Creative Job Stats Every Brooklynite Should Know
As we all know, Brooklyn’s become a boomtown for creative dreamers and makers. Now, a study from the Center for an Urban Future has confirmed and quantified the artsy influx.
CUF is a think tank and master of urban stats (we’ve written about their work before) so you can look forward to hearing these figures merrily repeated by pro-art policy makers in the months to come. The report was already cited at least twice at last week’s Make It In Brooklyn Summit, though not by Bruce Ratner.
Ready to face the facts?
All-Day “Quintessential Queens” Celebration
No local stone will be left unturned next Friday, when Queens College hosts Quintessential Queens: Celebrating America’s Fourth Largest City, an all-day, eight-hour conference. As part of ongoing 75th anniversary celebrations, the Flushing university will bring together a hodgepodge of outstanding speakers, including academics, economists, preservationists and artists. City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer will give a lecture about culture, while QC biology professor John Waldman will talk about the borough’s natural landscape. Wellington Chen from the Chinatown Partnership will discuss demographics in Flushing, while Jonathan Bowles from the Center for an Urban Future will imagine the borough in the year 2030. Paolo Javier, the borough’s poet laureate, will offer verse, the official Queens historian Jack Eichenbaum will discuss the county’s place in U.S. history and QC professor Nicole Cooley will look at how Queens fares in the literary world. Plus, local nonprofits, such as the Alley Pond Environmental Center, the Museum of the Moving Image, Flushing Town Hall and the Louis Armstrong House Museum, will staff informational booths.
Details: Quintessential Queens: Celebrating American’s Fourth Largest City, Queens College, LeFrak Concert Hall, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, October 4th, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, $20 for all day plus lunch.
Photo by the Queens Tourism Council
Lots of Design Firms Calling Brooklyn Home These Days
The Center for an Urban Future just released a study called “Growth by Design” (download it here) showing that there are more companies in the design sector than in any other creative field in New York, and that the number of architecture and design companies based in Brooklyn grew dramatically from 2001 to 2009. From the study: “A vast majority of the city’s design firms are located in Manhattan, but, the number of companies in Brooklyn has exploded in recent years. Overall, the number of Brooklyn-based firms grew from 257 in 2001 to 430 in 2009, a 67 percent increase. The number of graphic design firms in Brooklyn grew by 62 percent in that time, from 86 to 139, and the number of architectural firms nearly doubled, from 65 to 129.” It also notes that while there are no labor statistics on furniture designers, the growth in that industry has “fueled a resurgence in small scale, high-end manufacturing in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and pockets of Greenpoint and Bushwick in northern Brooklyn.” The report advocates for the city’s economic agencies to do more to support design industries and recommends that officials work to bring back the Brooklyn Designs show, which was shut down this year after the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce didn’t receive expected state funding.
Growth by Design [Center for an Urban Future; PDF]
