Being able to serve the Hispanic community well means overcoming issues of trust and cultural differences.  Both Encuentro and La Comunidad Habla have long track records of success and their diverse connections in the Hispano community reflect this.  But, these ladies are also eager – a euphemism for hungry – to build their own ventures.  They work for themselves and because they must succeed I knew they would need us to succeed.

And, I knew they would also be willing to take credit for our work or give us credit for their work.  This is essential as telling the story of our success needs to a flexible activity.  We can’t define our success and tell our story by who did what but instead that together we did it!  This doesn’t mean that some work harder than others and get none of the credit. this means that when a funder says to me at a training, “Great job on the speakers!” I don’t reply “Actually, I didn’t do that part, Sara did.” I instead say. “Thanks, it all came together really well.”

Sharing credit, giving it up, our getting looked over when the accolades are handed out can be tough. But when partners are willing to do this they become an effective team, internally valuing each other’s efforts thoughtfully and specifically, but externally presenting a unified force that funders, participants, and more partners are eager to support.  And there is nothing better than success to create rapport among a team.

America didn’t invent entrepreneurship – but we sure do love it here.  Even President Obama is getting on the entrepreneurship bandwagon, announcing new programs to spur technology innovation that will lead to new companies being formed and hopefully, more jobs.

And he is singing my song – almost.

What continues to be missing from all the rhetoric about small business assistance, technology and innovation, is an emphasis on pragmatic community development efforts that support entrepreneurial ventures growing in unexpected places.  As a few examples from our (www.culturalentrepreneur.org) adventures across New Mexico: In Zuni Pueblo a small partnership of cultural entrepreneurs has begun an export business of jewelry and art to Asia, in Albuquerque two Mexican ladies are building a tamale business that can’t stop growing, and in Deming, New Mexico, a couple is building and selling solar cookers that schools are using to heat breakfast for 200 kids – using zero electricity.

Photo Credit: And Dr. Susan Oberlander and Alice Loy. Azucena Molinar of La Comunidad Habla working with a training participant.

Small businesses in America spring from determination and necessity and these days we’ve got both in abundance.  Which means that small businesses are popping up all over the place.  In crafting our FFNM program, we considered these ventures and saw one gaping hole in the resources they need: digital literacy training for a Web 2.0 economy.  Sure, everyone knows how to use Facebook to connect with long lost high school friends but how many of us know how to use social media to spur sales for our small business? And, how many entrepreneurs in Deming or Zuni Pueblo can access training that addresses how to cut costs using Web 2.0 technologies?

Our BTOP grant-funded program, Fast Forward New Mexico, is unique in that our program’s advanced trainings focus solely on meeting the learning needs of small and new businesses in rural and marginalized communities.  To do this well we recognized we would need to partner with organizations already working in these communities, and we would need to develop Small Business Success curriculum for a Web 2.0 world.

Over the next several weeks I’ll share how we developed community partnerships, curriculum, and outreach methods that have, so far, been successful in training entrepreneurs in far-flung communities to utilize social media and internet tools to build their business.

Photo Courtesy of Denise Avila

Last week Thomas Friedman came out with another great opinion piece, “The New Untouchables” in which he argues that the “huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street” and that our middle-class workers are rapidly losing their ability to out-compete middle wage workers in foreign nations.  He suggests that The New Untouchables are those who, “have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work”, those with a creative and entrepreneurial mindset, in other words.  Furthermore, he makes the point that,

“Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait.”

The days of work being handed out to those who happen to be standing nearby are over.  Instead we are tasked with using our ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit to seek out new market opportunities and leverage our creative talents into new ventures.  And this call to join the Creative Force is being answered loud and clear by cultural entrepreneurs.

In New Mexico cultural entrepreneurs like Patricia Michaels are building into this new economic reality.  Ms. Michaels designs her own fashion pieces,  has them all sewn here in the US, and leverages the appeal of Native  American community values and expressions to connect with buyers.  Her shows are lively events where customers shake hands with the woman behind the wearable art, listen to the stories of Taos Pueblo that are hand-painted onto the fabrics, and leave with a little piece of Native America elegantly draped around their neck, or tossed across their back.  High fashion + deep meaning = satisfied customers.

Patricia readily talks about her vision for building her cultural enterprise, “I want the world to feel the Native American culture in a way in which they are being invited into a common ground.”

Hand Painted Fabric by Patricia Michaels, Photo by Jennifer Esperanza

Patricia Michaels is uniquely gifted in her ability to translate her Native heritage into wearable art that meets a growing demand for meaningful fashion products.  Friedman advises that, “Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs,  new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.”

And Patricia Michaels is just one example of a thriving cultural entrepreneur.

Painting “First Light” by Ron Ukrainetz

At GCCE our core tenets are:

We believe talented entrepreneurs drive wealth creation;
     Therefore, we are entrepreneur focused.
We believe cultural entrepreneurs have unique opportunities and needs;
     Therefore we are experts in building cultural enterprises.
We believe markets drive profit opportunities;
     Therefore we build toward growing cultural markets.
We believe enterprise networks increase innovation and speed to market;
     Therefore, we build clusters of cultural enterprises.

