Creative Class Communities

The conclusion of the two-day Creative Communities Leadership Program seminar in Roanoke with four fantastic initiatives.

Creative Class Group led CCLP for the city of Roanoke with a 2 day seminar called the Roanoke Creative Communities Leadership Program.

The Richard Florida Creative Connectors project in Roanoke.

The Great Noosa Camp Out was the first of five projects to come from the Noosa Creative Alliance, developed from Richard Florida’s Creative Communities Leadership Program model. About 30 “catalysts’’ were chosen at the start of the Alliance last year to work on projects to boost Noosa’s economic prosperity by attracting and supporting creative industries.

The DaytonCREATE initiative was launched last year with the help of economist and best-selling author Richard Florida. He urges communities that want to thrive economically to recruit and cultivate a “creative class” — artists, musicians, engineers and high-tech workers, all people who think and create for a living. A number of projects have grown out of the work of Dayton’s creative “catalysts.”

What makes a community desirable and sustainable? The answer, according to researcher and University of Toronto professor of business Richard Florida is the strength of its creative class.
Roanoke plans to test Florida’s theory by becoming the latest city to try the Creative Communities Leadership Program.

The Creative Communities Leadership Projects “give emerging leaders the tools they need to generate greater economic prosperity in their region.” In the Spring of 2009, they will be bringing those tools to bear on Roanoke.

Roanoke CCLP to be launched at a two-day seminar for selected leaders where the Creative Class Group will work with the volunteers to build an understanding of the creative economy, the community’s 4Ts (Talent, Technology, Tolerance and Territory Assets), identify strategic economic goals and develop a framework of projects to engage the Roanoke community.

Star City Manager Darlene Burcham issued
a call to the community to identify 30 local leaders who hold the key to turning Roanoke into one of the most desirable and sustainable communities in the country as part of the Creative Communities Leadership Program (CCLP), which was launched by the Creative Class Group (CCG).