Blog Format

Okay.

So.

This is awkward.

I just drafted a post saying that I was going to resign from the internet because Isaac + J. Holtham in one blog is just too cool for me to handle.

And I wanted to reference my own post from two weeks ago about my own striving to face-lift my blog. The only problem? I never hit publish on that post!

So, I'm going to publish the post about my planned changes for this blog, knowing that in comparison with Isaac + J. Holtham in one blog this manifesto-let is probably going to look like the longest suicide note in history.

(Here was the original post.)

So, over the weekend [that was two weekends ago,-e.d.], my brother got married, and for some reason that gave me time to sit and think about where I'm headed in a lot of things. As a result, I'm going to try and restructure the way I go about this blog.

Here's what I think will change:

• Aesthetics - reflecting on my blog currently, in the context of working on my Honors Thesis (which is basically a document on my personal aesthetics), I realize that I write a lot about the systems within which culture is being made (the form of culture; internships, diversity, the creative economy) rather than the culture itself, art and how to make it -- how I like making it. I'm spilling a lot of ink on how to make an ideal theater company, and not a lot of ink on how to make an ideal play. Granted, I want to make a great theater company, but the reason is to support my work and the work of others. My thesis advisor has called me on avoiding making categorical assertions and personal opinion-making, and she's done a lot to help me figure out how to approach talking about how to make work. Specifically, I have been lead over the last few years to slowly hash out a theory of art that is based on my heroes William James and Harry Frankfurt of the Pragmatism school of philosophy, and I want to use this blog to crystallize that thinking more. This leads to point two:
  
• Structure - I'm going to be looking at ways to structure my posts a little bit more regularly, cleanly, and more interestingly -- in other words, pay attention to the aesthetics of the blog posts, not just the aesthetics of my work. I currently follow 202 blogs (I am not making that number up), and I read through them at a breeze. Blogs that work the best for me often have structure that make it clear before I even read a word what content there is going to be in the article. The example of a blog that leverages this excellently is Createquity: there's Around the Horn for a collection of small but important links, New Blogs for plugging links you should be reading, the new Bullet-Point Manifesto for laying out a point-by-point argument, and the Arts Policy Library to examine a key report or book at length.
• Creative Works - I am going to put up more creative works of mine on this blog, in the spirit of others.

Things that will not be changing:

• The RSS Feed - Seriously, how many times am I going to have to click subscribe to get Scott Walters' thoughts in my Google Reader?

I jest, I jest.

Local Arts News

I've given plenty of shout-outs to Createquity as being a fine blog (and not just because I've contributed to it), and one of the top reasons is its excellent coverage of local arts issues. But of course, the best reporters of local news are people who are local. Luckily, there's now a way to bring those two forces together -- Createquity tipster! If you spot an important local arts news story (like this one), you can toss them along to him, and it'll probably wind up in one of his excellent Around the Horn segments. I still like my method, but let's all be sure to give those local arts stories the attention they deserve.

Hurrah crowdsourcing!

Contribution to Createquity.com

I've said it before and I've said it again, I owe a lot of gratitude to Ian Moss. Ever since we first crossed paths on Twitter, he's been a solid friend of this blog and, I was thrilled when he first asked me to contribute to Createquity. He's a very studious editor and makes my reports something quite above the level of work I usually do on this blog, and it is always a joy to get to work on it with him.

Anyways, in celebration of Snowpocalypse/snOMG, my second contribution is now online - it's an analysis of the report The Search For Shining Eyes, which was a rather comprehensive investigation into how to reverse the wane of orchestras in America. Although its focus is on classical music, there's a lot that theater can take a way from it -- and some illuminating differences.

Anyways, go take a look. If you're interested, my previous contribution is here, along with a response to a response here.

Grassroots + Power VI: Separation Between Arts and State?

A few months back, I got attacked by some drones from Andrew Breibart's big Hollywood blog because I approved of the Obama administration's realistic approach to arts policy -- basically, we'll provide what distant support we can to whatever is already going on in the field. My sense was that, given the incredible resistance to the arts from many politicians (excluding a few heroes).

At first, I was just irritated, especially by criticism that I hadn't given proper thought to the relationship between the grassroots and government. And then I decided to reflect on the relationship between arts and government for a few posts (starting from here).

