 Welcome to a conversation about creativity, culture, and capital, the untapped potential of the global creative economy. I'm Laura Hallanian. I'm the family partner at Upstart CoLab. At Upstart, we believe that creative people solve problems, and we're disrupting the way that creativity gets funded by connecting impact investing to the creative economy. Upstart frames the creative economy for impact investors with a focus on the creative industries, in particular, ethical fashion, sustainable food with an emphasis on food products and experiences that connect people. We focus on social impact media, film, TV, video games, music, and more. We think about cultural tourism and a whole range of other creative industries. Since we launched Upstart five years ago, we have introduced a creativity lens to impact investing. In partnership with the Local Initiative Support Corporation, LISC, we launched the first inclusive creative economy fund in the United States, and we've directly mobilized 17 million dollars of impact capital for investments in businesses in the American creative economy. This year, 2021, is the United Nations International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. UNESCO predicts that the creative economy will become 10% of the global economy in the next few years. Already today, the creative economy is the source of 30 million jobs in the formal economy and 300 million jobs in the informal economy. The creative economy employs more people aged 15 to 29 than any other sector globally, and the creative sector employs 285 million women around the world. My organization, Upstart Co-Lab, has partnered with Fendanzeon Compromiso and Buenos Aires, and Nesta's Arts and Culture Finance Fund in London on a project called Creativity, Culture, and Capital. This project intends to bring attention to the potential for impact investing in the global creative economy. We've recently published 75 essays from 94 leaders representing 24 countries around the world. Our authors include Sirana Cohen, the chairman of the Global Steering Group on Impact Investing, Board Foundation President Darren Walker, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. You can find these fantastic essays online at creativityculturecapital.org. Today we're going to speak with two of the leaders who contributed essays to creativity, culture, and capital, John Hawkins and Roberta Anand. John Hawkins is the author of books, including The Creative Economy and Invisible Work, and Roberta Anand is managing partner for the Impact Fund for African Creatives. John and Roberta, welcome. I'm so glad to be with you today and just have this conversation with both of you. It's very exciting to bring John and Roberta into a single conversation. John coined the term creative economy more than 20 years ago. So he is at the beginning of this whole movement. And Roberta will tell us about launching the Impact Fund for African Creatives just four days ago, which I think is a really hopeful milestone as we come towards what we hope will be the end of COVID. And as we imagine what's gonna be possible for the rest of the 21st century. So John, since you started us off imagining that there was a creative economy, I think I'll ask you that first question, which is why? Why creative economy? What was the virtue that you saw in defining as one field something that brings food and fashion and media and music altogether? What was it that you saw that was important and sort of common across all of these creative activities? It's a great honor to be here and that's a tough question. But 20 years ago, I've worked all my life in the creative industries, what became known as creative industries, in music, in journalism, in television and a bit in film. And I realized that there's a lot going on and there's not a commonality between the different activities. But for some reason, it was happening in what was felt to be the margins of the economy and policymakers didn't really, they were not really paying attention to it. But if you added it all up, it was massive. And I felt it was important as well. And it was partly, I have to say, to wave the flag for human creativity, human creativity. At a time in the late 90s, when everybody correctly was getting very excited about the web and online, and I was involved in that, but I felt that was not everything. There's something else going on and human creativity should be, human expression should be given a bigger profile. It was also, I guess, something that a lot of young people wanted to do coming out of the universities. And they were going to do something that in many cases, their parents, their families, their teachers did not really value. I felt it should be valued. I also wanted to give a bit of a prod to the economics profession who were not really paying attention. They weren't really focusing on creativity as something that was important to people's lives and contributing to adding value to their businesses. I have to say, I think economists have been very slow to pick up what is happening to give it serious attention. But those are my main reasons to draw attention to something that was already big and was massive and was part of humanity, part of civilization, but for some reason was not really acknowledged by the widest society. So since you first introduced this term creative economy and brought attention to this whole space of activity as you've just described it, what's changed? Maybe some good changes, maybe some not so good changes, but what have you observed over this past 20 years that's evolved around the creative economy? It's now recognized by all governments, all regions or cities as a critical part, not only of their national local economy, but of their national local wellbeing. Another thing that's changed is the use of tech or not the use of