I’ve been thinking about that John Holden video I posted a few weeks ago that touched on redefining the value of arts and culture, and have been observing how the three deeply interrelated forms of culture he describes—publicly-funded, commercial and homemade—are played out in the community where I live.
“…that the upsurge of home-made culture in the last thirty years, brought about by the easy and inexpensive access to tools that allow anyone to publish a book, sell music, produce a video and then spread it freely around, “…should not blind us to the fact that access to publicly funded culture is still very limited, with only 4 per cent of the population enjoying the arts regularly. There is a thin line between defending quality and erecting barricades against outsiders, and it is not always clear where that line is. Sometimes ‘maintaining standards’ just means preserving status.”
I’ve been privileged to get to know a wonderful group of local musicians, artists and writers who might be called “defenders” of homemade culture and the need to preserve its character and accessibility, and who believe in the power of such culture to heal and build community. It’s been inspiring to see a group get together to record the songs of an aging musician who has never cut a record or another organization soliciting and installing a cooperative mosaic project in honor of two cultural icon in the community as well as to see a fledgling street entertainment program springing up, replete with actors, dancers and musicians of all types popping up on the streets of the downtown on weekends.
What this is telling me is that even though giving people greater opportunity to create, perform and experience culture in the “homemade” way rather than forcing them to either succeed or consume traditionally-judged or competitive forms of culture may dilute the “quality” of the cultural experience in some way, a flourishing homemade culture offers benefits far beyond “high standards.” Allowing people to express themselves through the arts and share it with others in more ways can only promote a greater sense of personal and community well-being that is far more valuable than revering arts and culture that only 4 percent of the population are enjoying and denigrating the proliferation of homemade culture.
I like this post I found on a blog appropriately called “Homemade Culture.” The author defines it like this:
“homemade culture…spontaneous. free to participate in. communal. homemade culture has fingerprints not corporate branding. it is not mass produced. it is impermanent. adaptable. makeshift. made of the materials at hand. local. non-commercial. ad hoc. improvised. small scale. lively. energetic. made with and out of the stories of everyday people. fitting. imperfect. quirky. loose. always political, even when it’s not overtly so, because it challenges the notion that culture is “produced” by our paid culture-manufacturers and only “consumed” by folks like us.
why?
because we’ll meet our neighbors. because we’ll finally understand what our grandmother meant when she said we should learn the piano so that we can entertain our friends by playing and singing songs on a Friday night. because we’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. because it’s good to play. because in it we will find small truths.”
Thank goodness for folks that understand the value of maintaining all the different forms of culture. Hooray for the defenders of homemade culture and the small truths they preserve!
The terms creative economy, creative industries, creative cities, creative class, and creative clusters have become all the rage these days, with economic development departments from cities large and small not only embracing the terms, but actively pursuing ways to attract and retain individuals that produce and consume “creative” products and services of all types.
A number of agencies have sprung up to champion this specific approach to planning and economic development, believing that supporting the creative sector of a community encourages the introduction of new ideas, which can be the foundation of economic growth in the form of trade, industry, social development, tourism and retail or consumer services. The Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission is a fairly typical example of how this is being implemented in communities around the world.
John Eger writes in his article “Forging a Creative Community for the New Creative Economy” that “…at the heart of such efforts must be a recognition of the vital roles that art and technology play in enhancing economic development and, ultimately, defining a “creative community” — a community that exploits the vital linkages among art, technology and commerce. A community with a sense of place. A community that nurtures, attracts and holds the most creative and innovative workers.”
I’ve been watching this idea take hold where I live in a small town tucked away in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It’s a place with a deep sense of history and a community that tries to honor the past, examine the present and not barrel ahead too quickly into the future. Progress here seems to move with a Virginia-bred slowness that is sometimes ridiculed, called old-fashioned, and even blasted as ignorant or backward. A few people I’ve talked to have argued that this reverence for maintaining a historical sense of place stifles creativity and freedom and severely limits growth, diversity and equality. They feel it perpetuates discrimination of all kinds.