The problem at the core of the criticism, which I felt it was necessary to address, was the proper relationship between mass movements and government. The right has shrewdly decided to draw parallels between the mass movements directed by government under Fascism/Nazism, whereas the left sees this government as government directed by mass movements. In the end, of course, neither is true -- my sense of the Obama Administration since it took office is that whereas it is responsive to some of the mass movement's concern, he certainly isn't bound by them, and on the other hand, the idea that the 9/11 National Day of Service indicates that Barack Obama is directly controlling artists is just ridiculous--or that ACORN is a malicious plot directed by Democrats to rig votes in their favor.

I was led to re-reflect this morning on that line of thinking by this post at Butts in Seats, about a recent TED address about a program that uses arts to address controversial concerns. The post ends:

She argues that social leaders who strive for change need to harness the universal language of the arts to bring it about.

My favorite quote: “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.”

It struck me, suddenly, that although I have often heard the message directed towards artists that art is a powerful vehicle for social change, I had never heard the message directed towards politicians that art is a powerful vehicle of social change. And I wondered what that would look like -- politicians partnering with artists to create social change.

And then I remembered those anonymous flame messages accusing me of being a patsy to Stalinism because I thought it was a good idea for the arts to be included in a government community service program.

In other words, what has happened is that public backlash against political art has created a situation in which we have enforced separation between arts and state. Sure, Obama can go see a show (not without catching some shit) or even invite them to his house (and notice how both are considered historic gestures of support for the arts). But the idea that artists would actually work with politicians on public issues feels absurd (except maybe in the realms of film and music) and the government certainly doesn't lead art events on issues.

I am reminded of Ian's post for arts to become a partisan issues. In a way, he was just articulating something that we've articulated before, that arts needs to have political clout, but specifically he was saying that we need one party or the other to come out and say "Actually, we're the party that supports the arts."

But I wonder if it's deeper than that. Certainly, I know this unique sense of irritation that comes over most audiences if they feel you have too sharp a political "message." I get that too. They'd prefer artists not have political affiliation, but pretend to be simply presenting the world as it is. Brecht must be throwing a hissy fit as I write these words, but I think in American culture, the arts are supposed to be separate from politics.

Is that part of what has made us irrelevant? I don't think arts have to be political to be relevant. But is the fact that we flee from tackling the central issues in American culture? And I don't mean "doing plays about controversial issues." Certainly we can do a controversial play, but we certainly know that we're not actually going to influence events. Whereas there are some cultural events that have an impact.

If a group of talented, intelligent theater people wanted to create a theater event that would actually change health care in this country, what would it look like? I don't know. But I know it wouldn't be a play about a politician torn between the insurance lobby and their past as a doctor. (I can already see the poster: "First Do No Harm," the controversial new play about Health Care, going up at the Roundabout, starring Neil Patrick Harris as the doctor and Julia Roberts as the lobbyist... I should register that at the WGA, just in case).

Do we want this separation between arts and state? Does it give us integrity or make us irrelevant? Can we bridge that gap without becoming irritating, didactic, or -- at worst -- Code Pink?

Conversation III: Philanthropy SMACKDOWN

Createquity's latest Around the Horn features GiveWell launching a fairly sustained and intelligent criticism of Philanthropedia, as well as a two part response from Philanthropedia.

Honestly, the ins and outs of philanthropy isn't really so high on my radar, probably because I haven't gotten enough of an income to donate beyond supporting autism education in NYC in pitiful small change, a little bit of money to the Obama campaign, and regular contributions to public radio. What drew me to read the articles in full, however (and believe me, it is in full for blog posts) was the tone of conversation.

GiveWell thinks that Philanthropedia is dodgy people, relying on "Experts" who aren't fully disclosed or defined. But GiveWell doesn't write a 40 word post full of scorn and derision. GiveWell writes a long, clearly structured, point-by-point summation of their central concerns with Philanthropedia's approach.

Philanthropedia responds in an even longer, point-by-point approach. How? By thanking GiveWell for their efforts, and acknowledging the weaknesses that GiveWell highlights while respectfully disagreeing on their real impact -- basically, Philanthropedia wants us to look past the flaws, and look at the vision.

