Creative economy

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Spending on arts, culture brings strong return on investment

Arts and culture are now considered vital economic drivers, and for good reason.

Not only do they bring beauty and quality of life, but they also generate a strong return on investment, attract visitors and new residents, and produce creative problem solvers.

“It actually drives a lot of jobs. It drives a lot of our economy,” We Create Media CEO Wade Breitzke said. He is a member of Indiana’s Creative Economy Leadership Alliance, a trade association for creative businesses.

The numbers prove his point. The National Endowment for the Arts reports that arts and culture are a $10.1 billion sector of the Indiana economy, and that 92,643 Hoosiers are employed in creative jobs.

Indiana also has higher arts-and-culture employment growth than the rest of the country, at more than 5.5% compared to 0.3% nationally. But in Indiana, the sector provides only 2% of Indiana’s GDP compared to 4.2% nationally.

That leaves room for more creative jobs, Breitzke said.

Christine Livingston, president and CEO of Indiana Dunes Tourism, leads the placemaking pillar for Ignite the Region, Northwest Indiana’s regional economic strategy. In 2025, arts and culture were added as a sixth pillar.

“Quality-of-life amenities aren’t just nice to have anymore,” Livingston said. “They’re recognized as core to economic development. Tourism knows this. Site selectors already know this. Municipalities and other regional organizations are catching up.”

Janet Bloch, executive director of the Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, sees that, too.

“A good quality of life drives the economy,” she said.

Tracking return on investment

So how is ROI factored for arts and culture?

“I do painting and music and film. All these are very artistic things,” Breitzke said. “There’s a way to think about the return directly, but what value do we get out of this?”

Art Barn School of Art Executive Director Amy Davis Navardauskas said tracking ROI is important. Each funder has different metrics depending on the goal of their investment. “Depending on what their reporting is, we follow those.”

“We’re using everything from visitor logs to registration metrics. All those are done mostly electronically for us,” she said.

That includes attendance at offsite outreach events and website visits.

The Indiana Arts Commission is funding projects in all 92 counties. Executive Director Miah Michaelson wants to make sure the investments have an impact.

“You can start with how many participated, how many were served directly,” she said.

Most programs require a match, either cash or in-kind donation. For a $4,000 grant for a concert series, a $10,000 private match is common. “That is absolutely an ROI we can track,” she said.

But other measures aren’t as tangible.

“A lot of the value on our investment, you can’t track — quality of life, quality of place. You can’t necessarily put a dollar value to that,” Michaelson said.

“On balance, if you look at communities in Indiana that are high-growth places and are recognized as great destinations, whether it’s to vacation or live or start a business, they are places that have invested and have a robust arts-and-culture ecosystem.”

Case in point

Kristine Wright, director of the Brook Iroquois Washington Public Library in Brook, was thrilled to get a $1.9 million Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative 2.0 arts-and-culture grant. With the local match, that brings $3.88 million in investment for a library expansion.

The library, built in 1914, is one of the original Carnegie libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie’s largesse.

“Libraries have really evolved through time to become more of a community center,” she said.

The funding is going toward a 4,400-square-foot expansion.

“We really don’t want to abandon our beloved Carnegie,” Wright said.

The expansion will allow programs to be done at the library instead of shopping around for other locations. The programs are popular.

“A lot of the return on investment comes when a kid comes in just grinning ear to ear because they just watched a puppet show,” Wright said, or the 28 residents at a nursing home smiling and thanking the staff for bringing a monthly crafts program to them.

Some of the programs are tied directly to Newton County’s culture.

“We do quite a few historical programs,” she said. Newton County was home to famed author and playwright George Ade, the Nature Conservancy’s Kankakee Sands Nature Preserve and more.

“We also love to feature local artists,” she said.

Public art helps tell the story of the land, the industry, the people, too, Bloch said.

“We have been learning about other historical figures, considering bringing those people to life in a nontraditional way,” Bloch said.

Building identity

Fourth Street Theater in Chesterton is featured on Indiana Dunes Tourism’s Arts + Culture Trail. Board President and Technical Director Angela Heid said the small, 50-seat theater focuses on shows that make people talk about important issues. “We only do one comedy a year,” she said.

The theater’s exterior features a pair of wings for visitors to pose with. The artist donated his time and materials for the project.

One of the theater’s annual traditions is a 10-minute play festival, featuring plays as short as the festival’s name implies. Some are world premieres.

Julia Gibbs, executive director of the Miller Beach Arts and Creative District in Gary, is also focused on attracting people to the community.

