Creative Santa Fe: Strengthening Santa Fe's Creative Economy
Creative Industries
From cabaret singers to woodworkers, the creative economy is comprised of diverse professions, spanning ethnicities. Together they combine to create an innovative and diverse cultural economy, based in Santa Fe's past and poised to position its future.
Visual Arts
The nation's third leading art market after New York and LA, Santa Fe boasts a wide range of art galleries, museums, and private collections spanning all styles and time periods. From cowboys and Kokopelli to the latest conceptual visual arts projects, Santa Fe is also home to a series of additional arts events of international renown, and a bustling community of painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, and interdisciplinary artists of all kinds.
Performing Arts
Be it world class opera, cool jazz, new classical music, ballet, modern dance, tradition or avant-garde theater, or even hybridizations that combine several art forms, Santa Fe's performing and presenting arts organizations enthrall audiences all four seasons of the year. Santa Fe is proud to be one of a very few cities of its size can compare favorably with the offerings of our nation's leading cultural centers in terms of the diversity and quality of its performing arts offerings.
Design
Gathering inspiration from the rich cultural heritage and history of the region while embracing and, yes, influencing the latest contemporary trends and ideas, Santa Fe's designers bring high standards and sophistication to the industry. From graphic design to industrial, fashion, interior, product design, and more, Santa Fe is on the cutting edge. A new annual weeklong festival devoted to showing off local design talents and industry debuted in 2005, demonstrating the variety and beauty of the "Santa Fe look."
Literary
When a 800-seat theater hosts a capacity audience for a Nobel-prize poet or Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist, you have all the proof you need that Santa Fe has a vibrant and varied literary scene. From Pulitzer Prizewinners to poetry slams, with several world-class small publishers and a slew of book artists, world famous authors alongside an impressive representation of small book artists, Santa Fe has a scintillating literary scene.
Craft Arts
Santa Fe: a 500-year-old city located in a region with 2000 years of tradition—and simultaneously buzzing with contemporaneity. This convergence fosters to an astonishing array of craft art activity that combines a glorious heritage with an exciting future. Tinworkers, basketry artists, woodworkers, jewelry fabricants, textile artists and weavers coexist with impressive activity in the paper arts, ceramic, and glass arts and many other forms of artisanry, keeping this community thriving with creativity and passion.
Music/Entertainment
Santa Fe's local entertainment artists make their mark on the national scene, while keeping the night-life-loving crowd on their feet. Singer-songwriters, bands across the stylistic spectrum, comedians, puppeteers, and all manner of other entertainers contribute immensely to the cultural offerings delighting audiences, night after night.
Architecture/Landscape Design/Green Design
Santa Fe's architects, landscape designers and others quite literally live off the land, designing breathtaking, innovative, functional, and simply stunning indoor and outdoor spaces. An increasingly common denominator to their esthetic and technical prowess is a keen consciousness of and attention to the challenges poised by our high-desert climate. Gathering momentum from the sustainability movement, and part of the most exciting current trends in industrial design, "Green Design" has become in some circles, synonymous with "Santa Fe."
New Concepts (web, new media, software, games, inventions)
The complexity scientists cannot take all the credit, but the Santa Fe area is a leader in the area of "new concepts," be it website and new media development, software, new products, or even research and development of intangible but nevertheless fascinating new inventions that will someday change the way we all live. A key stop along the "Info-Mesa," Santa Fe is a city that is definitely future-forward.
Cultural Heritage Sites and Activities
Many of the people who move to Santa Fe do so for the same reason native Santa Feans have been proud to call this home for generations. That is, the amazing multicultural heritage that infuses the region with history and a “sense of place” that other creative cities can only dream about. From traditional storytellers to cowboys, Native American dances to Fiesta, or simply the sheer beauty of the landscape, the richness of our cultural heritage sites and activities is one of the reasons why Santa Fe was, in 2005, named the first UNESCO Cultural City in the United States.
Film/Video/Digital Arts
It might be a Hollywood movie, an Indie flick, or perhaps an artsy mélange of digital art and video. Whatever it is, it's happening right here in Santa Fe. An annual Film Festival, an impressive selection of packed art houses, along with art galleries presenting absolutely compelling movies, "Made in Santa Fe" keeps filmmakers busy and all of us at the forefront of the film, video, and digital arts universe.
Broadcast and Media
Santa Fe's daily newspaper is the oldest in the West and one of the last family-owned dailies in the United States. Add in thriving other newspapers, weeklies, magazines, and free monthlies covering everything from parenting to the art world to natural healing and beyond, as well as a growing radio industry and innovative advertising, web- and podcasting scenes, and there's little argument that Santa Fe's broadcast and media industry is leading us into an informed and connected future.
Culinary Arts
The capital city of a state whose official question is "Red or Green?", it's no surprise that the delectable innovations of our leading chefs and caterers leave diners begging for more. They are joined in the culinary arts industry by innovators using food and edible products as their "raw material," creating everything from beauty products you can eat, to little packages of Santa Fe edible mystique to send to hungry fans across the country—or on the other side of the world. There's a good reason why globally, there are more food products named "Santa Fe" than any other brand!
Healing Arts
It is certain that our area's healing arts practitioners bring true artistry to the potions and methodologies they apply towards the healing of both body and soul. Aromatherapy, botanical arts, art therapy, herbalism, and other creative healing arts make Santa Fe a capital for healing arts learning and practice.
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