent music producers distributing niche music in

local bodegas. But the bottleneck at the market-entry

level not only drives down compensation—any band that

won’t accept $100 for a three-hour gig is sure to see a

half-dozen other groups that will—it also makes it

unnecessarily difficult for niche products and business-

es, which are not backed by large corporate distribution

networks, to reach appropriate consumer bases.

MARKET FORCES

As the economic value of creative content and prod-

ucts has become more evident, New York’s creative com-

munity has become increasingly entrepreneurial, look-

ing for business opportunities. This greater focus on the

commercial potential of creative enterprises is impor-

tant, but efforts to apply a rigid traditional business par-

adigm also pose a real threat to the vitality and viability

of the sector. Successful creative products cannot simply

be “cranked out” on a fixed schedule, and even the

largest firms in the city’s creative economy struggle to

generate quality products while meeting investors’ or

shareholders’ expectations about profitability. Creative

workers often see the world, and their work, differently.

Investors commonly struggle with this reality.

“In New York City, most big creative businesses

here are very established, have a lot at stake and are

really focused on minimizing risk,” says Bill Mesce,

manager of corporate affairs at HBO. “We will take a

risk on material, but need [established] talent behind

camera or in front of the camera. We don’t hire some-

one who came straight from really small ‘black-box’

theaters when we’re bankrolling a $30 million series.”

“If you’re casting [an actor], you know who is good,

who is a known quantity and who will make studios

happy,” he says, “Why take a risk on the invisible?”

Pressure to produce a product or a profit in short

order is exactly the opposite of what creative endeavors

need to succeed, say those we interviewed. What these

ventures need most, they say, is the one thing the busi-

ness world won’t give them—a chance to fail. The logic

of “research and development” that drives experimenta-

tion in fields like pharmaceutical research and the hard

sciences rarely seems to exist in the world of the arts.

“There are many, many failed scientific experiments,

and they say it’s a waste of money if it’s artistic,” says

press agent Bruce Cohen. “Well, when I was at LaMaMa

[theater club] we had a guy named Harvey Fierstein, and

he had three failed plays before he reworked them and

made them into ‘Torch Song Trilogy.’ Somehow the

stuffed shirts can’t understand that you have to fail nine

out of ten times in the arts. Art is supposed to be perfect

all of the time while medical and industrial development

can afford and is allowed to fail.”

Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn

Academy of Music, believes there is a general impa-

tience with the pace of the creative process, which

makes it difficult to give new ideas a fighting chance to

succeed. “The problem in America is if you or your ven-

ture is not brilliant in the first 15 minutes, everyone

wants to throw it out.” To really try something new, she

says, you need three years: “The first year to figure out

what’s wrong, the second year to start to figure out how

to really do it, and the third year to really get it going,

really have a well-oiled machine.” Decision-makers with

non-profit creative groups noted that this time frame is

similar for their ventures as it is for small businesses.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that there often

seems to be an unintended disconnect between the

financial community and the creative community on

how to overcome this risk. Mary Howard, executive

director of NY Designs, a business center for designers

established in 2003 by the CUNY Economic

Development Corporation and LaGuardia Community

College, says “New York has an ineffective capital mar-

ket for design. Here is this $5 billion industry concen-

trated here. Some of the most talented designers are

here, but no one has any money to run their businesses.

People are winning all of these awards for design and

there is no money.”

Part of the problem is that there is a lack of

financing models to help minimize the risk. Banks fre-

quently fail to understand that the typical financing

mechanism in fashion is for a designer to factor prod-

ucts—or pay for the cost of a sample run—up front.

This requires a different type of lending tool for the

designers to keep them from defaulting on their loan.

Corporate pressures of conglomeration in certain

creative industries also mean that a more modest short-

term payoff often takes precedent over long-term risk.

“Consolidation in the book business is not new, but it is

different now,” says Geoff Shandler, editor-in-chief at

Little Brown. His company was owned by Time, Inc. in

the 1950s, while RCA owned rival Random House. The

difference now, he argues, is that as these subsidiaries

have broadened to include other media businesses, “the

expectations of what is considered profitable have

changed.” According to Shandler, these short-term pres-

sures have meant “you do not take chances on authors

who may take time to be successful. Some very success-

ful literary authors, if they started now as opposed to

1963, would not make it. There is just not the time to let

the author grow. There is not time to take the risk.”

In addition to changing funders’ and investors’

expectations about the time frame for success, industry

leaders like Mara Manus of the Public Theater suggest

that what the sector needs is not venture capital but

something more like “adventure capital”: a cross

between investment and philanthropy, somewhat like

charity raffle tickets.

The lack of investment readiness on the part of the

designers and other creative entrepreneurs themselves,

discussed further below, is also part of the problem.