While I’m not disputing that being too committed to tradition can be completely inhibiting to the creative economy concept, there’s a definite reason for taking the time to truly understand a city’s “sense of place.” Attracting the best and brightest is great, but I have come to think that maintaining an objective cultural perspective of how a city’s long-time residents have lived is equally important. Understanding a place’s history and what is important to the long-time residents, whether you agree with it or not, could make or break this creative economic strategy in some places.
My theory is that the “grow slow” idea isn’t all bad, and it seems to be working, at least here on the far side of Virginia. Historic preservation has been a major local effort for many years, and “green” initiatives have become a focus this past year. The city recently designated a portion of the city as an “Arts and Cultural District” and have partnered with a local small business training and micro-loan agency to fund loans for “…entrepreneurs who have traditionally had limited access to financing, ranging from women and minorities, to artists and students, to low- and moderate-income residents.” And in the process, they have not lost sight of the basic issues like maintaining infrastructure, public safety, education, jobs and housing that have to be addressed in the measured ways government must move forward.
So even in the midst of an enormously tough economic cycle, this gradual movement towards more visible support of so-called creative industries has energized the local scene. All the arts and culture organizations within the city have formed a council to collaborate on marketing and promotional ideas to help increase tourist trade and attendance at galleries, historical sites, performances and special events. The downtown association has begun organizing and advertising street performances throughout the fall to encourage actors, musicians and artists to be more visible to the community and increase traffic for downtown businesses. Local musicians have banded together to form an alliance with venues, media and music-related businesses to increase exposure and provide services to other musicians. Newcomers who are unmistakeable members of the creative class are opening businesses, running for political office and becoming active in local organizations.
Now I don’t pretend to know anything about the economics or social psychology of any of this, but the potential economic benefits to all this activity seem pretty obvious. To me, however, the emotional advantages of fueling a more inviting and inclusive ”sense of place” that encourages entrepreneurship, creativity, AND community feels like the big payoff, particularly when applying these principles to smaller cities. Attracting and supporting the new ideas of the creative class to take root can undoubtedly be a worthwhile aspect of any community planning program, but if what’s happening in my town is any indication of success, understanding and respecting a community’s history during the implementation of such strategies will certainly build stronger community participation and livability. Only time will tell if such efforts can revitalize and sustain a creative economy’s health over the long haul. Stay tuned.
How is the traditional model of the value of arts and culture being redefined in today’s global economy? John Holden describes the expanding and interrelated reach of arts and culture…
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” Virginia Woolf
Mental pictures, visions, intuition, serendipity–how does innovation arrive? And maybe more importantly, how is it suppressed? Arranging what comes requires always being aware and open to what arrives.
This dramatization nails the dance of brillant minds opening and closing. Orson Wells at what he does best!
I’ve been working in my local community to help fuel a movement to designate a portion of the city as an “Arts and Culture District.” The goal has been to get the myriad of arts and culture organizations in the city to join forces to actively promote and grow into a more cohesive community that can be marketed as a destination for visitors looking for that kind of experience.
A secondary, unspoken goal is to create an environment where the ”creative class” that exists can be encouraged to flourish and expand. With that, the hope that the economic benefits of more services and products required to support such a population can benefit the entire community.
It’s got me thinking what it takes to create an art and culture scene in any given location. Can it be planned and encouraged or does it have to happen spontaneously? Which comes first? And is this elistist thinking?
Kwende Kefense posits in “What’s in a Scene?” on the CreativeClass.com blog that cultural scenes may often be the deciding factor in what kind creative talent can be attracted and retained in any given region.
Richard Florida, father of the creative class concept contends in Who’s Your City that deciding where one lives is one of the most important decisions anyone makes, and quality of life and cultural scene have a huge impact on that decision. And some of the statistics he has gathered are suprising! What’s your city’s “Bohemian Index?”
Listen for the comments about what constitutes true creativity in this video clip. Not education, not affiliation–but openness to all kinds of experience.
