Oregon Creative Industries Blog

October 8, 2009 was an exciting day for Oregon Creative Industries! Gathering at the offices of AIA in the Pearl, were staff and board members from the associations that support major sectors within the Creative Economy in Oregon: IIDA, AMA, AIA, ASMP, PAF, WAN, IABC, AIGA, IDSA, IDC, OMPA, Art in the Pearl and DevGroup NW.  All but one of our State’s 14 Creative Industries verticals were represented.

The order of business for this meeting, the big question: Do we want to move forward as an organized Creative Economy cluster? To do this would mean forming a new 501(c)6 non-profit trade association called Oregon Creative Industries to support the core missions as established from conversations and roundtables with the community and detailed in the draft Oregon Creative Industries proposal published in February of this year. The core missions are networking, promotion and advocacy as related to economic development of our cluster.

Jerry Ketel of Leopold Ketel & Partners and President of the Board of PAF made a motion to vote on the forming of this organization. The vote was unanimous! During this meeting an OCI working group called Creative Economy Council (CEC) was also formed, made up of association leadership.

There was a great energy around the table as all of the associations pulled together to support this initiative and those three core elements. The next step, the meeting at City Hall with city officials and Portland Development Commission. It was agreed that as a show of support and true collaboration all would attend this meeting at City Hall to present some of the findings from previous roundtable discussions and the proposal for the formation of the trade association, Oregon Creative Industries.

There is still a lot of work to be done. We look forward to future collaborative efforts that we know will strengthen the mission and goals of all involved. Stay tuned!!

JG