This is certainly not to say that creative ventures

cannot become profitable businesses. But as we

described above, opportunities for innovation are also

essential to the city’s creative ecology, and too much

pressure to succeed on business’ terms could threaten

that delicate balance.

LACK OF BUSINESS SKILLS AND INFORMATION

Given the highly competitive market for creative

products and services, small businesses and aspiring

entrepreneurs need honed business skills to succeed. But

The fierce competition to be seen, heard and appreciated helps preserve the

high quality of the city’s creative offerings—but it also drives down wages and

makes it extremely difficult, even for those with great talent but no

trust fund, to stay afloat long enough to find an audience.

despite an increased focus on the economic potential of

creative content, the city’s creative workers frequently

lack even basic business skills, as well as information

about how to develop them. These individuals typically

go about learning to run a business the same way they

conduct their other activities: by trying to “figure it out”

using information gained through word of mouth, the

Internet, and whatever other resources they can scrape

up. Many spend a tremendous amount of time and ener-

gy on this kind of trial-and-error approach—and fre-

quently all they end up doing is reinventing the wheel.

Rachele Dorsinville, founder and executive director

of BAD (Bright Aspiring Designers) Association, Inc.,

says she started her organization to help fill the tremen-

dous need for business skills and information she saw

when she worked as an attorney for creative workers. “I

was representing independent contractors and realized

most desperately needed the basics—employer ID,

financials. I saw a lot of designers were opening them-

selves up to liability because they had no insurance.

Many of them were not even able to use the [technolo-

gy] that they needed to design. They thought that just

being a fabulous talent was supposed to be enough.“

Indeed, part of the problem is that many creative

workers are uncomfortable with or resistant to even

thinking or talking about their work as a business.

“With rare exceptions, artists can’t go out and raise

money for themselves,” says Meg Fagan, an oboist and

former development director for The Kitchen, a group

that supports the creative efforts of performing artists.

“This is an intimate process and plays to insecurities to

describe who you even are, and what you can con-

tribute. I ran a workshop on fundraising for individual

artists and said ‘tell me about yourself’ and only one in

20 could do it.”

Even those who overcome the psychological barri-

ers typically waste a tremendous amount of energy

casting about for basic information. And despite a vast

assortment of trade associations, educational institu-

tions and arts service organizations that exist to pro-

vide exactly this training, our research turned up

numerous accounts of budding creative entrepreneurs

spending late nights searching for answers on business

sites on the Internet, talking to friends in the busi-

ness—and making a lot of mistakes.

It also means the potential of losing viable busi-

nesses because the producers do not know how to take

their businesses to the next level. According to Mary

Howard of NY Designs, the lack of investment readi-

ness on the part of many creative entrepreneurs is a

serious barrier: “People show up here [NY Designs]

and they are ‘burnt out’ physically and mentally. A lot of

them come here and want to declare bankruptcy. And

these are successful businesses. Some of them have

grown 40 percent in a year. But they can’t manage it.

They do not know how to get the investment they need

to grow and they want to quit entirely.”

The irony is that New York has a multitude of organ-

izations that provide technical assistance to entrepre-

neurs and small businesses. But evidently, many of these

business entities are not connecting to those attempting

to start firms in creative fields. Meanwhile, non-profits

that provide services to those in artistic fields are not

doing enough to partner with these business assistance

organizations or create their own programs.

Indeed, many creative businesses and individual

workers don’t know what resources are available. “We

have been around for twenty years and I still run into

people who should be working with us but don’t know

anything about us,” says Steve Gross, co-director of The

Field, an arts service organization founded in 1985 to

assist artists in both creating new artwork and managing

the business of being an artist. “Another problem is that

there is no central source to tap all of the various

resources available, and even if there was, many artists

and individual producers would want assurance that this

source could communicate how useful or appropriate a

given service might be for their needs.”

Also missing is a service that connects the business

needs of creative workers across both non-profit and

for-profit sides of the creative industries. Theodore

Berger of NYFA admits that NYFA Source, an online and

print service that provides one of the most comprehen-

sive resource listings for artists and arts organizations in

the nation, does not provide information for people in all

creative industries. “We have an extensive information

service, but it is primarily non-profit resources. What we

don’t have enough of is information about resources for

the for-profit side of these industries,” he says.

Hugo Barreca, board member of the cutting-edge

string quartet Ethel and former executive at Time, Inc.,

suggests that city government help centralize informa-

tion about what kind of business services are available

for people in various creative industries. Some kind of

central knowledge bank, he says, would “make the

process much less of an ad-hoc, every-time-is-the-

first-time, experience.” This and other policies that

supported the fundamental structure of the lives of

What creative ventures need most, according to those who conceive and support them, is

the one thing the business world won’t give them: a chance to fail.

artists would pay big dividends, he believes, helping to

draw talent to the city, stabilize the creative economy

and the lives of artists and even relieve pressure on the

health care system.

