Scaling Arts & Culture
Miah Michaelsen is the Executive Director of the Indiana Arts Commission, where she leads statewide strategies to strengthen arts, culture, and the creative economy. With a career spanning nonprofit leadership, public service, and arts administration, Michaelsen has worked at the intersection of culture and community development for decades. Prior to joining the Commission, she served as Bloomington’s first Assistant Economic Development Director for the Arts and has held leadership roles in arts councils and museums across the Midwest and South. At the IAC, she has prioritized creative entrepreneurship, regional planning, and positioning Indiana’s arts sector as a driver of economic vitality. In this conversation, Michaelsen reflects on the role of nonprofit arts within the larger creative economy, the challenges of collecting meaningful data, how the Commission navigates rural and urban needs, and what she hopes will emerge from Indiana’s historic READi and Lilly Endowment–supported arts and culture planning efforts.
Polina Osherov: The big question is how the nonprofit arts sector fits into the broader creative economy. How do you see that relationship?
Miah Michaelsen: The nonprofit sector is absolutely key to Indiana’s creative economy. In many of our communities, especially rural ones, there simply aren’t many for-profit creative industries. So the nonprofit sector is the backbone. For most people, when they think of the creative economy, they picture nonprofit arts organizations, because that’s what they know.
That said, nonprofit arts groups don’t always see themselves as part of the creative economy. Their focus is mission-driven—producing theater, music, or visual arts—and not necessarily on the economic benefits they create. Yet when you start breaking down their contributions—spending at the local hardware store for building theater sets, paying art instructors or musicians —you see the lightbulb go on. They realize they are part of the local economic engine, even if that’s not central to their mission.
PO: You and I have talked about how nonprofits and for-profits are motivated so differently. Do you think keeping that distinction is useful, or does it hold us back?
MM: They are structured differently—different tax statuses, different stakeholders. For-profits have owners or shareholders; nonprofits have missions and a charitable purpose. But both are important.
Where it becomes powerful is when they work together. The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant during the pandemic is a great example. For-profit and nonprofit performance entities were both struggling with the loss of audiences. By uniting, they were recognized as one industry. That collaboration shifted the paradigm—allowing for the development of a grant program that helped ensure the ongoing viability of the live performance industry which is a significant contributor to many state and local economies.
PO: One obstacle for all of us is measuring the creative economy. What makes it so difficult?
MM: First, there’s no consensus on what constitutes the creative economy. Other industries have clear classifications, but for the creative economy it’s more nuanced. If we had standardized NAICS or SOC codes that defined creative economy jobs and industries, that would help tremendously.
Second, collecting and reporting the data is challenging. Nonprofits often lack the capacity to track it consistently, and for-profits may not see the value in reporting. Until we address both the definitional piece and the collection mechanisms, it will remain difficult to get a full, accurate picture.
PO: Balancing statewide priorities with rural and urban differences is complicated. How do you approach it?
MM: We start from the belief that communities are more alike than different. Whether you live in a large city or a small town, people want quality places to live, meaningful work, opportunities for their families, and a vibrant local economy.
We don’t arrive in communities with preconceived notions. Every place and region has its own vision for how it wants to move forward, and our role is to help them realize it through arts and creativity.
PO: Do you see common challenges across regions, despite the differences?
MM: Absolutely. Marketing and communication are universal challenges. Whether in large cities or small towns, arts and cultural organizations struggle to reach audiences. People simply don’t know what’s happening in their communities. I didn’t expect that to emerge so strongly across the state, but it has.
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