Volume 5: Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
The Building Blocks Column | Volume 5
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
Reflections on Missoula, Montana, Chicago’s Southside and Our Sector’s Collective Power
Me, fly fishing in Missoula, Montana, June 2025
I want to talk about power…
Our power as a creative sector…
And how we can shift our thinking in order to expand and leverage it.
It is easy to underestimate our power as artists - both as individuals and as a collective sector. Our society often treats creative work as avocation and arts products as luxury items. But in this moment, we need to remember that totalitarians always try to control cultural output and attack artists that dissent. What we have seen from the Trump administration’s cuts to the NEA, NEH and IMLS, their takeover of the Kennedy Center, their attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, their championing of ‘the Monument of Heroes’ and efforts to protect confederate statues, etc. etc. is a continuation of longstanding historical patterns. They are attacking artists because they fully understand our power.
Boris Vladimirski’s "Roses for Stalin," 1949. Image credit: Dr. Patrick Horvath’s Virtual museum of political art
During the last two weeks, while I’ve been writing this post, I have had the opportunity to attend four inspiring events where creative sector and small business leaders have gathered together to discuss leveraging our collective power during this moment of extraordinary challenge and extraordinary opportunity. Huge shoutouts to Hyde Park Art Center, South East Chicago Commission, Chibrations, Arts Alliance Illinois and Illinois Arts Council for hosting these galvanizing conversations.
This post serves as a companion piece to the last Building Blocks blogpost, The Arts Funding Crisis: Math, Metaphor and Money. In that post, I explored how metaphors influence our thinking, which in turn impacts our actions (both individually and collectively). I argued that we need to change the metaphors we use when discussing the importance of arts funding.
Today, we will explore how we define our sector. As with metaphor, how we define something shapes how we understand it. A photo gains focus when you crop it. An overwhelming project feels more manageable when you narrow its scope. A new solution may present itself when you expand how you think about an intractable problem.
We have defined our sector too narrowly. I believe this fact - perhaps more than any other - has resulted in a complete misunderestimation of the economic impact that arts, culture, arts education, heritage, creative services, design, and entertainment have at the neighborhood, municipal, and national scales. Our limited definition of our sector is restricting our collective power.
I had the chance to travel twice this summer to visit my brother and his family in Missoula, Montana. I was not anticipating that the trips would lead to a Building Blocks blogpost - after all, Missoula and Chicago’s South Side are radically different in terms of geography, demographics, culture, politics, etc. etc. Yet, I was surprised by how many similarities I found between Missoula’s local economy and the burgeoning creative economy back home on Chicago’s Southside. My trip to Missoula helped me see our sector’s economic impact in a more holistic manner. It made me realize how severely we limit our sector’s power through the definitions we use and how expanding that definition could significantly increase our power as we fight the long, hard fight ahead.
Let’s start by quickly examining the terms we currently use to define our sector. Typically, I see practitioners using these three labels:
The Arts
Arts & Culture
The Creative Economy
‘The Arts’ is the most restrictive and has the tightest boundaries. When we hear talk about the arts sector, most people think of large non-profit institutions presenting work rooted in long-established European artistic traditions. The term is falling out of favor as the sector recognizes its limitations; however, we still reflexively refer to “the importance of the arts.”
‘Arts & Culture’ is more expansive and inclusive, but it still vastly underrepresents the sector’s economic and cultural impact. Our collective perception is that the Arts & Culture sector is economically insignificant; whereas the Entertainment Industry is viewed as a powerful global economic engine. But in fact, the entertainment industry is part of the arts & culture sector. The term ‘Arts & Culture’ fails to capture the full scale and economic impact of the sector. ‘Arts & Culture’ is Bruce Banner. We need to be the Hulk.