Another solution would be for arts organizations to

create partnerships and other connections with business

assistance organizations, educational institutions and the

business world. Some of the city’s educational institu-

tions are beginning to respond to this need: the Fashion

Institute of Technology recently added a new component

to its course offerings which will train top fashion

designers in new technologies, financing and other skills

to keep their businesses thriving in an increasingly com-

petitive market. But much more can be done.

WORK SUPPORTS AND ECONOMIC INSECURITY

In contrast with other fields that follow a more tra-

ditional employment and business model, work in the

creative industries is heavily project-oriented and in

some sense, almost always “temporary.” Freelance

workers and the self-employed are far more prevalent

as a result, and much of the work is done by small com-

panies and non-profits that rarely offer benefits—like

health insurance, retirement accounts or pension

plans—that similarly skilled workers in other profes-

sions would take for granted. Other needs more specif-

ic to the sector, such as access to ongoing professional

or technical training and intellectual property protec-

tions, are almost as likely to go unmet. While the unions

and other organizations such as the Freelancers Union

provide some of these supports for workers and help

arts organizations and small firms access better servic-

es and benefits for their employees, the lack of health

insurance in particular has many creative workers liv-

ing in fear that one sustained illness or fluke injury will

lead to financial ruin.

Creative workers who lack health insurance are living in fear that one sustained

illness or fluke injury might lead to financial ruin.

Authors 67.9%

57.9%

10.0%

Artists & related workers

53.8%

47.6%

6.3%

Photographers 52.5%

41.4%

11.1%

Musicians & singers

38.6%

26.4%

12.2%

Announcers 34.4%

23.2%

11.2%

Producers & directors

32.8%

28.5%

4.3%

Designers 31.8%

25.0%

6.8%

Agents 27.0%

22.9%

4.1%

Film and video editors
& operators

23.0%

15.0%

8.1%

Architects 21.8%

17.5%

4.3%

Dancers
& choreographers

18.1%

0.0%

Actors 17.4%

15.5%

1.9%

Editors 12.9%

9.4%

3.5%

Broadcasting
technicians 9.3%

6.3%

2.9%

Reporters 6.3%

3.7%

2.6%

SOURCE: Occupational Employment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002. (Note: Rows that do not add up are a result of rounding.)

Table 5: SELF-EMPLOYMENT LEVELS FOR CREATIVE WORKERS IN THE U.S.

Nationally, nearly 68 percent of authors and more than 50 percent of both artists and photographers are self-employed.

Self-employed workers,

all jobs

Self-employed workers,

primary job

Self-employed workers,

secondary job

Occupations

Says photographer Eric White, who is not insured: “I

think about all the time. I think a lot of people think about

it all the time. Especially, living in New York, one false step,

you step in front of a cab and you have huge problems.”

Because many uninsured creative workers earn

relatively low wages or have unstable incomes, they

frequently cannot afford private health care, and rely

on public clinics. Many more simply forgo care until

they need to go to a hospital emergency room.

According to a 2004 survey of over 4,000 independent

workers in New York City conducted by Working

Today, a national non-profit organization that advo-

cates on behalf of freelance workers, 84 percent of

freelancers cannot afford health care. Roughly 13 per-

cent of those surveyed worked in arts and culture. Of

those, more than eight in ten said they could not

afford health insurance.

Small business owners and non-profit leaders

alike feel these pressures as well, in some cases even

changing their business model as a result. Press

agent Bruce Cohen says: “I used to employ a staff,

and now I use only freelancers instead of employees

because of the health care bureaucracy. I used to

spend a third of my day dealing with personnel mat-

ters. Now I farm out editing and marketing and even

phone work, and let everyone else deal with health

care.” As head of IATSE Local 18032, the Association

of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, Cohen saw

half the organization’s time go toward dealing with

issues of health care costs.

CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY

Fast-moving technological changes that have

brought great benefit to consumers, like the introduc-

tion of the iPod and desktop movie editing, are rapidly

transforming a number of creative industries. While

these technological innovations have created opportu-

nities for small firms to compete with larger entities,

they also present unique challenges for many of New

York’s creative companies.

In fact, advances in digital technology have

already significantly altered the way in which film is

produced. The new film technology is relatively

small, inexpensive, easy to operate and requires

fewer camera technicians and support crew. This is

good news for independent filmmakers trying to

make art with limited time and resources, but this

revolution is beginning to have a major impact on

filmmaking and the extensive and skilled workforce

infrastructure that supported it.