Jeff Hawkins explains why intelligence is based on memory and prediction, not behavior. Which leads me to these questions…If intelligence is the ability to remember and be able to predict what will happen next, then is creativity the ability let go of predictions (preconceived notions) and open to all the other possibilities? Is creativity an anti-prediction mechanism that keeps the brain from insisting that something that looks and feels the same as a previous experience is absolutely the same (the old looks like a duck, quacks like a duck syndrome?)?
Curiosity is the key to creativity. –Akio Morita, Co-Founder of Sony
I had a couple rejections arrive yesterday, one for a client, another for myself. I sat for a moment pondering the basis for both these rejections. We were both complimented for our originality and ideas, our abilities. But we didn’t fit their agency’s mold. We weren’t what they were looking for. Somehow I got the feeling they thought we were living too far outside the box. Creative yes, what their audience wants, NO.
The rejections reminded me of Akio Morita’s quote about curiosity and creativity and raised this question: Where does creativity LIVE and how does it find its audience? Should I be upset that these type groups, in spite of their ability to recognize creativity, are not curious about bringing new things to their audience?
Knowing that there is always such a huge divide between the act of creating and the business of selling what is created, I can’t fault a business for going with what sells. But I’m interested in how some artists and organizations thrive on living outside the box like Sony, and others huddle tightly inside the box, like the agencies I’ve just encountered. And how does an artist, writer or musician recognize the businesses and audiences that match their in-the-box/out-of-the-box creative style?
Amy Tan talks in the video below about creativity finding its way in the form of a focused question. She contends that once you have the right question, the rest falls in place in a seemingly seredipidous way. So perhaps my client and I don’t have the right question yet. Maybe we are trying to answer or fit ourselves into someone else’s box when we will always be out-of-the-box types. Perhaps just following curiosity wherever it takes us and letting our audience do the same is the key.
No doubt success stories like Morita and Sony didn’t waste time by trying to unlock their way into someone else’s box. They weren’t trying to make the in-the-box people see the benefits of living outside the box. They just followed their curiosity where it took them.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.~Henry David Thoreau
A day spent participating in a summer solstice sweat lodge recently offered up a new theory for my curiosity over why some creative people are successful and others are not.
During the sweat I kept seeing the symbol of the beaver, which seems so appropriately connected to the question that has puzzled me–why do some creative minds manage to build foundations under their dreams while other very deeply creative souls trudge through life never quite touching the ground nor managing to share their talents with all the folks that would benefit most? Is it just fate that some find the tools and help they need to anchor their air castles and others remain frustrated in their attempts?
The beaver symbol offered me a clue. A beaver dreams a dream and then methodically coaxes it to reality. He sees and engineers a dam that can change the course of river, believes it can happen and gets to work making it real. He doesn’t hear the voices that say one beaver can’t change the course of a river. He just dreams it and gets to work. But it takes time, diligence and patience. And it takes never losing sight of the dream.
But what strikes me as the most important lesson of this animal totem, is that the beaver does what he does with the intention of building something for everyone. Sans ego, the beaver isn’t looking for accolades or a monument to his enormous talent as an engineer; he’s building safety and security for his community. He’s contributing what he’s best at—dreaming and then doing—for the betterment of the group. The beaver instinctively knows how to balance creative dreaming with egoless doing for the benefit of all. It’s his nature.
Granted in the human realms of creative dreaming, there tend to be dreamers and doers, with few of us blessed with both gifts of beaver-like vision and persistence. And we have egos that will float the most amazing creative ideas out into the world like clusters of beautiful mansion-making sticks and leaves and floss in the hopes that someone will notice what great visionaries we are. There’s a disconnect between dreaming and doing for many, and the easy way out is often to lament that creativity is neither honored or rewarded.
Somehow the example of the beaver tells me that what really keeps all those air castles adrift is the idea that there will be personal rewards for simply being creative or things will just happen by having a dream. Perhaps the wisdom of the beaver tells us that in order for our internal creativity to become a shared reality, we must dream outside our egos and be willing to build one stick at a time. Air castles (or floating beaver lodges) are a start, but it’s creative doing, which inherently understands the importance of community, diligence and patience, that will turn creative dreams to reality. Moving from the vision to action back to the vision again and again is the only way to turn creative dreams into reality.
