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FEATURE STORY
To boost the region's economic and social growth, the Hartford business community is pulling out all the stops to get young professionals to work, live and play here.
By Leonard Felson
The Wadsworth
Atheneum Museum of Art is pulsating. More than 750 people, most of them
young professionals, are packed into a gallery not so much to view art,
but to meet, drink and dance. DJ music blares, shocking pink lights
shine on the walls, tall round cocktail tables stand around the hall
and women dressed as ’40s-era “cigarette girls” walk
around offering patrons packs of candy cigarettes.
The event, called Collage and funded by The Hartford Financial Services Group, has been drawing crowds like the one this late February night every three months or so for the past year. For metro Hartford, it illustrates one picture of how the region’s business community is embracing the challenge of attracting and retaining talented young people. Indeed, both business and arts leaders are increasingly recognizing that creative initiatives in a town long burdened with an image of rolling up the streets at 5 o’clock are proving a necessity if the region wants to compete with other urban areas for this new generation’s best and brightest.