Similarly, the music recording industry is currently

facing changes akin to the desktop publishing revolu-

tion of past years. “‘Desktop audio’ has really hurt com-

mercial studios as it has evolved to offer higher audio

resolution, track count and additional features once

found only in the professional studio,” says Christopher

Walsh, a writer for Billboard magazine. “Commercial

studios use this workstation equipment…but so do pro-

ducers and engineers in their homes and, increasingly,

purpose-built home studios. That has taken so much

money out of the commercial studio market. The entire

overdub process of an album’s production can be done

outside a professional studio. And it largely is.”

Seeking to adapt, many studios have diversified

their services. Some have even become recording

schools, teaching desktop audio production. Many have

started production companies to entice unsigned

artists, hoping for back-end profits if the artist's

recordings lead to a record contract or otherwise pro-

duce revenue. And many studios have dramatically

reduced their rates, especially in traditional downtime

periods, allowing artists on limited budgets an opportu-

nity once out of their reach.

“Some studio owners reason that an occupied

room generating some revenue is better than an empty

one generating none; others feel that once you start

cutting rates, you may as well close, because there's no

bottom,” says Walsh.

An additional wrinkle is that the advance of new

technologies has generated a fight for the ownership

of intellectual property. This has put tremendous pres-

sure on both large multi-media enterprises, which are

consolidating rapidly in order to own the means of dis-

tributing these new technological forms, and on small

creative businesses and the independent creators

responsible for generating this new content.

Currently, there is a lack of visible, accessible,

affordable training opportunities geared toward help-

ing those in the creative fields adapt their products and

skills to changes in the marketplace. The development

of such opportunities—whether by non-profits in the

creative fields or by local government—could help

ensure that New York keeps its edge in the global cre-

ative economy.

❖

A 2004 survey of independent workers in New York City by the non-profit advocacy

group Working Today found that 84 percent of freelancers, including more than eight in

ten arts and culture workers, could not afford health insurance.

LEARNING FROM LONDON

As New York takes on the challenges facing its creative sector, industry leaders here can look to London and other UK
cities for some useful models.

AS THIS REPORT HAS DETAILED, CREATIVE STAKEHOLDERS

in New York City face a fairly daunting set of challenges

to maintain Gotham’s current dominant position in the

creative sector. But these challenges are not unique to

New York.

Consider London, the one city in the world where

more people work in creative industries than New York.

The similarities are unmistakable: as in New York, space in

London is limited, costs are high and competition is fierce.

And like New York, London has a dense network of gov-

ernmental, educational and private organizations focused

on serving the creative industries, but this network has

traditionally been rather fragmented and duplicative.

But where London, and the United Kingdom as a

whole, is arguably ahead of their American cousins, is

that government is actively crafting tools to support and

grow these industries. Since 1997, the UK has made its

creative sectors a major focus of economic planning,

with particular emphasis on supporting its workforce

and entrepreneurs to spur future economic growth.

The Center recently visited London and several

other cities across the UK to see what is being done

there to encourage the growth of creative industries and

better support the creative workforce. By the time we

returned to the five boroughs, it was clear that New York

could learn a great deal from its rival across the pond.

COORDINATION
Creative London

Aligning and rationalizing the resources available to

support creative work is no easy task. But in London, for

the first time, all of the highest-level creative stakeholders

in the city—arts, business, higher education and govern-

ment—have begun to collaborate around a common

mission to support creative industries. The field is being

assessed and assisted as a whole, not in distinct parts.

The coordinated effort began in 2003, when

London Mayor Ken Livingstone set up a commission to

undertake a major assessment of the creative indus-

tries in London. Spearheaded by the London

Development Agency (LDA), the equivalent of New

York City’s Economic Development Corporation, the

commission brought together business executives from

creative industries, government officials and leaders of

arts and cultural organizations to identify the econom-

ic potential of the city’s creative sector, as well as the

major barriers that might impede its future growth.

“As an economic development agency, we are saying

this is a sector we are fully backing,” Graham Hitchen,

head of the LDA’s Creative London initiative. “In our

review, we found it has a huge and major growth poten-

tial. For example, one in five new jobs created each year

in London are in the creative industries. So in 2003, we

started a commission to see what we should do about

supporting the creative industries at the LDA. We did a

lot of investigation: site visits, open forums, research. We

focused on the barriers to growth.”

LDA’s research yielded two major findings. First,

the same entrepreneurial spirit that makes the creative

sector so dynamic would have to inform the collabora-

tion. And secondly, the coordination and buy-in among

other government agencies would be critical to the suc-

cess of these programs.