The one that left me more convinced was GiveWell. I certainly walked away from Philanthropedia thinking that they were an organization that cares, and that in a year or so they might be a really useful tool for philanthropy, but they had to concede too many points to GiveWell.

But really, I'm highlighting this not because of the actual philanthropy argument, but because of the tone of the conversation, the rigor with which both sides approached their points. I'd love to see GiveWell respond. And Philanthropedia respond with that. I want to see some of the information that Philanthropedia talks about in the future tense.

Hey guys, remember when David Cote asked bloggers to Enrage/Engage more? I was always thought that the "engage" side of the slash would be far more helpful to use than the "enrage" side. I think, if you're a philanthropist, you gained far more from this mode of conversation than if @GiveWell had tweeted "Who are @Philan-pedia's 'experts'? They're as qualified as FOX experts LOL" and then spent the next few weeks sniping at each other calling the other unserious organizations or whatever passes for philanthropy smack talk.

(Updated: Misnumbered my own series again)

2009 in Review

It can't be said enough how fine some of the blogs on the internet are, and Ian's Createquity is one of the finer ones in our little arts-policy world. Today he has a retrospective on what he's learned since 2007, which I can basically substitute as what I've learned in 2009 being a reader of his blog.

And what's amazing is that those are the things that I've learned reading his blog, and I've also learned equally as much reading those other blogs out there. If I actually had a brain that wasn't made of soggy wheat and could retain half of the information I've been reading through in the last year, I'd be comfortable calling myself a pretty savvy guy.

Americans for the Arts + Emerging Arts Leaders

Hi everyone,

As you may know, the incomparable Ian Moss over at Createquity (which I have and will continue to contributed to) is one of the sharpest arts policy bloggers on the blogosphere. For instance, his updates on arts councils fundings is required reading for those of us who actually want to know what's going on in the arts community.

Well, Americans for the Arts is holding an election for an Emerging Leaders Council, and Ian Moss is on the ballot. If you're an Americans for the Arts member (which at the moment, I am not, although I plan to be when I get the chance), you should go here and vote. Even if you decide not to vote for Ian, go make your voice heard.

By the way, the concept of "emerging arts leaders" is being talked about so often everywhere that it kind of feels like a trope at this point. I kind of like that. Kudos to Americans for the Arts for making them a key part of the discussion.

Shout-Out

Community Arts Network sums up my report for Createquity here. They come pretty close to spelling my name right. It's okay... one of my theater teacher calls me Yahweh, which is not only incorrect but blasphemous.

Educating Too Many Professionals

[update: in the original post, I mistakenly wrote that I was quoting Barry. In actuality, it was Barry asking the questions and Ian himself who had written the responses. My apologies.]

Speaking of Createquity, the last few days has seen Ian posting some conversations he had with Barry Hessenius. The second installment caught my eye, because it deals with art education.

The part of Ian's response that stuck out to me was this:

The reason is simple: the kids who fall in love with learning to play the tuba or do a pirouette today are the adults who are going to be competing with each other for gigs and grant money tomorrow. If we are successful in our efforts and ensure that every child has the opportunity to experience all the arts they want to during their formative years, what happens to them once they get to college?

Now, Ian precedes that statement with an important set of disclaimers about how he's not dumping on the concept of studying the arts, and he doesn't want the arts to be an elite discipline--all of which is valid, and I appreciate what he's getting at.

So the question is a good one. What would we do in our dream scenario that arts education doubled the amount of people interested in the arts?

The problem, I think, is with what our arts education currently frames its goal to be. The goal, as Ian sees it, is framed right there at the top of that chunk: "the kids who fall in love with learning to play the tuba or do a pirouette today are the adults who are going to be competing with each other for gigs and grant money tomorrow."

For the arts education system today, arts education is a professional system: it exists to create arts professionals. And in the higher-education world, this is correct, and is as it should be: once you're majoring in theater, you should be aiming to be practicing theater for your life.

Yet for some reason, this thinking exists even in elementary school. When we teach elementary school-kids music, we teach them how to play the tuba. And then the expectation is that, if they're good at it, they'll keep playing tuba and eventually get a good job at an orchestra playing the tuba. If they're not good at it, well then, they'll get something out of the rest of their education.

