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Creative cluster hard to pin down
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Editor’s note: This is the fourth part of a six-part series examining the AngleouEcomonics report and the five cluster industries the report recommended economic developers pursue.
Ernest Andrade, director of the Charleston Digital Corridor, reached for his telephone and after a moment, proceeded to describe just why it’s so challenging to promote a particular business cluster, even among those one would expect to be sympathetic to that cause.
“To tell you the truth, as far as the Angelou report and its specific recommendations regarding the development of a creative cluster here are concerned, I really haven’t kept up with it,” said Andrade, whose organization is dedicated to the development of the Lowcountry’s high-tech industry.
“It’s not that it isn’t a worthy goal, or that digital design and film aren’t related to high tech, but the reality is we, as an organization, set out to do specific things and we’re firing on all cylinders,” he said.
Andrade’s specific focus right now is promoting the creation of software companies to complement major industry players in the region like Blackbaud Inc. and BenefitFocus.com Inc.
“Not that I’m unsympathetic to the Angelou report’s goals, but you just don’t wake up one morning and think, ‘This is a flavor I like.’”
AngelouEconomics, the Austin, Texas-based consulting firm, did anticipate this separation of economic development efforts when it released its landmark study in April 2005. In fact, Andrade’s remarks illustrate one of its core conclusions: The creative cluster it was proposing is the only one of the five target business areas that falls outside the lines of traditional economic development efforts.
Unlike other industries, where businesses tend to cluster together because of supply-chain advantages and synergies, the compilation of businesses that might comprise a creative cluster flourish best in those communities where the quality of life and economic environment allow the creatively minded to act on their talents.
When compared to trying to recruit businesses—the forte of economic planners and people like Andrade—developing the creative cluster is far less easy to pin down. The task becomes how do you recruit people who constitute an industry in the absence of a wide swath of businesses to employ them.
“The reality is business clusters aren’t created by local governments or economic development associations,” said Karen Kuchenbecker, director of marketing for the Charleston Regional Development Alliance. “All we can do is make the going easier for them in certain respects.”
“The real driver of clustering, particularly in this case, will be the businesses themselves and to a large extent the educational community, which is already stepping to the fore.”
Spadework for cluster already done
When representatives of AngelouEconomics arrived in Charleston to begin their analysis, they found a community that was already home to an established cluster of creative businesses in the arts, architecture and historic preservation.
Their recommendation was that CRDA, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and others concerned about economic development in the region expend their energies on developing two distinct creative areas: community planning and urban design; and digital design and film.
As envisioned by AngelouEconomics, community planning is a niche cluster that would bring together architecture, technology, design and urban planning to address issues and create solutions in historical preservation and smart neighborhood planning.
This area has already gotten a major shot in the arm with Clemson University’s decision to move forward with plans to establish its restoration institute on 80 acres of the former Charleston Naval Base, Kuchenbecker said.
“We anticipate that the institute is going to be a real anchor for this segment of the local economy,” Kuchenbecker said. “Not only will it be a place were students and academics can focus on fostering better design principles, but it can also be a center for developing material assets as well.”
Other important players in the effort to establish an urban planning cluster are the Clemson School of Architecture in downtown Charleston, the College of Charleston and the American College of Building Arts.
The ACBA’s Building Arts and Design Center currently occupies 10 Storehouse Row at the old Navy base, and it’s where students learn traditional building skills as well as the most up-to-date methods of quality fabrication and building technology.
“Because so many educational assets are already clustered in one area, if you will, we expect there to be a lot of cross-pollination, and from that, for many new business opportunities to grow,” Kuchenbecker said.
Lights, camera, action
The Angelou report described digital design and film, meanwhile, as a complex combination of computers, visual media and the art world.
“This target is largely driven by the skills of the work force, which is somewhat more mobile than that for other industries and attracted to an emerging cluster in their desired area of expertise,” the report said.
Fast-growing and high-paying targets in this niche include digital media content creation, graphic design and film and visual media production.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, design occupations are expected to grow 21% to 35% nationally over the next 10 years. Design applications tied to software will be the fastest-growing segment.
As is the case with the architectural and urban design cluster, Kuchenbecker believes the region’s universities have already made significant strides toward establishing a digital film industry here.
Trident Technical College, for instance, offers more than a dozen associate degrees and certificate programs in radio and television broadcasting, filmmaking, film production, computer graphics and multimedia design.
Likewise, Clemson offers a Master of Fine Arts in digital production in an upstate facility that includes 4,000 square feet of motion picture-quality production space. Closer to home, the College of Charleston and The Citadel offer a joint graduate program in computer science.
“We’ve also got actors in training at the College of Charleston and a scriptwriting program at the University of South Carolina,” Kuchenbecker said. “So we’ve got the means in place to grow the intellectual capital we need.”
The trick, as in almost all business sectors in South Carolina, is getting them to stay.
Toward that end, the Advertising Federation of Charleston has been promoting the advertising profession, a significant user of digital film technologies, through educational programs, awards and recognition events.
The South Carolina Film Consortium, a collaboration between the South Carolina Film Commission, the University of South Carolina, Clemson and Trident Tech, has begun providing funding to independent producers, writers and other film professionals through the South Carolina Film Production Fund.
Recently, the state Legislature also stepped up to the plate, greatly increasing the state’s incentive package for filmmakers, putting South Carolina far better footing to compete with other film industry-savvy states like Louisiana.
If all of the Angelou report’s goals were to come to pass, the work force at the heart of Charleston’s creative cluster would include architects, graphic designers, multimedia artists and commercial and industrial designers.
The companies they’d work for would tend to be small in size, consisting mainly of highly skilled workers and a small support staff. Roughly one-third of all designers in the nation are self-employed, according to AngelouEconomics. As a result, the region’s entrepreneurial network will be vital to the success of these new local firms.
The challenge for Angelou-minded economic developers is how to tap into Andrade’s expertise without disrupting his efforts to develop a software cluster here.
“I do think the Charleston Digital Corridor can do its part; the question is how you go about it and how quickly people who are kind of on the outside of the Angelou-based effort can get smart on this stuff,” Andrade said.
“The community spent good money to get good advice, but it’s difficult to absorb it all with all the active projects and active companies we have on our plate,” he added.
But Kuchenbecker said, at this point, simply getting the region’s major economic development players thinking and talking about the creative cluster is what organizations like the CRDA want.
“By identifying the creative cluster as an attainable goal, AngelouEconomics legitimized it as something we should be going after, but we’re not at the point were there’s a lot of real activity going on,” she said. “There is no long itinerary of projects currently underway, but people are talking, and people are developing ideas along this line and that’s the groundwork we need in place before the real work begins.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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