City loan fund helps make art pay

Once they conceived the idea for a combined crafts and clothing boutique, the pieces came together quickly for partners Matthew Brown and Jaime Jennings.

The owners of Fancy Tiger Crafts and Clothing on South Broadway wrote their business plan, lucked into the location they wanted and opened their doors mere months after the idea popped into their heads.

Luck was with them again when they needed cash to grow, in the form of the Creative Enterprises Revolving Loan Fund, a program administered by Denver's Micro Business Development Corp.

The program, which doubled its maximum loan amount to $40,000 this year, is funded through $100,000 in annual Community Development Block Grant Funds and is designed to help small arts-related businesses start or expand in Denver.

The seed for the loan program came from the Mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces, which in early 2006 found that the city's artists didn't typically view what they were doing as a business enterprise, even if they used their art to make a living.


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