Together with our local host, Bridgeway Capital, the Urban Manufacturing Alliance invites you to our 2018 Gathering in
Pittsburgh. Our Gathering theme, Building Coalitions To Create Equitable Manufacturing Ecosystems, will showcase organizing and systems-building strategies that are promoting small-scale manufacturing and stimulating diverse and inclusive neighborhoods.
For decades, economic development in cities depended on “smokestack chasing”: luring large employers from one community to another or incentivizing them to stay. However, we have begun to see a shift from this zero-sum paradigm towards a locally-focused, place-based approach that lifts up and champions businesses of all sizes. Local stakeholders are driving today’s cross-sector approaches to industrial and community economic development, through financing programs, community coalitions, and workforce initiatives that lift up and sustain small-scale makers and manufacturers. By working to stimulate these entrepreneurs, local coalitions are keeping good-paying manufacturing jobs in urban neighborhoods.
From organizations that connect housing advocates with real estate developers, to local branding organizations that provide everything from marketing services to funding opportunities for small-scale manufacturers, UMA members represent the finest in the art of ecosystem building. Our collective job–both as an organization and on the part of our members–is to build connections among these groups at the local, regional, and national level, so that ecosystems can expand and influence one another. UMA Gatherings help us achieve that goal: they unite practitioners from across the country, and give them a dynamic platform to discuss coalition building strategies, face-to-face, with like-minded professionals.
As UMA works in partnership with its members to build a movement around inclusive industrial development, we are able to connect manufacturing advocates with those whose development work indirectly impacts local manufacturers. This ultimately expands our national coalition to become more representative of the local neighborhoods and businesses our work strives to benefit.
At the 2018 Gathering, we will learn about ecosystems being built across the country, using Pittsburgh as a canvas for understanding best practices. Some local programs we will explore include:
- Bridgeway Capital, the Gathering’s local host in Pittsburgh, operates the Craft Business Accelerator and Monmade trade group which provide entrepreneurial designers and emerging small-batch manufacturers with better access to elements of business success: markets, capital, workforce, space, guidance, and peers.
- Thread turns trash into products that make people’s work week better. They’ve created a fully transparent supply chain where trash starts in the poorest neighborhoods in Haiti, is converted to yarn and fabric, and finally sewn into finished products in Pittsburgh. So far, the network has saved over 40MM bottles from landfills and the ocean, and the network keeps over 1000 people working.
- Since 1994, the University of Pittsburgh’s Manufacturing Assistance Center (MAC) has connected thousands of people with meaningful careers in manufacturing. The MAC trains individuals and professionals in precision manufacturing, CNC programming, and CAD/CAM technologies and operates a community makerspace. With a 95% job placement rate, the MAC is a true success story of what happens when a University invests in the community.
- After achieving significant impact in providing trades training to hardworking people with barriers to employment, the Trade Institute of Pittsburgh now launches its brick oven business to create small-scale manufacturing and culinary arts training opportunities to the populations it serves.