Americans for the Arts has just issued a comprehensive comparative study of arts businesses and arts employees in all 50 states, with figures also for the 50 largest cities and all 435 congressional districts in the nation. For purposes of their study, the "creative industries" as they call them naturally encompass performing arts institutions, but also museums, the visual arts (including architecture), and a whole host of other enterprises. AFA gathers its figures from Dun and Bradstreet and acknowledges that many nonprofit organizations and individual artists would not be included in these statistics. Nevertheless, the study does give an intriguing picture of the nation's creative "hotspots," and it's easy to look up your part of the country to see how it stacks up nationally.

None of South Carolina's cities rank in the top 50 population-wise and so are not included in the city rankings. Naturally, in raw numbers, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago rank one, two, and three in both number of arts businesses and arts employees. But when you calculate the number of arts employees per capita, the number one city in the United States is...Atlanta. And it's by a country mile, too...Atlanta has 47.69 arts employees per 1000 residents, which means that one out of every twenty people you meet in Atlanta is employed in one of the "creative industries." The second place city, San Francisco, lags with 39.73 per 1000, and for comparison, only about 28 out of 1000 New Yorkers are "arts employees." The "arts businesses" per capita rankings are only slightly different, with Atlanta coming in third behind Seattle and San Francisco.

Another southern city that ranks high in these per capita rankings is Nashville, 7th in arts businesses and 11th in arts employees. How about Charlotte? It ranked pretty well, 20th in arts businesses and 22nd in arts employees, right about at par with its population rank (20th) and better than many other cities that enjoy more of a reputation as artistic centers such as Houston and Chicago.

Although we don't have any rankings for South Carolina cities, there are state-by-state comparisons, and the good news is the Palmetto State barely lags its population rank (25th) in these criteria: 26th in arts businesses and 27th in arts employees. And the trend is upward: South Carolina ranked 4th in the percentage increase of arts businesses over the measured period.

The picture is less rosy when you zero in on our home congressional district, the SC 2nd, which includes most of Columbia and much of the Midlands which is the home base of this blog. We rank 209th out of 435 districts in arts businesses which is actually pretty good, but only 334th in arts employees. As you might expect given that they include many very poor communities, the 5th and 6th congressional districts are in about the bottom 10-20% nationally in the creative industries. Oddly, the SC 4th district (which includes the upstate cities of Greenville and Spartanburg) accounts for 145 fewer arts businesses than our Midlands' 2nd District, but nearly twice as many arts employees! Do they just have huge staffs at their museums? Tons of individual working artists? Curious.

The best showing in our state by far, however, is the First Congressional District, which includes of course Charleston, so that should come as no real surprise. Again remembering that these are rankings of 435 districts nationwide, the SC 1st comes in at 89th place in arts businesses and 108th in arts employees.