COURTESY CATALYST STORY INSTITUTE
A panel from last year’s Catalyst Content Festival takes the stage at the historic NorShor Theater near the Catalyst offices in Duluth.
When Executive Director Philip Gilpin Jr. and the board of the non-profit Catalyst Story Institute considered relocating from Vermont, they looked around the country for a suitable new home.
As Philip tells it, the search turned up only one possible place – Duluth.
“Not only was it that we saw the future potential here in this region, this was the only region where we found everything we needed.”
The backstory for Catalyst Story Institute is that it started 15 years ago, mainly to host its major fund- and awareness-raising event, the Catalyst Content Festival.
The festival draws writers, producers and others connected to the television and streaming industries from around the country. It showcases the episodic storytelling that could feed the ravenous content needs of TV networks and services like Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV. The festival also features workshops and invaluable networking for writers and producers of the series-style of storytelling.
“The need for content is expanding so rapidly that the antiquated, closed system can’t keep up,” Philip says. “Audiences are really wanting to watch stories and shows that reflect who they are.
“The industry does not have a pathway,” he adds, for training writers in this story form or for connecting them to the buyers of that content.
Before the Content Festival, he explains, there was no outlet to benefit narrative storytellers in the way the Sundance Film Festival promotes independent film artists.
Now Catalyst intends to expand beyond one event, and this 15th year was to herald the its growth.
As Philip outlines how Duluth met all checks on his list for the institute’s new home, he interweaves the story of Catalyst’s expanding mission – to become the country’s focal point for training and encouraging writers and producers in the episodic style.
“Storytelling is an art form – that’s undisputable. … We’re really a year-round school focused on how do you get your scripts heard,” Philip says of the institute’s creative and practical teaching function.
Its StorieRoad initiative offers in-person and online seminars, workshops, panels, presentations and networking events to pave the way for participants to write, produce, find agents and sell projects. StorieRoad participants can buy into individual events, or sign on for an annual membership.
A place to support that kind of creativity was another check on Philip’s list for where to locate Catalyst. He needed “a community and a state that has a love and appreciation of the arts.” Duluth, in Minnesota … check.
Next on Philip’s list was finding a small city in a relatively remote, beautiful location yet “with access to major airlines, hotels, multiple restaurants,” the necessary elements to draw East and West Coast attendees to the festival.
That proved true here last October, when festival goers gave the locale rave reviews, despite being in the heart of the downtown construction zone. “These people come from L.A. and New York,” jokes Philip. “They live with construction.”
The connection started with the scene-setting arrival over Thompson Hill to see the panoramic expanse of Lake Superior. “They come over the ridge, and they see the Lake,” Philip says. Then they discover the good hotels, the great restaurants, the incredibly friendly volunteers that seem to be on every torn-up corner of the street.
“What is this magical place?” they asked.
But Philip wants to impress them with more than a festival getaway from their big cities. He wants to lure them back to actually produce a series here.
This region, seen through Philip’s eyes, has more possibilities than an empty Hollywood sound stage. Right within Duluth, he notes, “you have a 1950s school or church, an ocean, a railyard, an art-deco theater … and everything in between.”
With the nearby Iron Range and Arrowhead, he adds, “there are a massive variety of locations within a small drive radius.”
And the hospitality infrastructure? That’s important for more than a multi-day festival. “If we do land a major television series, where are you going to house and feed people six months out of the year?” Philip asks. Duluth has those things.
Beyond training writers and producers, Philip sees Catalyst and its adopted city also working together to train the skilled crews that would be needed for such long-term series productions. The universities and technical schools within the region could help there, he notes.
In return, becoming home to large productions could generate a new economic driver for the region.
“A production like Game of Thrones employed more people than Minnesota Power, UMD and Cirrus combined,” Philip says, naming some of the Duluth’s larger employers. “How do we get productions here? There are so many who want to be here shooting right now.”
The how, in Philip’s mind, is the last, necessary – and most difficult – plot twist he needs to write for the institute to settle into its adopted home port. He needs to generate the social and financial support to lure in those productions. His goal is a two-pronged financial enticement to production companies. One is a production fund with cash grants that can be used by productions to buy local goods, rent local spaces or hire local people. This money, while a grant to the companies, could only be used within the local economy. The other tool would be a state tax-incentive program for such productions. Minnesota, though, just last year melted its production “Snowbate” incentive program from $10 million per biennium to $1 million for the next biennium. That program provides up to a 25 percent rebate for in-state productions. But these incentives are what lures major film and TV productions to states like Georgia and New Mexico, Philip says, which he believes generates revenue beyond production. “I can’t think of a place on the planet that is busy with production that isn’t internationally known.”
That he is trying to generate support for these two incentives during one of the worst possible financial times is not lost on Philip. “The only barrier I still see in front of us is the local information and education campaign about that intersection between art and industry and the jobs that production brings in. Everything else is lined up and ready to go.”
He’s still hopeful for a happy ending.
Connecting
Philip Gilpin Jr.
Catalyst Story Institute and Content Festival www.catalystcontent.org
This year’s Content Festival is still currently scheduled for September 30-October 4.