I’ve long been a believer in the power of creativity to unite hearts and minds and enable communities to thrive. So, I was incredibly excited and humbled to be selected as Imagine MKE’s Executive Director back in February.
If you’re unfamiliar with IMKE, we’re an arts nonprofit advocacy and media organization. We amplify, advance, and advocate for the arts and culture sector, in order to support Milwaukee’s dynamic creative economy and promote economic and social prosperity for all Milwaukeeans. But, more importantly, we represent a movement. We believe that Milwaukee’s arts and culture ecosystem—and the creativity that is born and fostered here—is a key to driving equity, connectedness, and a rich, sustainable cultural life in our community.
So, what is the creative economy, you might ask? It encompasses nonprofit, private, and public jobs and programs that draw from the generation and sharing of creative goods and services. It represents large portions of the tourism and hospitality industries, as those industries are driven by cultural happenings and events. It encompasses the knowledge-based industries, too: including architecture, video game design, videography, and so much more!
Beyond driving economic activity, local creative economies have the power to define and transform communities. Consider how routinely Milwaukee of today exceeds outsiders’ expectations because of our culture. More and more, our city gets top billing on national lists as a must-visit destination, a prime locale to start a business, or metro area rich with unrivaled entertainment experiences. And yet, without investment, or sustainable infrastructure and support of our creative sector, our community stands to fritter away a vast amount of untapped potential. Imagine MKE seeks to highlight and celebrate this potential, and we believe that in doing so we can help turn the tide.
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To support the advancement of Milwaukee’s creative economy, you’ll be seeing and hearing a lot from me and my team in the next weeks and months. For starters, in a few weeks, we’ll be sharing the results of the Arts and Economic Prosperity Study 6 from Americans for the Arts and administered by the Imagine MKE team with help from incredible arts partners. These data points highlight the revenue, employment, and tourism/hospitality dollars that are generated in our community by our arts and culture sector. Later in October, I’ll be traveling to our nation's capital to represent the opportunities and interests of Milwaukee’s creative economy to directly to Senators and other elected officials, alongside representatives from Americans for the Arts.
Meanwhile, we are continuously helping to reshape perceptions of Milwaukee as an artistic, innovative community and home for diverse talent through our Creative MKE podcast (syndicated with 89.7 WUWM) blog stories, and other media highlighting opportunities, excellence, and professional development avenues for creatives. We’re also hard at work collaborating on innovative events and programs to unite the public, private, philanthropic, educational, and non-profit sectors around the power of a robust arts and culture sector.
And we’re just getting started. But we cannot do this work alone.
If the positive momentum of the creative economy in Greater Milwaukee is important to you, please come alongside us. Sign up for our newsletter, make a donation to support our cause, get connected with us on social media and in person. Your engagement will impact our ability to advance Milwaukee’s creative economy, champion expanded public funding for the arts, and amplify the stories of our region’s vibrant arts, culture, and creative industries. I’d be honored to have you join us in this movement to advance Milwaukee’s creative economy. Together, we can co-create the future we want to see for Milwaukee. With gratitude, Adam Braatz.
Visit: Imagine MKE
Photo Credit: Erol Reyal