A $172,000 READI 2.0 grant will help the nonprofit’s old, historic Marshall Gardner Center for the Arts become ADA accessible, allowing fundraising efforts to be devoted to programming rather than facilities.

The district features a Lake Effekt mural festival as funds permit. Gibbs hopes it will become an annual event. “There will be a lot more going on in the 2027 festival,” she said.

“The thing that really matters is the engagement with the community and the people who come to the neighborhood,” Gibbs said.

Livingston recently launched the Arts + Culture Trail.

“It connects galleries, murals, performance venues and boutique dining and shopping across the Region into one experience,” she said. “It’s brand new … but we are hearing anecdotally from partners that it is driving traffic to them. This is music to our ears. Visitors enjoy it and are engaging, and it’s helping our local businesses!”

Indiana Dunes Tourism is counting on those visits to add up to more than a weekend away from home.

‘It’s pretty simple,” Livingston said. “If you want to visit a place, you may eventually want to live there. If you live there, you may want to work there. Arts and culture are what make people want to visit in the first place.”

Business acumen

Marshall County Economic Development Corp. President and CEO Greg Hildebrand wants artists to succeed.

“We put together an eight-week course for entrepreneurs” in different sectors,” he said. “We do have a lot of creative individuals in the area, and many of them are trying to make a living or at least subsidize their income through their arts.”

What artists, he said, is a little business sense.

“They are excellent at what they do in their chosen field, but their business acumen needs some assistance,” he said.

Artists need to learn how to market their business, how to identify opportunities and how to make sure their expenses are covered when setting prices.

Hildebrand said 25 people applied for the program, and 15 were included in the first cohort.

The Indiana Arts Commission has a similar program.

“Rarely do they teach in arts school or just general knowledge how to run a business or how to be a business person,” Michaelson said.

“Some musicians make music and have no interest in monetizing their music, and that’s just fine,” she said, but for those who want to make some money on their talents, whether full-time or as a side hustle, the commission offers assistance.

Zaria Chandler, founder of Chandler Advisory in Dyer, is one of those artists who participated in the Indiana Arts Commission’s On-Ramp Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator program this year.

“We got a lot of valuable information in those three days,” she said.

Her artworks have been primarily self-funded, she said. That’s going to change.

“In the beginning, I had the idea up front, and the last thing I thought about was the market for it and the return on investment,” Chandler said.

But that mentality is changing for her. She now understand that being a successful artist means being compensated fairly.

Most of her works pay tribute to the hip-hop movement. Among her works is a coffee table for a coffee shop in Chicago.

Sculptor Chad Copeland, founder of C2Fab in Valparaiso, works on commission, including the centerpiece at Flounder & Friends Skatepark in Valparaiso, which was funded by the Valparaiso Creative Council. He also created the Birds of Paradise scattered throughout downtown funded by the Valparaiso Redevelopment Commission.

He also does metal fabrication for clients, including ornamental fencing.

“Northwest Indiana is getting much better than it used to be” Copeland said. “There’s more and more support every year.”

He said that people want to go to creative, whimsical, artsy places, he said. They want to shop at “locally owned boutiques where a quirky woman behind the counter is making things.”

“If you look, the communities that embrace the artists, the tourism increases,” he said. “The quality of life in those communities increases. They become more fun. People flock to that.”

Funding matters

Jessica Corral, executive director of the Valparaiso Creative Council, said funding for the arts is vital to a community’s economic health. Big projects bring big results.

“Think back to the golden era, 1920s to 1940s, when monumental structures were built,” she said. “The Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty. How much tourism did that one structure create?”

Even one mural a year can put a town on the map, she said. The Valparaiso Creative Council sponsors several a year during its annual Mural Walk.

“A community willing to invest in the arts preserves its longevity. Period,” she said.

The arts affect individuals as well as communities.

“I think public money is catalytic,” Breitzke said about attracting additional funding from the private sector for the community. “We should look at corporate investment tied to these economic outcomes.”

Breitzke said encouraging creativity pays off for businesses, too.

“The more thoughtful you are, the more creative you are with your solutions, the more valuable you become,” he said.

“The world is increasingly hungry for originality, for creativity. Whoever wins that, wins the economy.” •

Read more stories from the current issue of Northwest Indiana Business Magazine.

Doug Ross
Doug Ross is an award-winning journalist with 40 years of experience in Northwest Indiana. Ross is a native Hoosier and a graduate of Valparaiso University.
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