(Editor’s note: CTB board member Karen Raihill summarizes our organization’s key activities and accomplishments in this article. Please read it all and celebrate a great year with us!)

Strategic thinking, global connections, and community-building were all evident during 2005, CreativeTampaBay’s second full year of operation – leading to even greater growth and possibilities in 2006 and beyond.

We launched a year-long strategic planning process to shape the direction of the organization for the next three to five years. Australian consultant Larry Quick helped CTB put a framework around creative community design and development. Quick says communities need to move beyond the information or knowledge era to the “age of innovation” for reshaping economic and social progress. 

Local consultant Don Upton of Fairfield Index then guided the CTB board through an all-day planning effort to distill principles into actionable items.  As a result, under the deft orchestration of board member Donna Manion, we determined five pillars of importance:

CTB President Peter Kageyama took to different continents and North American cities this year to share the story of CreativeTampaBay.  In return, many thought-leaders and exciting projects were introduced to Tampa Bay.

Last winter in Perth, Australia, Kageyama shared the stage with Dr. Richard Florida, and then traveled to Melbourne where he spoke before VicUrban, the public-private development agency for the State of Victoria.  VicUrban repaid the visit in May when their planning executives conducted meetings with local leaders in Tampa and St. Petersburg and met with local developer Bill Bishop. VicUrban is committed to sustainable development, affordable housing, and prosperous and successful communities.

In March, USF’s Collaborative for Children, Families and Communities and its director and CTB board member Judi Jetson brought Harvard professor and author Robert Putnam to town for a dialogue on “social capital,” a term Putnam made popular in his book, Bowling Alone.  Putnam’s research suggests that broad personal relationships are a critical component of vibrant, innovative, and diverse communities.  This can lead to lower crime, higher educational levels, flourishing children, healthier and happier residents, and a stronger, more stable economy.

We followed up Putnam’s appearance by hosting four world cafes to educate and elaborate on the importance of social capital and to take the pulse of the region’s sense of social connectivity.  More than 200 people attended these gatherings in downtown Tampa, Clearwater, downtown St. Petersburg, and at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Last spring CTB board members May Weber and Sigrid Tidmore helped plan one of CTB’s most well-attended “salons” at the USF Graphics Studio. It featured Dr. Stephen Klasko of the USF medical school, who spoke about the intersection of arts and science and how important it is for the medical and other science professions to tap into creativity and holistic thinking.

Kageyama, CTB chairman Deb Talbot, and Michelle Bauer were our local ambassadors at a conference in Rhode Island in June called “Transforming Urban Communities: Lessons from Providence and Liverpool," by Rhode Island School of Design and the Royal Society of Arts.  The symposium was billed as a “call to reflection,” not action – intended to improve the quality of the questions, deconstruct assumptions, and open doors to future events.

Kageyama then went to London, Ontario, to be a panelist and presenter with Charles Landry at a creative cities conference.  Landry, an international authority on the future of cities, was the keynote at the September 2004 Creative Cities Summit that CTB held in St. Petersburg.  We are scheduling his return in 2006 to be a creative in-residence in Tampa Bay. 

This past fall Kageyama represented CTB as part of the Manchester, England, trade mission sponsored by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.  Creative industries are a recognized, legitimate sector of the economy in the United Kingdom headed up by a minister of creative industries, a cabinet-level position.  In fact, England is actively recruiting creative industries to join a sector valued at billions of pounds a year.

The strong Tampa Bay ties with the UK are evident on this side of the pond as well.  Anamaria Wills, chief executive of the Creative Industries Development Agency in the UK, visited Tampa Bay in September to talk about the organization that she co-founded in 2000.  It serves artists and creative entrepreneurs in design, media, visual and performing arts, crafts, marketing and advertising, and new technologies with professional development and business support. 

Also in September, we were treated to an encore visit by Aussie playwright and director Craig Christie.  He did an evening presentation with CTB board member Bob Devin Jones at the Studio @ 620 on “Theater Beyond Entertainment.”

