SALEM — The task force promoting the creative economy North of Boston is getting $50,000 to hold a conference in the next year to join forces with other areas on a statewide economic development initiative.

The funding is part of the new $23.8 billion state budget signed into law yesterday by Gov. Mitt Romney.

The financial support for the conference got into the budget after representatives of the creative economy task force last spring asked state Sen. Fred Berry, D-Peabody, for support, said Patricia Zaido, task force co-founder and head of the Salem Partnership.

"I think, when I look at job growth and I look at economic growth in the Commonwealth, I see tourism and the creative economy, as they call it, being only second to health care or higher education in terms of our potential," Berry said yesterday.

While manufacturing is shrinking in Massachusetts, Berry said the state needs to do more to promote culture, such as Salem's Peabody Essex Museum, and creative-based businesses.

"We have to recognize we're a service economy, and where this fits in," he said.

The creative economy employs nearly 6,000 people and generates more than $1 billion in sales North of Boston, according to a study commissioned last year by the task force and conducted by the Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co.'s marketing department. More than 900 creative economy ventures — from Web design firms to advertising agencies to cultural and arts-based efforts — in Essex County were counted by the study.

Statewide, businesses and venues in the creative sector pump about $6 billion into the economy, Berry said. "I think we can see a 100 percent increase in that," he said. "That ought to be our goal."

Berry, who called $50,000 "a modest earmark" in the budget, supported funding the conference, he said, because it would put the key people from the Cape, Boston and other areas of the state in one place to hash out ideas for the future. "I think we've got to take the ball and run with it," he said.

While the task force, formed last year, focused on the North of Boston region primarily, the conference would expand its work.

"It would take the effort we're doing and expand it," Zaido said yesterday. "We would like to use the North Shore as a model for this effort."

Members of the task force have said the group's goals include distinguishing North of Boston from the rest of the state as a place to do business. Zaido said yesterday the group still wants to promote this area for economic development, "but if we get the state involved, it's like a rising tide. It will benefit everyone."

No date has been set for the conference yet, but Zaido said she would like to hold it in the spring. Attendees would include city planners, businesses within and outside the creative economy that want to get involved. Possible co-sponsors include the New England Council, which has its own creative economy group, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, according to Zaido.

"We want it to (consist of) more or less success stories, ways to make this a statewide initiative," Zaido said. "There are pockets that are interested now — the Berkshires, the Cape. It's time to gel the creative economy. A lot of states are way ahead of us."

In addition to planning the conference, the task force is preparing to launch a spinoff group, the Creative Economy Association of the North Shore, to encourage businesses and others in the sector to network. Earlier this month, the group drew 150 people to a preview event at the Hawthorne Hotel featuring Beate Becker of Cambridge, a consultant who has worked around the world on creative economy projects.