I'd like to contrast that with English. The philosophy behind English education, at least as I was exposed to it, was that English was a language, and therefore it enfused every part of the world around us. It didn't matter whether or not you were going to go into the literary criticism field one day, as a bank teller or as a media mogul or as a tuba player, your ability to think critically in English and communicate fluently in English was a key part of your job.

That's how we should tackle art. Our elementary school program should be an artistic literacy program, not an art professional program. Kids should be learning how to listen to music, how to express themselves in music--whether or not we train them in specific skills.

The example that resonates for me comes from Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed. Boal describes a short-lived Peruvian artistic literacy program where students were given cameras, and asked a series of questions which they had to answer through photography. One question, for example, was "Where do you live?" and one student responded to it with a portrait of his older brother, whose lip had been chewed off by rats in the night. The teacher asks, "Why did you take that photo to answer 'Where do you live?'" and the student responds, "Because I live in a country where these sort of things can happen."

That student learned something powerful about arts, communication, and critical thinking. Ian seems to imply that this student will now want to become a professional photographer, and therefore we'll need to make space for him. I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Condoleeza Rice was given a beautiful full training as a concert pianist, but that didn't take her away from the realm of foreign policy.

Actually, I'm being a little unfair. What Ian really means is this:

If we’re trying to hook 55 million children on the arts in a system that pours 3.2 million new high school graduates into the market every year, even if only 10% of them decide to pursue professional careers, what happens to them when, by the NEA’s own figures, only 2 million artists can coexist in that market at any given time?

The 10% figure is a lot more reasonable. But on the other hand, it is somewhat looking at the glass half-empty. So, 10% of 55 million children on the arts adds another 5.5 million children to our 2 million artist ceiling. That leaves 49.5 million art-hooked but not professional people.

So, there's two options to what those 49.5 million will do. One is they'll say, "Well I didn't get to be an artist," and then never call us ever again. The other is that they'll say, "Boy, I love the arts, and I want the arts to still be a part of my life." And then they become our concert-goers, our donors, our audience.

If they become our audience, then the 2 million cap that Ian references will probably be raised. By how much? Difficult to tell. But surely as our audience grows, so do our artists.

But I agree with Ian that it won't just happen. If we teach those 49.5 million kids that the only way to participate in the arts is by being a professional, we shouldn't be surprised if they fail to materialize in our audiences. But if we teach them to hunger after any sort of connection with arts, and give them the opportunity to connect with arts in however their lives can connect to it, then they'll be the engine that drives the 5.5 million who practice it full time.

And suppose those 49.5 million turn into voters, into advocates for the arts. Then we'll have a much better chance of turning around the negativity towards arts funding, the lack of public support. And then we'll definitely have a shot of shifting the 2 million.

Contributions to Createquity

Hello readers,

My apologies for having left you behind somewhat, after a productive summer. I have lately been rather drawn in to the actual practice of the arts--putting up a show, working on publishing, etc. and therefore have not had the time to write at length about the things that go behind it.

Part of this, as well, has been that my time for writing arts policy was spent very productively: I'm pleased to announce that my first contribution to the fine blog Createquity is up. It's an analysis at length of a report called Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement, a report which I think is one of the most important reports to hit the public in recent days.

Createquity is one of the few extremely high quality arts policy analysis blogs, and it was an honor when Ian Moss contacted me about contributing. He has been very supportive of this little blog here, and it was great to get to write for him.

Anyways, stop reading this post. Go and see my analysis. I promise I'll have fresh content here soon.

Are the Arts for Everybody?

Posting has been lax at this end for a number of reasons. One are the three professional websites; another is the book launch; lastly is my reading FSG's Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement, which gave me so much damn information that I haven't had the chance to process it all and post away on it, since I think it's going to be the core of what the Thriving Arts Report started sparking in my mind.

Before I get to FSG (I'm still neck-deep in sifting through my notes, and I only ever got a third of the way into my notes of Florida's Rise of the Creative Class), I'd like to take a moment to look over Createquity's Arts Policy Library, namely his first summary of Gifts of the Muse.

Before I launch into this, I would like to point out that although I have purchased the book Gifts of the Muse, I haven't gotten it to read yet, so my response is not to the book, but rather to Ian's response to the book. I'll report back once I've read it about whether I find it to be accurate. I trust it to be.

