Creative Santa Fe Announces New Board Chair, Executive Director, and Initiative

Creative Santa Fe, a nonprofit that emerged in 2005 out of the University of New Mexico BBER economic-impact study, and has been funded by the City of Santa Fe to increase arts and cultural awareness and advocate for arts and creative industries, has announced it has a new board chairman and a new executive director. Philanthropist and entrepreneur William A. Miller will lead the reorganized nonprofit “to fully implement our mission to strengthen Santa Fe’s Creative Economy and showcase Santa Fe nationally and internationally,” according to an email released today. The new executive director, Clark Hulse, comes to Santa Fe from University of Illinois at Chicago where he has been a professor of English and art history, associate chancellor, and project director of The Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, a six-time gathering of government, business and academic leaders, on urbanism and innovation in cities.

The new board and staffing announcements coincide with Creative Santa Fe having disclosed on the website in October a new “initiative,” first posted on October 6, and described as involving “a world-class conference and arts and cultural festival to be held annually in the fall in Santa Fe. The aim is to explore the escalating significance and economic impact of the cultures of creativity (science, art, architecture, food, design, music, film, indigenous arts, etc.) in the development of cities worldwide.”

In materials handed out by Creative Santa Fe at the Ore House restaurant last week, “Imagined Futures” or “IF” is described as the name of the new initiative. Imagined Futures, a page of printed materials relays, “was stimulated in part by new research on cities conducted at the Santa Fe Institute by Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West.” Beginning in 2012 in Santa Fe, Imagined Futures will focus on a specific city — the first year that city will be Santa Fe itself – in a conference and subsequent festival. Future years’ conferences and festivals will showcase other national and international cities.

For a full article on the cities research of Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West, The New York Times magazine reported last December. See the link here.

Featured image (l. to right): Kris Swedin, former Creative Santa Fe executive director; Cyndi Conn; Laura Carpenter; and William A. Miller, discussing the conference and festival in Santa Fe on December 8.

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