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Creative businesses and the arts employ 29,000 people in the Piedmont Triad and their growth will help the region create more jobs, the state’s top business leaders said Thursday.

Such companies and occupations as architecture, crafts, graphic and industrial design, film, performing arts and writing, and publishing are integral to the economy, they said.

“Design keeps emerging as a main source of competitive advantage for our region,” said Margaret H. Collins, the cluster director of creative enterprises and the arts for the Piedmont Triad Partnership.

The partnership released an ambitious plan to add more jobs through a collaboration between industry, educators and creative enterprises.

The report said creative enterprises and the arts:

* Attract companies of all sorts that value a rich quality of life for their employees.

* Attract individuals to the region who set up small businesses and form networks with other creative people.

* Create high-wage jobs and improve the region’s academic achievement.

“Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that today’s talented, creative people are more likely to choose a place to live, rather than a place to work,” said Linda A. Carlisle, the secretary for the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Carlisle told about 100 businesspeople at the Proximity Hotel on Thursday that she is working closely with Keith Crisco, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Commerce.

“We simply need to leverage every asset we have,” Crisco told the group.

The Piedmont Triad has plenty of assets already, Collins said, including colleges and universities, arts councils, design firms and interactive technology companies.

She outlined five new programs that the Partnership has budgeted through 2009 that are designed to bring new workers into these industries, make existing companies stronger, and teach artists to become better businesspeople.

The programs are:

* Piedmont Triad Architectural Initiative, which is studying options for a professional architecture school.

* Triad Design Leadershop, which will help design professionals develop their leadership skills and form alliances with industry.

* Marketing and Publishing, which will help companies learn more about Web sites, social networks and other new digital media.

* Entrepreneurship for Artists, which will work with arts councils, universities and others to teach skills and provide services that help artists earn more money.

* Interactive Media/Advanced Learning Technology, which would build on the Triad’s businesses that design virtual learning, interactive media and simulation technology.

A roundtable of dozens of local professionals is working to promote these projects.

Carlisle said that regardless of the financial pressures of the recession, building arts and creative companies now will help the region recover in the future.

She said, “Our creative class is an integral part in the economic development of our state.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com