‘The Creative Economy’ is the most inclusive and fully representative term, however, it’s incredibly vague. If ‘The Arts’ makes us think exclusively of large non-profit institutions, ‘The Creative Economy’ fails to convey any clear sense of boundaries of who is being discussed. Who is part of the creative economy? And perhaps more importantly, do those people consider themselves and their work to be part of the creative economy? That vagueness dilutes its power.
As a result of the many problems with each of the existing labels, I typically default to “our sector” in this blog when referring to the full spectrum of individuals, non-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, and creative industries that trade in art, culture, heritage, entertainment, design, and imagination. In my work with Bustling Spaces, I frequently combine terms and speak of “arts & culture and the creative economy.”
Today, I am going to propose a new definition for our sector: Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation.
(Spoiler: it turns out that is already how the federal government defines us!)
Missoula’s recreation economy
Missoula is a funky town with 73,000 residents in western Montana, located at the confluence of three mountain ranges and five major rivers. For a town of its size and relative geographic isolation, Missoula has a wide array of restaurants, hotels, shops, and small businesses clustered in its picturesque downtown.
The Big Dipper Ice Cream, Missoula Montana, June 21, 2025
Missoula’s timber industry, which had been the backbone of its economy since the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883, has been in decline since the 1970s. Lumbermills across the region, which provided steady employment for generations, have shuttered. Mills continued to operate along Missoula’s downtown riverfront through the 1980s. Today, the area is known as the Old Sawmill District and is home to many of the charming restaurants, shops, and office buildings that I described above.
Missoula’s economy faces several complex challenges, including a lack of employment opportunities, high costs of living, a severe housing crisis, and gentrification pressures brought on by an influx of wealthy out-of-state individuals. Despite these very real challenges, Missoula feels strikingly different from many of the post-industrial communities that I am familiar with.
I have spent much of my life living in and near communities that continue to struggle to recover from the collapse of their longstanding industrial base. My mom’s family is from Lawrence, Massachusetts. My home state of Maine has many hollowed out milltowns. I went to college in New Haven, Connecticut. And now I live and work on Chicago’s Southside. In all of these communities, the collapse of the industrial base has left much deeper and longer-lasting scars on the built environment than it has in Missoula. These communities have much higher quantities of vacant lots, abandoned industrial buildings, and shuttered schools. Their commercial corridors are less densely populated with businesses and stores and customers.
The University of Montana is the city’s largest employer and an important economic anchor. But, that anchor institution alone doesn’t explain the city’s vibrant downtown or quantity of thriving local small businesses.
The strength of its recreation economy provides a far more likely explanation for how Missoula has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls faced by other communities impacted by the collapse of their industrial base. Missoula provides easy access to an incredible array of extraordinary outdoor activities: fishing, hunting, hiking, skiing, running, mountain biking, backcountry camping, paragliding - the list goes on. Many of the locally owned small businesses directly service outdoor enthusiasts: tackle shops, running stores, gun dealers, guide services, etc., etc.. The area also employs large numbers of public and private sector workers who manage and maintain the infrastructure - roads, trails, rivers, forests, parks, etc. - that sustains the recreation economy.
The recreation economy drives the area’s tourism industry, which attracts 3.5 million nonstate visitors to Missoula and generates nearly half a billion dollars each year. It also is a key factor in attracting talent to the area. A significant portion of Missoulans moved to the area from across the country in order to enjoy the area’s extraordinary access to recreational activities. They spend a significant amount of their time and discretionary income on outdoor recreation. And many build their sense of community around shared passion for outdoor activities. In my time in Missoula, I’ve met people who are part of formal and informal communities of ultra-marathoning, fishing, hunting, river surfing, and alpine touring. These individuals include entrepreneurs, scientists, conservationists and more. Instead of the type of “brain drain” that plagues many isolated small towns in rural areas, Missoula has become a hub for young, highly educated workers drawn to both its natural environment and its creative energy.
My time in Missoula reminded me of the Southside Creative Economy 2035 Tour that the Bustling Spaces team took earlier this year.