But, today in Bozeman, Montana, while giving a short presentation to a group at TechRanch, I realized one tenet was missing.  Therefore, I am going to add this:

We believe all communities are culturally rich;

Therefore, all communities can thrive in the Creative Age…even communities whose economies have historically not been based on human capital, like the communities of Montana I am visiting this week.

Bozeman, Montana- the land of glacially carved valleys, towering granite peaks, and wild trout-filled rivers. 

This morning, as I leafed through a series of brochures about this, The Last Great Place, I came across these words: “While Montana may not be a cultural hub…”.  And I thought to myself, “Maybe not to someone else, but this is my culture!”  Towering peaks that tell the seasons, ranchers and cows that struggle to sustain, galleries filled with vibrant expression of place more than people, museums that recall the struggles of pioneers and Native Americans.  The West has a culture all its own and while emblematic images of cowboys and open ranges still hold true in some places a new cultural reality is arising in towns from Bozeman, Montana to Bisbee, Arizona.

Montana, like so many places in the West is faced with a changing global economy and the next iteration in the Montana economy will likely be built on creativity and culture. Within just a day in Montana I have come across more than 50 cultural enterprises – ranging from the 320 Guest Ranch to the Bozeman Opera to the myriad Yellowstone National Park tour operators.  And each of these cultural ventures equally expresses the culture of Montana.

As our Western communities move away from natural resource based economies to human capital based economies we need policies and development resources that support cultural industries.  And, we need to highlight and support the work of cultural entrepreneurs – the leaders who are envisioning and building a “society that matches the scenery” here in the West.

In 2007 Newsweek published an article about the growing concern that our children are becoming increasingly disinterested in school and are falling behind in science, math, and reading.  A more recent commentary by Dr. John Eger, wisely warns, “We cannot continue to fail to put creativity at the center of education”.  Dr. Eger holds the Van Deerlin Endowed Chair of Communications and Public Policy in the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University and like many of us, is concerned that kids are apparently losing their creative drive and expressive abilities. 

Yet when I go to cultural events like the recent Las Golondrinas Fall Harvest Festival, I see kids engaged, thriving, learning.   So are kids losing their creative drive or are we squashing it with an over-emphasis on wrote memorization and standardized tests?  These are concerning questions that are at the heart of education policy reform. 

I argue these questions are also at the heart of economic policy reform. 

We have entered the Creative Age and yet our culture is not one that embraces creativity in children.  So, if our economies are increasingly based on creativity, and numerous studies show that livelihoods and wages are improved for those in creative occupations, when will we begin to see creativity as the center of education policy and practice - instead of just knowledge?  The intersection of knowledge AND creativity is culture defined.  Combining what we believe to be true with one’s own unique expressive sensibility is culture.  

So here is my call to action: support education policy that calls for a culture of creativity in our classrooms!  And consider taking your children somewhere this weekend where history meets the present so our future is full of culture!

This weekend I sifted through about forty academic articles on the Cultural Economy, Cultural Industries, Cultural Enterprises, Cultural Entrepreneurs.  My brain is still swimming with terms like cultural geography, the intersection of culture and economics, and regional economic development.  The consensus is evident: creative and cultural economies are the future of innovative regional economic and community development and offer promising paths toward prosperity and cultural diversity.  A bright spot on our otherwise cloudy economic horizon, you might say.

But a theme began to emerge, well, really more of a glaring “gap in the scholarship” that tickled my brain until I had to scratch it.  And here’s what I realized: the Cultural Entrepreneur was written out of the script in all of this research, thinking, writing, and theorizing.  The individuals who start these cultural ventures, and in aggregate, meet the ever-growing market demand for cultural products; the people who are at the heart of cultural economies were not mentioned in the cast of characters in these varied and voluminous articles.

Yet, in my experience, at the heart of every cultural venture – be it a new ethnic restaurant or a burgeoning niche film studio—there is always a Cultural Entrepreneur center stage.  Cultural industries and economies are not abstract notions or distant academic terms: they are vibrant, dynamic sites of cultural exchange between individuals.  So, over the next several weeks I will introduce you to some of these extraordinary individuals. Moreover, I hope to recast Cultural Entrepreneurs and place them at the center of the cultural economy discussion–right in the spotlight, where they belong.

In 2007 I helped found the Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship so I could combine my passion for creating thriving cultural communities, addressing economic challenges, and building successful enterprises.  I love working with cultural entrepreneurs – they are bold, resourceful, and bring innovation into our lives. Living in Santa Fe allows me to soak up culture and engage with cultural enterprises at every turn…Santa Fe is ground zero for cultural entrepreneurship thought leadership, policy development and markets.

Cultural entrepreneurs can reach me at alice@culturalentrepreneur.org