LiveWorkPortland is an effort to increase the visibility of the creative community in Portland, Maine, with the explicit goal of growing that community both in its numbers and it’s economic impact on the city. LiveWorkPortland is an ongoing marketing campaign—and advertisement for Portland, updated daily. Who is our target audience? Primarily talented and resourceful people who are living and working in other metro areas that have the means and drive to set up shop here and add to our community. As a virtuous benefit, we believe that the same kinds of content and community engagement that will make Portland more attractive and knowable to people “from away,” will also help us know ourselves better here and further integrate and energize the existing creative economy in Portland.

LiveWorkPortland is funded by the Creative Portland Corporation, a non-profit organization established by the City of Portland in 2008 to capitalize upon and grow Portland’s creative economy. This organization is the culmination of many years of municipal and citizen initiatives to formalize an economic development process directed at sustaining and growing the creative sector of the local economy. Creative Portland believes that Portland—with its vibrant arts and cultural scene, top-notch restaurants, easy access to pristine natural landscapes, and overall high quality of life—is well-poised to become a live-work destination for creative entrepreneurs.

Andy Graham is the chairman of the board of Creative Portland and serves as the director of LiveWorkPortland.

LiveWorkPortland.org, the website, is our effort to display the ongoing vitality of the creative community in Portland on a daily basis. We also want to make all of the different creative communities in Portland visible to themselves, to each other and to creative people in other cities who may want to consider moving here. Our goal is to add 10,000 creative people to our population over the next five years. The site consists of four main aspects: PortlandNow, a daily blog chronicling the activity of the creative economy in Portland; People to Watch, a presentation of multimedia portraits of creative Portlanders and an evolving directory that will eventually become a definitive social map of creative Portland; Live in Portland, a set of pages with resources for moving to Portland or getting the most out of living here; and Work in Portland, a set of pages with resources for relocating or starting up a business in Portland or for existing business to take advantage of everything that Portland has to offer.

Anthony Wing Kosner is the editor of LiveWorkPortland. He maintains the resource pages,  writes most of the blog posts at present, but we hope to feature more and more community generated content as we develop the site. We are open to story ideas on a wide range of topics and are happy to publicize events related to Portland’s creative economy. Please contact us with things you think we should add or questions about things you would like to see. Both Andy and Anthony can be reached via info@liveworkportland.org.

So if you love Portland, tell us and tell your friends!