Every year, Cincinnati talent-spotters mourn as the latest flock of creative young artists departs for more fertile creative ground.

While new opportunities crop up almost daily for shoestring productions and do-it-yourself start-ups, paying jobs in the arts - with the limited exception of music - are in painfully short supply in Cincinnati.

Aspiring actors, dancers, filmmakers, painters and playwrights - even those who would prefer to stay - move to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and other cities where they stand a better chance of making a living.

The loss of rising artists parallels Ohio's continuing loss of other young professionals, such as scientists and engineers, who make up a hefty portion of the audience for local arts.

Though the pattern will surely continue in 2003, the issue has worked its way into the public agenda, triggered in part by a provocative speech by Richard Florida, a professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and author of The Rise of the Creative Class.

His theory that creativity is a driving force in economic growth and that a climate favorable to the arts is indispensable to a healthy economic environment had at least one concrete result: It promoted City Council members to support September's first MidPoint Music Festival, which showcased scores of bands at a dozen venues in Cincinnati, Newport and Covington.