Creativity, collaboration keys to Peoria's economic future
Posted on February 28th, 2006

Published in the Peoria Journal Star Sunday, February 26, 2006 by Glen Barton.

Google the words "prize for creativity" on the World Wide Web, and you'll be surprised how quickly you find yourself back in central Illinois.

One of the top 10 results (out of 3.6 million) leads to the University of Florida's Web site and an article entitled "Digital Worlds Team Wins Top Prize for International Project." What's the Peoria connection? The "top prize" is one I had the honor of awarding last April - the first-ever Peoria Prize for Creativity.

If you haven't heard of the Peoria Prize, I encourage you to visit www.peoriaprize.com. There, you can learn about last year's finalists, including an art show that explored visual perception in humans, computers and fruit flies and an exhibit space in which animated characters leapt from computer screens onto tablet PCs. You can also read about the 2005 winner, the Digital Worlds' "Hands Across the Ocean: The Lost Chord."

What's special about these projects and the Peoria Prize itself is the focus on collaboration and creativity across disciplines. The winning project involved 70 engineers, artists, actors, dancers, computer scientists, educators and directors using a high-speed network to link ethnic musicians spread over 40,000 miles and four continents. In doing so, they produced a global, real-time music performance to demonstrate how technology can transform the traditional classroom into the epicenter of a truly global education.

Efforts like these are essential, particularly in a world many believe is increasingly flat, and where any community can realistically compete for the creative class that can help it transform into a thriving, vibrant place. We can be proud the Peoria Prize is the first of its kind specifically to recognize and reward visionary and innovative projects that result from collaborations across the arts and sciences. The award acknowledges creativity as an essential component of economic and cultural development - one that enriches our community, our nation and the world.

The Peoria Prize can help establish our community as a center for creativity and bring with it all the associated economic and quality of life benefits, but only if we truly embrace the principles of the award ourselves. We have a responsibility not only to ensure that the spirit and power of collaboration play in Peoria, but to guarantee they are prized here as well.

We have a proud history on which to build. This is a community of inventors and innovators who gave the world mass production of penicillin, the first practical gasoline-powered American car, and the track-type tractor and other earth-changing products of Caterpillar. This is a community that has cultivated the creative minds of artists, actors, musicians and writers far too numerous to mention. This is a community rich in its contributions to the arts and sciences - one I believe has more intellectual and creative power than others two, three or even 10 times our size.

But we have work to do to live up to the principles embodied in the Peoria Prize. We must put aside petty differences and political games. We must recognize, as the Peoria Prize finalists have, that creativity can emerge from the most disparate of sources. Through collaboration we can achieve results beyond what any of us can accomplish alone. The opportunities stand before us, whether it's Museum Square, Renaissance Park, the Heart of Peoria Plan, new centers of excellence at Bradley University, our new port authority or growth of our Downstate medical center.

The individuals and organizations that have come together to bring us the Peoria Prize set a fine example of creativity and collaboration. The award - the second will be presented April 28 at "Discovery Forum 2006: Creating through Collaboration" - is sponsored by Peoria NEXT and ArtsPartners, with the cash prize of $10,000 underwritten by the Peoria Civic Federation. The medallion award is designed by Fisher Stolz, a world-class sculptor and professor of art at Bradley, and struck using rapid prototyping technology at Peoria's Tri-City Machine Products. The Peoria Prize is a model of collaboration among technology, business, arts and manufacturing entities to expose our community to new people, new ideas and ultimately renewed economic prosperity.

Now it's time for the rest of us to do our part. It's time for us to come together as a community to coin a new phrase - not "Will it play in Peoria?" but "Will it be prized in Peoria?" If we are talking about innovation, creativity, collaboration and growth, then the answer must be a resounding yes.

Glen Barton is the retired chairman of Caterpillar Inc., a founding director of Peoria NEXT and the current chairman of the Peoria Civic Federation.