It was a busy October with two significant events.  Business 2.0 senior writer Gregg Zachary, through the efforts of Michelle Bauer and the support of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, spent three days with us sharing his perspectives on a myriad of topics from science, technology and society, to diversity, identity, and intercultural relations.  Zachary emphasized that there are technology users and technology creators, and the U.S. needs to be at the forefront of the creators because innovation is the key to growth.  He also stressed that the new wave of immigrants coming to our shores have both “roots and wings,” meaning that they want to be based in America but also want to stay connected to their native country by visiting frequently and sending money back home.  He recommended that Tampa Bay understand the special ethnic clusters that are here, figure out how to be inclusive, and use them to their fullest advantage. 

At the invitation of Deb Talbot, Ken Ford, Ph. D., founder and director of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, gave us his views on talent attraction and economic development.  Among his observations: Talented people are mobile and can live anywhere they want; jobs follow talent, not vice versa; cities can be talent attractors and repellors; in the new economy, the landscape will look “spiky” with high pooling of talented individuals.  He urged us to understand the powerful role that universities and research institutes as well as federal research money play in economic development; find out what is authentic, but don’t let it be a barrier to entry to those outside the market; and allow outsiders and newcomers to sit at the “big invisible table.”  H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute helped significantly underwrite the Ford event.

The Tampa Bay WorkForce Alliance staged a presentation for 150 teens and young adults in November on the 21st Century workforce, the role of the creative economy, and what young job-seekers can do to be prepared. CTB’s Kageyama and Donna Manion, who is a human resources executive at the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com, were the headliners.  We appreciate the strong support that CTB has received from the workforce board for our research studies.

With such a wide variety of events, CTB strives to do “civic acupuncture” by interjecting ideas and energy into the life force of the community.  CTB is also proud of board members who are following their own creative endeavors.  Deb Campbell, under the Forward Thinking Initiatives she has pioneered at the Museum of Science and Industry, is putting on the first Youth Entrepreneurship Camp at MOSI for students from seventh grade through high school.  This effort is through the generous support of MOSI and the Florida High Tech Corridor.  Susan Taylor Lennon, dance faculty member at the University of Tampa, drew rave audiences this past summer with “Telling Secrets: A Moving Memoir,” narrating her own life story and animating it with original dance choreography.

Research will be high on next year’s agenda, with Deanne Roberts chairing this effort, as CTB is a major participant in “Things Look Different Here … So What Should We Do About It?,” a national study to identify the unique characteristics of communities.  We will be able to focus on Tampa Bay’s uniqueness through a critical assessment of our differences in relation to national and other regional indices.  Many key components of our region’s “personality” will be examined, including entertainment, recreation, health, lifestyles, gender/sexual orientation, international travel, religious participation, social capital measures, readership and viewership, auto ownership, occupations and demographics, music, food and beverage consumption, and politics. 

CTB will build on this study, which promises to generate as much interest and media coverage as 2004’s Young & Restless study, with an on-site visit by Charles Landry.  Landry’s broad international experience will help the Tampa Bay region identify its existing assets and initiatives and point to near-term opportunities that are simple, inexpensive, and relatively easy to theme.  Landry will spend three weeks in our communities helping to develop strategies to build upon what is already in process. 

This two-pronged research approach during 2006 will also engage a number of community organizations and leaders from seemingly disparate business segments and industries in dialogue about what uniquely defines the Tampa Bay brand.

Stay tuned – 2006 promises to be stimulating and informative, as CTB board members Michelle Bauer and Tom Butler are working on a meaty calendar of salon conversations, place-oriented networking opportunities, and major events and workshops.  

Also on tap are a redesign of www.CreativeTampaBay.com and more Tampa Bay involvement in CEOs for Cities, a national, nonpartisan alliance of urban leaders – from mayors, corporate executives, university presidents, and heads of business leadership groups to foundations and other civic organizations.  CTB board member Sigrid Tidmore of the Patel Foundation for Global Understanding and Karen White, USF St. Petersburg regional chancellor, attended the December national meeting in Chicago.  Mayor Pam Iorio and CTB board member Christine Burdick of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, and CTB board member Karen Raihill of the Tampa Bay Partnership are also slated to become active participants in 2006.

Finally, much thanks to Deanne Roberts, Michelle Bauer, and Elizabeth Leib for editing 50 editions a year of the BUZZ, CTB’s electronic newsletter with nearly 2,800 subscribers.  This year the number of guest authors of the “Creatives Speak Up” column has really increased.  The goal is to get lots of voices, opinion, and ideas circulating to keep the community conversation fresh, relevant, and engaging.