tech, but the use of the tech sectors have become absolutely massive. A digital online tech connectivity, AI, robotics, learning machines, they are now a huge part of what we're talking about. I think another thing that struck me because I've spent a lot of time in China was the rise of China into being a major power in many areas. And that was part of the awareness of what I can only describe as non-western ideas about thinking about culture and creativity. When we all started to look at this in the nineties, it was very much to do with a small group of societies, ethnicities, ways of living. And I think we are now more aware of the differences and the diversities and we may not understand them more, but we are certainly aware that they're happening and we want to understand them. So I think that's a big factor. All those are good things. I think one thing that is not good is that a lot of people want to work in these areas, these sectors, these industries, which is great. But it's very tough, it's very competitive. This is not a soft option. Creativity is not easy, not a soft option. And I think although you can make a lot of money out of it, you can also work well and do good work and find it really hard to get a foothold and to make money out of it. And you might have a good life, but you might not make much money. And I think as we talk more about these industries, we've got to be aware that people want to have a good life, they want a good job that enables them to have a good life and we haven't quite got that idea. You know, sustainable creative lives is a concept that we talk about a lot at Upstart Collab. In some ways it was the initial impetus for why I launched Upstart. And so we absolutely believe that impact investing, that that kind of values aligned capital is going to be crucial to enable and shape a creative economy that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable. And not just environmentally sustainable at the global level, but sustainable at the level of the individual lives and the life of the creative community. So we agree with you that there's a lot of potential and we hope that impact investment can help to realize it. Roberta, I think that's the perfect segue to welcome you into this conversation, particularly given the exciting milestone of what happened just four days ago in Paris with the launch of the Impact Fund for African Creatives. Tell us about the fund and what your vision is, why you've started it and what you plan to achieve. Thank you so much, Laura. And it's just to link it back and also acknowledge John's contribution to the space and coining the term creative economy. I'd like to thank you for that, John, because oftentimes people focus on other sectors that are tangible, that investors can easily see return on investment, but the creative economy tends not to get a lot of investment because people, you know, investors, it's not tangible. But if you also connected back to human rights, most people in the culture and creative industries are born creators. Yes, they can hone on their skills, they can get educated to sharpen it, but you're often blessed with it. And sometimes it's difficult to protect that IP, you know, as a creative. So just going back to the Impact Fund for African Creatives. So I've been a proponent and an advocate for the creative economy in Ghana, sorry, in Africa. And my focus has been the African orange economy. So I have also been, you know, putting this at the forefront of affairs, especially when it comes to economic development. And the reason why I started EFAC is because the impact part stands for, has four main things that we focus on. The first is the creative economy in Africa tends to be the highest employer of women. And I think you gave a statistic early about, you know, women being part of employee, employed within the creative and cultural industries. And that is key because if you're talking about gender parity issues, and we're looking at ways in which women can gain, you know, employment or economically, creative economy is an answer. And it's a platform that can easily create jobs and opportunity for women, especially in the African context. Unfortunately, most of these businesses tend to be in the informal sector. And that is what we are looking at as a fund to bring the infrastructure and also the capital because capital without infrastructure is futile, right? So we need to help build the businesses, help businesses build business plans and have a strategy that can use the capital to actually see an ROI. And I'll touch on that a little bit because I think you also introduced that concept about sustainable lives within the creative and cultural industries, which is also an area that we address within the fund. The other thing that we focus on is young people because Africa has over 2 billion population and just to give you a key statistic, 65% are under the age of 25. 65% are under the age of 25. So if we can really capture this, people believe as a tick and time bomb, but for me it's a huge investment potential. If you're building infrastructure using the creative and cultural industries and you put the right amount of capital, you can actually convert this innovative and creative minds into contributed significantly to the GDPs of the African countries. And this is what we're looking to do. We're looking and addressing the fragmented nature of the subsectors and even piecing these together so that we can actually build economies of scale so that investors can quickly see how they can easily make money from making investments into these subsectors. And then the other eye for me is sustainability and environment, right? And people say, what is the link between environment and the creative economy? And I look at cultures, right? If you look at culture and heritage of a people, it's