The Bustling Spaces team, Evin Marie, Paige Brown, Juevel Hutton and Henry Wishcamper (off camera), on our Southside Creative Economy 2035 Tour, February 2025. Photo credit: Evin Marie.
As I wrote in Building Blocks Volume 3, A Tale of Two Neighborhoods, Part 2: Bronzeville:
Earlier this month, the Bustling Spaces team embarked on a Southside Creative Economy 2035 Tour. Our idea was to visit all of the sites where Southside artists, arts organizations, community groups, and creative businesses have active plans to develop arts, culture and heritage infrastructure….We visited over two dozen new, expanding or planned arts, culture and heritage venues and businesses in Bronzeville alone.
Our glimpse of Bronzeville of 2035 showed us a neighborhood packed with new and existing museums, galleries, destination restaurants, artist studios and co-working facilities, creative sector businesses, and performance venues. It includes new multi-use construction projects that combine arts spaces with affordable housing, new retail and social services. It includes restoration of key cultural heritage sites that families and local residents are fighting to preserve. It includes spaces for Southside artists to make their work and venues for them to perform.
I kept thinking… we’re looking at a Second Chicago Renaissance.
This palpable sense of the collective power and possibility of the local creative sector is beautifully captured by Intonation Music’s Space In Time, Exploring Intonation’s Place in Bronzeville video.
Like recreation in Missoula, the mid-Southside’s burgeoning creative sector has the potential to build a resilient local economy that supports small businesses and thriving commercial corridors, that spurs tourism and provides residents with appealing opportunities to spend their discretionary income locally; and that attracts and retains talent.
Chicago recently announced that the summer of 2025 set the record for the city’s biggest tourism season ever with over 3.5 million rooms booked between June and August (Axios, October 1, 2025). Arts, entertainment and recreation are a key driver of Chicago’s $20 Billion tourism industry. The three highest demand weekends for hotels all corresponded to major cultural events: Pride Weekend, BLACKPINK’s concert at Soldier Field, and Lollapalooza.
With the Obama Presidential Center scheduled to open in 2026, next year promises to be an even bigger summer for tourism. The mid-Southside’s burgeoning creative economy will be a key engine in driving a much larger share of pedestrian traffic and tourism dollars to communities like South Shore, Woodlawn and Bronzeville.
Meanwhile, The Chicago Loop Alliance reported new data this month showing that “Downtown pedestrian traffic now exceeds pre-pandemic levels from 2019, with more visitors drawn by arts and culture and dining” (WBEZ, October 15, 2025). CLA President and CEO Michael Edwards suggests that “people are using the district more as a social center than they are using it as a business.” As recreation does in Missoula, culture in Chicago has the potential to draw both tourists and local residents into communities.
Over the last 50 years, Black Chicagoans have been moving out of Bronzeville, the Southside and Chicago. From 1950 to 2010 Bronzeville’s population declined 75% (Metropolitan Planning Council, 2012, p. 3) with nearly 750,000 people leaving its four community areas. This longstanding outmigration of Black Chicagoans continues: the 2020 census found that the population of African Americans in Chicago declined by 85,000 since 2010 with the percentage of Black Chicagoans dropping from 32.4% of the city’s population to 28.7% (Census Dots). This brain drain has had enormous repercussions for Southside neighborhoods and the city as a whole. At the hyperlocal level, it has been a driving force in the collapse of commercial corridors and a major challenge to efforts to revitalize them. If it gains traction, the mid-Southside’s burgeoning arts and entertainment scene, rooted in the area’s legacy as a hub for Black culture and imagination, would provide a compelling reason for Black Chicagoans to want to return to and remain in the mid-Southside.
Maybe NAICS knows something we don’t know
According to the US Census Bureau, “The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy.” In planning school we used Census Bureau data, organized by NAICS codes, to analyze a community’s workforce and economy. Each sector is given a 2 digit NAICS code. Then that sector is divided into industries that are assigned a 4 digit NAICS code. That industry is then further subdivided into more specific subcategories that are assigned a 6 digit NAICS code.