There is a central problem working in this book, though, as Ian describes it:

The one major gaffe I found in Gifts has to do with a central premise: that the intrinsic benefits the authors identify are distinguished from instrumental benefits by virtue of their uniqueness to the arts. McCarthy et. al. [the authors] state that the intrinsic benefits are “inherent in the arts experience” and include “a distinctive type of pleasure and emotional stimulation.” The inference, it seems, is that the reason people participate in the arts in the first place (and the reason, therefore, to subsidize them) is because they can’t get these kinds of benefits anywhere else. Or at least that is the position implied by the authors’ withering criticism of the instrumental benefits literature for not considering the opportunity costs of supporting the arts to achieve broader policy goals.

In the course of their discussion of the intrinsic benefits, though, the authors let slip an interesting quote from one of the few sources directly cited in the chapter. It’s buried in a footnote on page 46, so the casual reader could be forgiven for missing it. But it casts a profound shadow over the entire discussion of intrinsic benefits. The footnote is drawn from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity: Flow and the Discovery of Psychology and Invention, and is as follows:

"When people are working creatively in the areas of their expertise, whether arts or nuclear physics, their various everyday frustrations and anxieties are replaced by a sense of bliss. That joy comes from what they describe as “designing or discovering something new” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, p. 108)"

So nuclear physics counts too, eh? Indeed, elsewhere on the page, McCarthy et al. write “[Csikszentmihalyi]’s study of creativity is based on interviews with 91 exceptionally creative people from the arts, sciences, business, and government, [and] argues that we have underrated the role of pleasure in creativity of all kinds. His subjects all talk about the joy and excitement of the act of creation itself. But that enjoyment comes with the achievement of excellence in a certain activity rather than from the direct pursuit of pleasure.”

There's a terribly worrying, but nonetheless accurate question, which is: what is it that is unique about arts? Ian continues:

The entire chapter on participation patterns—everything from gateway experiences to frequent participation—could have written about any of a million hobbies and Pro-Am activities, from gardening to stamp collecting to astronomy to cooking and beyond. But curiously, the one “intrinsic” benefit that truly is unique to the arts—the creation of a space in society for experimentation and imagination for its own sake—is never mentioned. Nor is the capacity for communication between artists, either in the same generation or across generations, which allows them to cultivate a common language and heritage of aesthetic expression that is specifically about art itself.

Unfortunately, even the benefits that Ian describes don't seem to me to be completely unique to the arts. A space for experimentation and imagination for its own space--I saw that at the Williamsburg Cupcake Cook-off (an event I highly recommend, by the way). Communication within artists is unique to art, but only because of the stipulation that they be artists. If you're a foodie, you've joined a community of food-enthusiasts who also foster communication and culture and etc, that gives a "common language and heritage of aesthetic expressio0n that is specifically about art itself.

Unless.

Obviously, I like the arts, I don't think they're vestigal. I, as of yet, have not found anything unique about art that can be gotten nowhere else. It's just a different form of pursuing those goals. A different language.

To return to Ian for a moment, to his final conclusion:

I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe the arts aren’t for everybody—and maybe that’s okay. We should be glad that they produce all of these various benefits for some people, especially those who might have a hard time getting those benefits elsewhere, and equally happy that there are many opportunities for individuals who don’t connect to the arts to express their creativity and strive for excellence and seek to understand the world around them in other contexts. ... I don’t necessarily agree that the goal should be “to bring as many people as possible into engagement with their culture through meaningful experiences of the arts.” I don’t see how that represents success, unless that’s what those people want for themselves.

It's very true that the arts are not for everybody. But creativity is.

See, one of the mistakes we do get lured into is considering creativity to be the arts. As Richard Florida points out with some very compelling personal anecdotes about his father's manufacturing firm, creativity can be found in every line of work.

What has driven people away from creativity is the concept that it is something only artists can do. What we should be focusing on is the availability of creative environments, in which arts is a prominent but not a sole component. The arts should be something that everybody can do but not should do.

For instance: a group of my friends have created a brand-new sport called Circle Rules Football. Do you know how much more fun I would have had in physical education if we'd tried inventing a sport? My best subjects were English, Theater, and History, because I got the opportunity to be creative in each of those (yes I got to be creative in History. I don't know who else gets that opportunity). In high school, I wound up being very good at math, because we tackled math with creativity at that point.

