PORTLAND — Actor and cancer activist Patrick Dempsey and Bar Harbor-based genetics researcher The Jackson Laboratory have been awarded the Maine Center for Creativity’s 2014 Maine Creative Industries Award.

The biennial honor recognizes exceptional people and organizations who enrich Maine’s growing reputation as a state where the arts and enterprise meet and flourish.

The award will be presented Nov. 15 at a celebration in Portland.

To kick off a discussion about creativity and enterprise and to raise anticipation for the November celebration, Edison T. Liu, M.D., president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and Mary Dempsey, assistant director of The Patrick Dempsey Center for Caner Hope & Healing in Lewiston and Dempsey’s sister, will lead a group of sponsors, business leaders and media in a Conversation in Creativity from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Monday, March 24, at the Cumberland County Civic Center.

Liu and Dempsey will speak to the importance of creativity in Maine’s economy and specifically to the role it has played in the evolution of The Jackson Laboratory and The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing.

Born in Lewiston and raised in Buckfield and Turner, Patrick Dempsey is best known for his role as Dr. Derek Shepherd on the long-running TV drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” Dempsey founded The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing, which offers a cutting- edge model of support, education and integrative medicine services to anyone impacted by cancer.

In 2012, actress Glenn Close and her husband, David Shaw, founder of IDEXX, accepted the inaugural award at the Maine Creative Industries gala. Shaw will present the 2014 award to The Jackson Laboratory. Mary Dempsey, along with Peter Chalke, CEO of Central Maine Healthcare, will present to Patrick Dempsey.

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