linked to environment. If you look at, I'm a Khan in Ghana, we have a very, very strong heritage of colors with a kinship cloth and things like the aging crown symbols. All of these are native to my culture, right? And if I cannot gain economically from it and it's appropriated into other markets, it doesn't contribute to my community in any way. And that is also to me, because if you can't gain economically for it and you cannot respect culture and identity and communities, then it has a very strong link to indigenous cultures and environment. So there's a link there. And there's also an overarching human rights link. You know, why is, because what you see over, what we've seen over the years is that African culture, because we lack the infrastructure and the funding and even ways to protect our intellectual property, our culture is often appropriated into other markets and they make premium price on what we could be gaining economically from. And that is why we're interested in putting those infrastructure and pieces in place to even educate creatives on how to protect their IP, right? And how to even educate themselves about the business aspect of their creativity or even getting a business partner if they want to just focus on the creative aspect. And the last part I think I touch on it again, it's again, culture and heritage. And I think during COVID, because people got the opportunity to press the reset button and really think globally, we've understood that it's important to have inclusive, you know, and diverse diversity when we're addressing the creative and culture industries. If you look at all of these things that have happened, like the Black Lives Matter and all that, people have become more sensitive, right? About listening and being more inclusive and diverse. And that is one key area that we also focus on is, you know, why can Africa or African economies go from also like putting the right pieces in place so that we can export our talent, right? And gain from it economically. So all of these things are very, very important to us at IFAC. And I'd like to see this platform, not just focus on investment, but really also put in key players and partners to help address some of the loopholes that we have in the creative and culture industries of the continent. And I'm also writing a book on it because I wanted to do, which will be published early next year. And it's called Ghana, the Orange Economy. And it will be a series because we're starting with Ghana because there's been a decade of explosion in the creative and culture industries. And I was there, I started this 10 years ago and I've seen, you know, the impact that this has had. And even connecting the continent to the diaspora, it's really amazing with things like the year of the return which was launched by our government. And, you know, the diaspora really connect them back to the continent. For Africa to drive prosperity and growth and the creative economy can be used as a tool to achieve that. And that's great, that's part of history. That's so exciting. John, as you look into the future, you know, we used, you named the creative economy 20 years ago. You just shared a few reflections of what's happened over these, the past two decades. As you look ahead into the future, what do you see as the hope and the potential and where you'd like to see the creative economy go? And are there any risks or warnings that concern you as you imagine what can happen in the future for the creative economy? I have two big things on my agenda, but they're not, it's a global agenda. It's an agenda for everybody. The first is the big COP meeting on the environment and climate change, which is happening very, very, very, very soon. And I would like the creative people, I don't like the word creative community, but creative people to really think hard about how they could help us to understand what is happening, to sort of express it, verbalize it, illustrate it, and to come up, to help us to change our attitudes, because we have to change our attitudes as well as doing some of the tech stuff and some of the policy stuff, and creative people are very good at changing people's attitudes. That's what they do, they change people's attitudes and beliefs. And the second is rather the same, is the future of work and automation and AI. And again, we need to rethink human creativity and put that next door to machine creativity. Are they the same? Are they different? One of the copyright rules, we're still struggling with that one. And I would like creative people to play a bigger role in those debates that are going on within each country, within each person's mind, within each country, and at the global level. So two big challenges. You big challenges. Nothing small in this conversation. As you're coming to the end of our time, I'll just observe that what's motivated me and the team at Upstart is realizing that as socially responsible and impact investing grows globally, now at $31 trillion, there should be an opportunity to focus some of this values aligned capital with the activities in the creative economy, with everything that Roberta was describing in terms of the potential for women and young people on a continent like Africa to respect culture and use that to provide jobs and growth opportunities, economic growth opportunities. What John is saying about the power of creative people to share stories and focus us on what's really important. Obviously, we need financial resources to bring this all to scale. So Roberta, John, thank you so much for being part of this conversation. Thanks to the team at SoCAP for featuring the creative economy. The year's not over yet. 2021, United Nations International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. Go celebrate it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Laura.