About Us
The Creative Communities Initiative is a bold, innovative project that focuses on six communities in Eastern North Carolina to: raise awareness of the characteristics that define a creative community; identify how best to develop a creative community; and, begin leveraging financial, intellectual and human capital to accomplish a strategic plan for participating CCI communities: Ayden, Edenton, Hertford, Murfreesboro, Plymouth and Tarboro. All six CCI communities are located in a region identified as among the most economically distressed in the United States. Approximately 27% of the total population from these towns lives below the poverty line.
FoR ENC worked directly with community leaders to identify up to fifteen people who, together, comprise each town's Creative Community Council. These Councils are pivotal in representing the views of the respective communities and ensuring that the Creative Communities Initiative supports and builds on relevant efforts.
Project Conception
At the "One East" Economic Summit in 2003, the people of Eastern North Carolina determined that bold and decisive measures must be taken to ensure that the economy of the region can transition from dependence on manufacturing and agriculture to a more competitive position in the global marketplace.
However, links must to be created between Eastern North Carolina's unique assets and the larger "creative economy," a model in which the aim is to develop intellectual properties and services and an environment conducive to promoting them rather than manufacturing products exclusively.
Such an economic model proceeds from a focus on individual creativity, skill and talent. Businesses that contribute to such an economy span an enormous range of options, from technology to tourism to the creative arts. Jobs whose economic function is to create new ideas or creative content now employ over 38 million Americans, or 30% of all employed people.
The entrepreneurs who are creating jobs for the 21st century regard places like Eastern North Carolina as among the most desirable in which to live and work: devoid of urban sprawl, abundant in beautiful natural resources and rich in authentic community life.
Eastern North Carolina is poised to take full advantage of its strategic assets.
Project Implementation
To support the Creative Community Commissions in their work, FoR ENC will:
- host capacity building workshops to share the creative community philosophy and approach
- work with the Councils to: identify priorities; develop community-driven blueprints for action; and,
- identify strategic and financial partners/change agents.
Other partners include relevant municipal leaders, educators from the North Carolina community college and University of North Carolina systems, the Institute for Emerging Issues and the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise.
The populations in the participating communities will benefit from a diversified approach to economic development. Instead of creating jobs piecemeal for the few, the Creative Community Initiative will create an environment that benefits the community-and the economy-with improved quality of life, diversification of opportunities and the development of new micro and small business.
Once completed, each town will act upon a blueprint to be used to guide and leverage various sources of revenue, including New Market Tax credits (where private investment receives a tax credit for investing in low-income communities), private investment and fee income from real estate development and management.
Using the participating six towns as case studies, FoR ENC anticipates that they will serve as examples for how Eastern North Carolina can refocus it development efforts. That by combining economic opportunity with a creative mindset and building on the quality of place synonymous with many of its towns, Eastern North Carolina can become a "creative destination".
