By Mark Bashore, WKAR News
EAST LANSING, MI –
Michigan State university researchers are trying to learn if a person's involvement in arts and crafts triggers economic creativity. A team of scholars from MSU's "Center for Community and Economic Development" is surveying the state's '21st Century Jobs Fund' recipients, and others, to find out. Dr. Rex LaMore runs the project---called 'Arts and Creativity in the Innovative Workforce.' He says previous studies have focused on the impact of arts and crafts on children.
"But nothing that really looks at the economic development aspects of this," he says. "The people that create new ideas, new products, new businesses, new services---do they have this pattern of arts and culture that is combined with their science and technology or entrepreneurial activity?
The group is also surveying MSU and Michigan Tech engineering faculty and MSU Honors College graduates. It hopes to release its findings this fall.
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