The most important result of the commission’s work

to date was the creation, in 2004, of Creative London, a

strategic group administered by LDA, and run as a public-

private partnership that is advised by executives of major

creative companies, leaders of arts organizations and gov-

ernment officials to promote, support and grow London’s

vast creative sector. The goal of Creative London is to

tackle the multiplicity of barriers facing the creative sec-

tor, from investment and financing to real-estate and tal-

ent development. Since its inception, Creative London has

developed a series of concrete programs including financ-

ing and investment, talent development, real estate and

promotion—perennial needs of the creative sector. Most

notably, the LDA is supporting the development of ten

“creative hubs”—locally-based partnerships that lead the

creative industries agenda by pulling together communi-

ty and cultural groups with government, education and

real-estate partners, and driving forward a long-term pro-

gram of investment and growth.

The London initiative is already showing promise,

and some in that city’s creative sector say it is because

the LDA understands and appreciates how employment

is different within the sector, compared to most indus-

tries. “What the LDA and Creative London finally got

their head around was the definition of a job,” says Harry

Leckstein, managing director of Freeport Records and

chairman of the London Urban Collective, an organiza-

tion that trains youth in the multiple skills required for

entry into the music industry. “They accepted that work

happens differently in the creative arts. In music, televi-

sion, film, media, these are all short-term jobs. It used to

be that they defined a job as a permanent position with

a company. The acknowledgement of these project-

based jobs where you move from one project to another,

maybe in the same company, maybe not, has led to a

whole new way of the government being able to provide

training, infrastructure and funding for projects.”

MARKET-MAKING
Creative Industries Development
Services, Manchester

As noted earlier in this report, accessing markets is

one of the most critical and difficult challenges facing any

creative business. In the UK, the Creative Industries

Development Service (CIDS), a new organization based in

the old industrial city of Manchester, has taken on this

challenge by finding ways to expose artists and arts-based

businesses to new markets, both locally and abroad.

Formed by Manchester’s City Council in 1999,

CIDS was developed to meet the needs of the creative

industries. CIDS provides general business assistance

as well, but their core focus is to bring art to new and

expanded markets.

CIDS provides trade development resources such

as research and strategic planning that target sectors

and key markets, building capacity through information

and training and helping companies to access trade

events. Perhaps most importantly, CIDS has developed a

series of trade shows and travel opportunities to market

creative companies both within the UK and abroad.

In many cases, businesses in the creative industries

do not have resources to explore international opportu-

nities and might not know about the sources of funding

available. CIDS actively works to open up new markets

for firms in creative industries. “We actively go out and

try and form trade association-like entities,” explains

CIDS executive director Lyn Barbour. “This looks differ-

ent in each area because we are driven by the sub-sec-

tor and what their needs are. Often there are projects

like joint marketing or trade shows to New York City.”

The Transatlantic Express, a trade mission to NYC,

is one of two recent trade tours coordinated by CIDS. In

the fall of 2003, CIDS organized a trade mission of a

group of Manchester-based fashion designers, musi-

cians and other artists to New York to connect them

with New York-based venues and producers in order to

foster new market opportunities for their creative

enterprises. CIDS worked with the Manchester Music

Company, a firm that advocates for the creative sector, to

produce a CD of Manchester’s emerging musicians.

CIDS then arranged for these musicians to perform at

two top music festivals in the U.S., CMJ Music Marathon

in New York and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

CIDS stands out for its broad focus: unlike most

groups of this kind, they are not limited to one creative

industry. They are motivated to work with any viable sec-

tor in Manchester and tailor the exact business assistance

needed to elevate the work to a larger, global market.

WORK SPACE
The Round Foundry Media Centre, Leeds

London and other major UK cities rival even New

York for off-the-charts real-estate prices. Addressing

the space issue has become one of the top priorities for

government and creative developers.

One solution to the space issue can be to place sim-

ilar companies under the same roof and support their

growth through a mix of services and shared resources.

In Leeds, the Round Foundry Media Centre, developed

and run by the Media Centre Network, a non-profit

management company, is home to an array of small

creative companies including IT, computer animation,

new media trade association and television. The

Centre, established with government support as a flag-

ship project of Yorkshire Forward, the local Regional

Development Agency, with support from the City

Council, provides shared office space and administra-

tive functions, flexible lease terms, as well as a host of

business training for the area’s creative entrepreneurs.

“A lot of what attracts the businesses is being all in

the same place. They feed off of that,” says operations

manager Cherry Salt. “Some people have false perception

that they will be competitive, but, quite the contrary, they

are here to be near one another. The Media Centre facili-

tates the networking—for example, they set up a four-digit

number for them to call one another so that calling anoth-

er company in the building is like an internal call.”

