Though the scene on Wednesday looked like any dull afternoon meeting, the guest list read like a who’s who of the Seattle arts, film and music scene: at the microphone, Priya Frank, Seattle Art Museum’s associate director for community programs; among the seated, Amy Lillard, executive director of Washington Filmworks, and KEXP DJ and education coordinator Sharlese Metcalf. It was the finale of six months of research, roundtables and city-commissioned reports meant to take the pulse of Seattle’s “creative economy.”

That process kicked off in March, when the city’s Office of Arts and Culture, Office of Film + Music and Office of Economic Development jointly published the results of a study that found that Seattle’s "creative industries” — a concept that includes high-earning tech professionals such as software developers and game designers, as well as lower-income artists — generate nearly 18% of Seattle’s gross regional product (the comparable national figure is 4.4% of the U.S. gross domestic product), but that major disparities in income and representation persist along racial and gender lines.

Those findings form the foundation of the city’s new Creative Industry Cluster Program put forward in September by Mayor Jenny Durkan in her 2020 budget proposal. The idea is that the Office of Economic Development and Office of Arts and Culture will work more closely to grow opportunities for everyone in the creative workforce while addressing its imbalances.

“We want greater economic opportunity and more affordability, all while centering racial equity,” says Randy Engstrom, director of the Office of Arts and Culture and interim director of the Office of Film + Music. (Kate Becker, the Office of Film + Music's previous director, left her post in March to become the arts and culture strategist for King County Executive Dow Constantine.)