I will be writing a submission to 20 under 40 tackling this subject: we've gotten to the point where we treat the arts like a trade, and thus we focus on the skills of art rather than the creativity of art. Can you imagine that I learned how to play the piano for five years and never listened to classical music? I never got the opportunity to write anything, to improvise--to do anything other than mechanically replicate the song at hand.

Theresa Rebeck has an essay on Lark Theatre's blog entitled "Can Craft and Creativity Live On The Same Stage?" I agree with her that the answer is yes, craft and creativity have to work together. But my problem with a lot of arts programs and arts education is a lack of exploration of creativity.

Partially that's because, as Gifts of the Muse and other publications make painfully clear, we still have a long way to go in terms of developing the language and information to analyze what exactly that means.

But we can do it. If anyone has read Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, there is a passage wherein he describes the artistic literacy programs in Peru. That's the direction to go: treating creativity as a language that crosses alphabets, and learning how to converse in that language.

Once we get into this "arts as a language" mode, the instrumental versus intrinsic benefits argument will become more moot. What are English's benefits: instrumental or intrinsic? There are strong arguments to be made for both, although both are exceedingly difficult to quantify.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Let it never be said that this blog is not grateful to its friends: Ian Moss at Createquity gave a shoutout to this blog today, and so I'd like to say thanks to him for his support earlier in the process and the kind words.

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Ah Fafa Lala, a new collaboration between Johannesburg and NYC arts groups (including possibly my own soon) that so kindly directed its members in this direction.

Thanks for the support! More content soon, I promise.

Issues with Quantification

In the email that Ian Moss (Createquity) sent me, he raised one of the obvious problems with quantifying the arts health of the community: how to analyze the data sets. How much does it mean if there's $x or n number of festivals in a city?

Using the process of the Thriving Arts report that I keep banging on about, another problem with that arises. The data can reflect the existence of an arts community, but it doesn't seem nearly as easy to reflect the potential for an arts community.

My original reason for investigating was to come up with something that would let the <100k Project analyze which communities to select for its project--after all, there are plenty of <100k communities in the country: some (like Laguna Beach, or Tracy, MN from the report) already have a thriving arts community; others may have nothing at all to speak of. If there was a way to evaluate candidate towns statistically, it would be easier to use them.

But as I looked at the Thriving Arts Report, the benchmarks they put forward of "background factors" for a potential arts community are even harder to measure than, for instance, the benchmarks under "emerging development. The following are their community-related benchmarks for "background factors":

• Valuing arts for young people
• Valuing history and sense of place
• Tradition of arts activity
• Artistic expression in spiritual life

This is separate from a number of individual and catalytic events that also qualify.

In my attempt to brainstorm some quantifiable benchmarks for those background factors, it quickly became apparent that the presence of institutions that represent these factors come later in the process. A community can value history long before it creates a Historical Society and before it attracts the money to create a surplus of museums (both of which are listed as later on benchmarks).

What this means that, from the perspective of quantification, it is easier to tell the difference between an undeveloped and developed arts community, but difficult to tell the difference between a high potential community and low potential community. To return to my pet example of Irvine, where I am currently locating, long before we could ever hope to develop an artistic community, there would have to be a lot of work just to create those initial benchmarks. On the other hand, some towns in the early days of development might not have a lot, in terms of institutions, to measure with. In such a case, you'd have to measure with more like census data--trying to isolate informal, unestablished data points.

Quantifying The Health Of Arts Communities

Sparked on by the report that <100K posted, I've been interested in putting together a method of quantifying the arts community. At the time I assumed it was a tall order because I'm not an urban studies major, or a sociologist, or anything that would give me the academic background necessary. But of course, the only way to really get that background is just to JUMP IN, feet first.

So I did, beginning with a little tweet to the world, asking if anyone else was involved in this.

Ian David Moss, over at Createquity.com, informs me that I'm a little late to the game, because there is a lot of raw research to look at. But there's still a lot of work to be done, and the final quantitative analysis (he called it the "holy grail") is still elusive.

He was very helpful and tossed me a number of resources, so my next step will be analyzing not only the report from <100k, but also the sources he gave me, and of course the groundbreaking work by Richard Florida on the Creative Class. I will, of course, share as much of my realization here as is possible.