The combination of services is meant to help these

companies thrive and grow stable enough to move out

into the wider marketplace; the expectation is that ten-

ants won’t stay forever. “We want these companies to

grow and move out. This is everything that we’re

about,” says Salt. “We provide all of this but we are very

careful not to push it. It’s available and if people don’t

want it, that’s fine. We are not here to nanny anyone

and that is the last thing these companies want.”

Proving that there is pent-up demand for the Media

Centre’s cluster model, companies from other sectors,

including a debt collection agency and a law firm, are

constantly trying to parlay their work into a creative

enterprise in order to be housed at the Round Foundry.

❖

RECOMMENDATIONS

This report details the tremendous importance and daunting complexity of New York City's creative sector. Just as the
field boasts unmatched assets, it also faces formidable challenges that threaten the city's current pre-eminence. To meet
these challenges will require a much greater commitment to organization and collaboration between different actors
than has ever previously been the case, and as in London, it will likely fall to the public sector to take a lead role. But
while government, with its resources and influence, is best positioned to play that part, and can provide the initial
impetus to convene the sector’s constituencies, the public sector cannot sustain any effort to which the other actors—
including creative businesses, workers and support institutions—are less than fully committed. Without this sustained
commitment from all involved parties, any progress on the thorny issues we discuss below, from the cost of work space
to ensuring health care for creative workers, will remain piecemeal and precarious at best.

TREAT NEW YORK’S CREATIVE CORE AS A SECTOR.

New York’s creative economy spans a number of differ-

ent industries and includes everyone from freelancers

and sole proprietors to small non-profits and multina-

tional corporations. Traditionally, the sector has broken

down along lines of size, specialty and purpose (for-prof-

it vs. non-profit); different creative groups have been

more likely to compete—for funding, audience and

favorable treatment from government—than to cooper-

ate. Undoubtedly, the needs of a non-profit dance group

aren’t always the same as a large publishing firm, and

the primary obstacles facing an up-and-coming fashion

designer are often very different from the hurdles

encountered by a film production company.Yet, the indi-

viduals, firms and non-profits working in the city’s cre-

ative industries—from film editors and music producers

to graphic artists and publishing companies—share

many common traits, challenges and opportunities. To

exploit the opportunities and address the challenges,

non-profit arts organizations, creative businesses, trade

associations and local government officials should begin

to recognize the commonalities within the for-profit and

non-profit creative industries and design strategies

around supporting this remarkable creative core.

CREATE A CENTRALIZED COORDINATING BODY

MODELED AFTER CREATIVE LONDON.

Leaders in New York’s non-profit and for-profit creative

communities should take the lead in creating a central-

izing entity that would bring together the disparate

stakeholders within New York’s creative economy and

advocate on behalf of the sector’s shared needs. Such an

entity should be modeled on Creative London and would

include high-level leaders from creative industries and

representatives from trade associations, unions and arts

service organizations that provide services to the cre-

ative core; government, philanthropic, educational and

financial communities; and leaders from the real estate,

economic and workforce development fields.

This coordinating body would act as a sector asso-

ciation to strategize around supporting and growing

the city’s vast creative sector, similar to other city-based

industry associations in fields like finance and infor-

mation technology. Initial activities could include creat-

ing a unified voice for the creative core and developing

policies that begin to address the issues and recom-

mendations addressed in this report as well as other

needs identified by the sector. The council would also

be responsible for developing a research program to

further track the trends and opportunities stemming

from the creative sector.

ESTABLISH AN INDUSTRY DESK FOR CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

AT THE NYC ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION.

City government currently supports the creative core

primarily through the Department of Cultural Affairs—

which largely works with non-profit cultural institu-

tions and arts organizations—and the Mayor’s Office of

Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. While these agencies

have done good work, they were never charged with

supporting large pockets of the creative core; partially

as a result of this oversight, these fields aren’t current-

ly a meaningful part of the city’s economic develop-

ment strategy. The city’s Economic Development

Though the needs of a non-profit dance group aren’t always the same as a

large publishing firm, the individuals, firms and non-profits working in the city’s

creative industries share many common traits, challenges and opportunities.

Corporation (EDC) ought to play a larger role in sup-

porting this sizable and growing part of the economy. It

could start by developing an industry desk that sup-

ports the city’s creative core. (EDC already has industry

desks designed to support a number of key sectors,

including life sciences; financial services; professional

services; media, technology and telecommunications;

airlines; and consumer products.)

BEGIN TO ADDRESS AFFORDABILITY ISSUES FACING

INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISES.

