Creative Industries: How Do We Stack Up Against Other States?
According to Americans for the Arts’ Creative Industries report, if attracting creative industries were a competition, Minnesota would win hands down against our surrounding Midwest states.
Minnesota is home to 13,835 arts-related businesses that employ 55,040 people. The creative industries account for 4 percent of the total number of businesses located in Minnesota and 1.9 percent of the people they employ. This data includes BOTH for-profit and non-profit arts businesses, and is culled from Dunn and Bradstreet data.
Of our surrounding states, Wisconsin comes closest to Minnesota’s arts activity, with 10,566 arts related businesses that employ 43,676 people. But Iowa, North and South Dakota aren’t even in the running.
Clearly the arts are one of the things that sets Minnesota apart from its neighbors.
Here are the numbers. I’ve added an analysis of arts businesses per capita, which shows that also on a per capita basis, there are more arts businesses in Minnesota than in these surrounding states:
| STATE | ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | EMPLOYEES OF ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | STATE POPULATION* | ARTS BUSINESSES PER CAPITA |
SURROUNDING STATES:
| MINNESOTA | 13,835 | 55,040 | 5,420,380 | .0026 |
| WISCONSIN | 10,566 | 43,767 | 5,742,713 | .0018 |
| IOWA | 6,209 | 23,838 | 3,090,416 | .0020 |
| S. DAKOTA | 1,533 | 6,652 | 844,877 | .0018 |
| N. DAKOTA | 1,327 | 5,804 | 723,393 | .0018 |
* Estimated STATE POPULATION according to U.S. Census as of 7/1/13.
But how do we stack up against states with similar populations? Only Colorado beats us in arts businesses per capita among states closest to ours in population:
| STATE | ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | EMPLOYEES OF ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | STATE POPULATION* | ARTS BUSINESSES PER CAPITA |
STATES SIMILAR IN POPULATION:
| MINNESOTA | 13,835 | 55,040 | 5,420,380 | .0026 |
| WISCONSIN | 10,566 | 43,767 | 5,742,713 | .0018 |
| MARYLAND | 14,259 | 50,021 | 5,928,814 | .0024 |
| COLORADO | 19,308 | 61,259 | 5,268,367 | .0037 |
| ALABAMA | 7,010 | 29,227 | 4,833,722 | .0015 |
* Estimated STATE POPULATION according to U.S. Census as of 7/1/13.
And, finally, how do we stack up against states who have arts communities that we like to compare to our own? Turns out that our density of arts-related business per capita is pretty darn close to (although less than) California, New York and Florida, but higher than Illinois:
STATES WITH ARTS REPUTATIONS:
| STATE | ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | EMPLOYEES OF ARTS RELATED BUSINESSES | STATE POPULATION* | ARTS BUSINESSES PER CAPITA |
| MINNESOTA | 13,835 | 55,040 | 5,420,380 | .0026 |
| CALIFORNIA | 111,516 | 489,988 | 38,332,521 | .0029 |
| NEW YORK | 56,634 | 349,286 | 19,651,127 | .0028 |
| ILLINOIS | 26,945 | 127,236 | 12,882,135 | .0020 |
| FLORIDA | 57,453 | 212,779 | 19,552,860 | .0029 |
Make Sure Your Organization is Counted!
Your arts & culture nonprofit has an impact on your community’s economy, but no economic impact study of the nonprofit arts & culture sector has been done in Minnesota since 2007. To fill this gap, Minnesota’s arts funders have partnered with Minnesota Citizens for the Arts to create a new State of the Arts and Culture Report to be released January, 2015. The report will include data collected from multiple sources including the Cultural Data Project (CDP). Funding partners so far include the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the eleven Regional Arts Councils.
Make sure your organization is counted as part of Minnesota’s arts economy!
Fill out a brief online survey for your organization here:
http://research.zarca.com/k/SsVWVWsQUSsPsPsP
(FYI, if your organization has filled out a CDP profile for FY12,
you don’t need to do this online survey).
Want to know more about the project?
http://www.mncitizensforthearts.org/learn/artsresearch/2014-eis-study/