New London — Local business people looking for a networking opportunity that could spark long-term changes are invited to an event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday sponsored by Spark Makerspace, CURE Innovation Commons and the businesses and tenants at Harris Place, 165 State St.

It's a new twist on business networking in the area, said Spark founder Hannah Gant, because of the presence of a wide range of business experts in such fields as the law, accounting, marketing, information technology, insurance, nonprofit management, organizations development and business model design.

"We hope to do this twice a year," said Migdalia Salas, director of the MS17 Art Project that rents space in the Harris Place building. "It's about working together as one."

Salas said she and husband Mark McKee, a well known local artist, have been busy transforming the Harris Place building into "beautiful, active spaces" for tenants, at the request of landlord George Waterman.

"People are wanting to be in this building because it's an interesting place to be in," Salas said. She added that the Harris Place transformation "is a microcosm of what we can do out there" when arts, ideas and innovation come together.

The event Thursday will be focused on the first floor of Harris Place, a light-filled building where refreshments and hors d'oeuvres will be offered free of charge. Each business represented at the event will be offered 15 minutes with a professional to discuss everything from existing enterprises to startups.

The event also will be offering information on the upcoming New London Festival of Creativity & Innovation June 8-11. The event is being held in conjunction with a New England Foundation for the Arts gathering in the city.

Attendees Thursday are being asked to register at the Spark Makerspace website, www.spark.coop, or the MS17 Art Project website, ms17artproject.com. For more information, email info@ms17artproject.com or hannahgant@spark.coop.

"It's like having a free business coach," Gant said.

Among the people on hand, she said, will be Maria Miranda of the Norwich marketing firm Miranda Creative and Matt Nemeth, who runs the Small Business Development Center in Waterford.

Gant said she believes this type of networking event has more value than the typical business get-together, which can sometimes feel more like social climbing.

"We didn't want to just have a 'hello' kind of thing," Salas said. "We wanted to give it more meat."

Gant said she expects the event to draw people from many different circles and networks. The idea, she said, is to allow people to establish some personal relationships and see what happens.

"I like to see artists and business people together," Salas said. "To solve problems today, you need the resources but you need the ideas, too."

Gant said she is hoping some of the ideas that come out of the networking session can be used in the master plan she is helping to build in conjunction with the Thames River Innovation Places initiative. The state-sponsored initiative is pitting several regions of Connecticut against one another to devise plans to move the needle on entrepreneurship, creating hubs of creativity and collaboration.

Gant said she believes the key to the region's success will be in building deeply collaborative ways to move ideas forward.

"People are thinking about how they are thinking," Salas said. "That's really a breakthrough."

l.howard@theday.com