As this report has detailed, the lack of affordable space

to live and work is the single largest challenge facing

New York’s creative core. With so many other residents

and businesses struggling to afford the cost of real estate

in New York, it’s neither practical nor politically feasible

to create real-estate incentives that single out artists and

creative businesses. Yet there are things city officials can

begin to do in partnership with philanthropic founda-

tions, businesses and real-estate developers. One idea is

for policymakers to push for new cluster buildings for

arts groups and creative businesses, possibly modeled

after public/private initiatives by the Alliance of

Resident Theatres/New York and the Greenpoint

Manufacturing Design Center. Another suggestion is

for the city to encourage real-estate developers, uni-

versities and large cultural institutions to include space

for artists or creative firms in their new developments.

MORE FLEXIBLE SUPPORT FROM THE PHILANTHROPIC

COMMUNITY.

Philanthropic foundations and private donors already

provide invaluable support to New York’s arts organi-

zations and cultural institutions. Yet, some of these phi-

lanthropists could further leverage their giving by

being more flexible in how they support creative

organizations. Specifically, instead of providing funds

that are highly restricted to specific projects, the phil-

anthropic community should allow for more general

operating support and planning grants. Doing so would

go a long way toward stabilizing many non-profit

groups, thereby allowing them to focus on their core

mission of creating art, cultural ideas and content. In

addition, funders should consider making longer-term

commitments that recognize a truth too rarely

acknowledged in the creative world: the time it takes to

develop a new product is often longer than a typical

one-year funding cycle.

EXPAND MARKET ACCESS FOR LOCALLY-MADE

CREATIVE PRODUCTS.

While New York has no shortage of locally-based cre-

ative talent, many creative individuals and enterprises

need help with marketing and getting access to a larg-

er audience. Non-profit arts organizations and trade

associations should work with city officials to enhance

promotion and marketing of creative businesses, which

all too often don’t have the resources to meet the costs

of getting their product to a wider marketplace. Specific

activities could include:

• Expansion of the “Made in New York” trademark

beyond films that are shot in the city to other

locally-developed and produced creative goods.

• Continued support, from foundations and city offi-

cials, for “market-making” initiatives like NY

Creates, a project that serves the marketing needs

of the city’s vast crafts and folk artisan community.

HELP CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS AND ENTERPRISES GET

ACCESS TO BUSINESS ASSISTANCE SERVICES.

Arts service organizations should take the lead in cre-

ating better linkages between the many entities—

including government, small business assistance

organizations, higher education, unions and trade asso-

ciations—that provide entrepreneurial assistance to

creative businesses and individuals. While the city has

a large number of non-profit arts service organizations

that offer general business development to artists and

arts organizations, these entities are rarely connected

to the vast array of services available to entrepreneurs

and small businesses provided by the city and other

economic development organizations; their assets

remain under-utilized.

IMPROVE ACCESS TO HEALTH INSURANCE AND

OTHER WORK SUPPORTS FOR CREATIVE WORKERS

AND ENTERPRISES.

As this report has detailed, there is a great need for

strategies that address the woeful lack of health insur-

ance facing creative workers and the businesses that

employ them. Non-profits, unions and industry associ-

ations should look to expand efforts to pool freelancers

into larger groups that could purchase insurance at

more affordable rates.

BEGIN TO ADDRESS THE CREATIVE CORE’S WORKFORCE

DEVELOPMENT NEEDS.

City leaders and industry stakeholders share a strong

interest in developing talented and skilled workers and

should look to better align workforce organizations,

industry leaders, trade associations and unions to coor-

dinate the skills development needed for creative

industries. These entities should also collaborate with

the city’s network of workforce training providers and

educational institutions to develop programs to meet

these multiple needs.

❖

TECHNICAL APPENDIX

NOTES ON METHODOLOGY

Unlike most previous studies of New York City’s creative industries, we have attempted to view the sector

through an economic development lens, counting enterprises and workers and focusing on the scope of the creative

industries. The approach looks solely at the direct employment associated within the city’s creative activity, rather

than attempting to capture all of the indirect economic activity connected to it, as is the practice when trying to meas-

ure the economic impact of a specific event or investment.

Both this conceptual approach and many of the specific methodological decisions detailed below were based on

the pioneering research of Mt. Auburn Associates, who conducted similar assessments of creative sector economic

activity in New England in June 2000 and in Louisiana in August 2005. Their approach to analyzing the creative

sector conforms to the methods used to analyze other economic sectors such as life sciences, manufacturing or

natural-resource-based industries.

One important way that this study differs from traditional arts-related economic impact studies is its inclusion

of both non-profit and for-profit enterprises within the creative sector. Our contention is that these enterprises,

despite their tax status, have the same underlying goal: to generate content, as both goods and services, that trans-

mits symbolic and cultural meaning to a marketplace, whether an audience in a theater or a group of high school

boys waiting for the next video game. Another major distinction is the inclusion of sole proprietorships, which are

particularly important in the creative sector. Studies which do not include the number of individuals who earn all,

or a substantial portion, of their income through self-employment would seriously underestimate the relative eco-

nomic importance of the creative sector.