So, a soybean farm (111110) is part of the Oilseed and Grain Farming industry (1111) which is a subset of the Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting sector (11). If the soybean farm hires a new employee, that worker would be added to the employment totals for its NAICS code. Planning student Henry could access census data for NAICS codes 11, 1111 and/or 111110 to determine how many new agricultural jobs have been added or lost in my study community over any given time period.
As a cultural planner I hate the NAICS code. In my opinion, the NAICS codes don’t accurately map to how creative sector jobs work. When I started Bustling Spaces it was easy to define our sector (2 digit NAICS code) but none of the industries (4 digit NAICS code) or industry subcategories (six digit NAICS code) fit the work we do or the jobs we have created. To me, the NAICS code is yet another example of how the government and traditional economic development planners fail to understand how the arts and creative economy actually function.
But…
What if…
Maybe….
The NAICS codes provide a better definition of our sector than how we define ourselves?
All of the industries and jobs that we think of when we talk about the Arts, Arts & Culture and/or the Creative Economy are categorized within NAICS code 71: Arts, Entertainment and Recreation. NAICS code 71 also includes many industries that we typically don’t think of as part of our sector, but which could easily fit within our tent. Here are the four-digit industries listed within the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sector:
7111 Performing Arts
7112 Spectator Sports
7113 Promoters of Performing Arts, Sports and Similar Events
7114 Agents for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures
7115 Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers
7116 Museums, Historical Sites and Similar Institutions
7117 Arcades and Amusement Parks
7118 Gambling Industries
7119 All Other Amusement and Recreation Industries
To me, this list of industries offers a definition of our sector that more accurately maps the work we do, the jobs we create, our economic impact, and our overall importance to our communities. It’s not the list of industries themselves, it's the scope of the definition that has power:
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation encompasses the things that make us human and give purpose to our lives.
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation includes products and services that each of us want to spend our time and discretionary money on.
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation provides experiences that allow us to form lasting memories and pass on our core values to the next generation.
Arts, Entertainment and Recreation provides the foundation that makes the places where we live into the communities we love.
In every community - Red or Blue; rural or urban; White, Black or Brown - Arts, Entertainment and Recreation provide the primary vehicle for Americans of every stripe to express their identity and sense of community pride.
Try it out. Put it in your mouth and see how it feels: “I am / We are an important part of the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sector.”
It’s actually not that big of an expansion of the definition of our sector. But it’s a massive mental shift in how we think about who we are, why we matter, and how much collective power we possess. Can you imagine if we could get our communities, our funders, our local governments to think about the impact of investing in the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation as a holistic and affordable driver of equitable economic and community development?
It’s a powerful idea.
Call to Action:
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) has three tourism-focused grant programs that are open now!
Tourism Private Sector Grant Program
Tourism Attraction Grant Program
Tourism Marketing Partnership Program
Each program supports projects that strengthen Illinois’ local tourism ecosystem through events, marketing campaigns, and new attractions.
All applications are due November 3.
Read the full funding descriptions and apply at illinois.gov/dceo/ApplyForFunding, and reach out to Arts Alliance Illinois’ Help Desk if you need support with your application!
Do you have a topic at the intersection of culture and urban planning that you’d like to write about? We welcome you to reach out to us at info@bustlingspaces.com.
We hope you will join us for this conversation. You can sign up for the newsletter here. Reach out to us at admin@bustlingspaces.com if you wish to talk about how Bustling Spaces LLC can support you as you manifest your vision for your community.
Just a quick note: Building Blocks is not connected to Bustling Spaces’ Funding Opportunities Newsletter. The Funding Opportunities Newsletter will continue to come out 2x each month. Our hope is to release Building Blocks once each month. Sign up here.