Our first task was defining what and who should be included in New York’s creative core. The second, more dif-

ficult assignment was to measure it.

One of the key components of the Mt. Auburn approach is that every region has a distinct creative economy and

that a definition used in New England would not necessarily be relevant to New York City. The Center for an Urban

Future, Mt. Auburn Associates and an advisory board of creative sector leaders helped us come up with a definition

of the “creative core” that comprises nine industries:

• Advertising

• Film and Video

• Broadcasting

• Publishing

• Architecture

• Design

• Music

• Visual Arts

• Performing Arts

The first step in measuring the creative core was to identify the number of enterprises involved in these creative

core industries and the number of individuals who make all or part of their living through employment in a non-

profit or for-profit enterprise, or through self employment.

The U.S. Census’ County Business Patterns includes information on employment for enterprises with wage

employees. The 2002 version, the most recent available, indicates 198,627 workers in the city employed by firms with-

in the nine “creative core” industries. A separate data set tracking “non-employers” indicated an additional 79,761

freelancers and sole proprietors within the core, for a total of 278,388. (See Table 3, page 9 for the breakdown by

creative industry.)

This count is extremely conservative for three major reasons:

1) We focused primarily on those enterprises involved in the creation or production of creative content. While

we included some activities involved in the distribution of creative content, we only included these activities

if the distribution-related activity also involved production or was a core activity in terms of the market in

New York. For example, media (a distribution channel), art galleries and museums were included in the def-

inition of the core. Movie theaters, CD stores and book stores were not.

2) Our count does not include many of the suppliers to the creative core. For example, art supply stores, legal

firms specializing in entertainment and other similar firms are clearly part of the broader “creative economy”

in New York City. However, they were not considered part of the creative core, under the definition set forth

in this report.

3) There is a significant amount of “embedded” activity within the creative sector which is very difficult to quan-

tify. The best examples of embedded activities would be public libraries (which are important distribution

channels for creative content, as well as important venues for creative work) and are considered part of local

government employment. Similarly, jobs in museums and performance venues owned and operated by gov-

ernment or colleges and universities are classified under the economic code of their parent organization.

Finally, many “crafts”-related businesses are included in manufacturing under the current economic codes.

Thus, an artisan furniture maker would be included under the economic code for furniture manufacturer. It

was impossible to disaggregate within manufacturing those enterprises that were more design-intensive.

While it was not possible to capture all of the embedded activities, the methodology tried to make some estimate

of creative workers employed in industries outside of the “creative core.” Perhaps the best example is fashion. We

did not want to count all 30,000 apparel jobs in New York City within the creative workforce, but it’s clear that there

is a “creative” element to some number of these positions. Fashion designers working in manufacturing all merit

inclusion within the creative workforce; the question was how to come up with an estimate of their numbers in New

York City.

We used national estimates of the percentage within each creative occupation that were neither self-employed

nor working within the creative sector. Then we applied those percentages to the number of individuals in that cre-

ative occupation in NYC. For example, in the fashion industry, we found that there were 4,080 fashion designers

working in the city in 2000. Of these, 22 percent were working in apparel manufacturing, 30 percent in apparel

wholesaling and about 6 percent in apparel retail. Some additional 6 percent work in other miscellaneous industries

like government or education. We took this percentage (64 percent) and applied it to the 4,080 fashion designers to

come up with another 2,600 creative jobs.

Applying this process to the numerous creative workers employed in non-creative industries as indicated in

Table 4 (see page 15), we identified an additional 30,754 creative workers in the city. As Table 1 shows (see page 6),

adding these three figures yields the 309,142 total for New York's creative workforce.

The U.S. Census’ County Business Patterns (2002) has information on employment for enterprises with wage

employees. This is the most recent data set that has detailed information on employment at the level of enterprises.

The U.S. Census’ data on “Non-employers” supplements the enterprise employment data. This data included

individuals who file returns to the IRS that indicate that they earn income from a sole proprietorship, an enterprise

whose only employee is the owner.

A third set of data, the 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Special Tabulation of the 2000 U.S. Census

was used to complete the measure of the creative workforce by comparing the other two data sets against the num-

ber of individuals living in New York City who reported working in “creative” occupations.

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Alliance for the Arts (1997). “The Economic Impact of the Arts on New York City and New York State.”

Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (2002). “New York City’s Not-for-Profit Theatres in the Post-September
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Alper, Neil O. and Wassell, Gregory H. (2000). “More Than Once In A Blue Moon: Multiple Jobholdings By American
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