- Soup-To-Nuts - Rather than approaching the cultural environment in a one-off fashion, approach cultural environment as a whole. This is difficult, and is one of the reasons people are working on developing a quantitative approach to arts cultures... Richard Florida's early work suggests a direction, but doesn't provide the answers yet.
- Baby Conservatory - The Harlem's Children Zone is probably the current Overachieving Nonprofit du jour, but they're exploiting a very important principle in their Baby College approach to education: children are most influenced between the years 0-3. That may go for economic success, but I bet it works for the arts too. And that means we need a conveyor belt that tracks a child's artistic development, so that by the time they graduate, they have an artistic literacy. In some way, trying to "expand your audience" of 20 year olds is probably far, far too late.
Showing posts with label richard florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label richard florida. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Solutions IV
Thanks, This American Life!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Creative Workplace I: How Did We Fail?
Whereas Richard Florida's statistical observations in Rise of the Creative Class are not necessarily the best (for reasons that people far more qualified than me have gone into), his qualitative analysis of the workplace is fairly on-the-nose. It is, however, an ideal view of the creative class' workspace, and not always the accurate case.
Teachers, I think, can be placed rather squarely in the realm of the the creative class. The creative class, Florida observed, is marked by high job mobility. Instead, it seems like teachers are organized in the manufacturing class model: unionized, entrenched (by tenure), etc. The concept of state-wide curriculums and standardized testing, as well, seems to be an attempt to take the creativity out of the hands of the teacher, and standardize the system of education.
Perhaps this is the success of the charter schools and private schools: they are more likely to create a creative class environment for children. In fact, it may be that the creative class is better served by being taught in a creative class environment simply because it is a creative class environment, and the students will be modeling the place they will have to work for the rest of their lives.
The same applies to arts institutions and arts education. We need to take a look, because in some regards it feels to me like many people in the creative field are not working in that environment. And this may be why some of these institutions fail.
Just a thought.
Teachers, I think, can be placed rather squarely in the realm of the the creative class. The creative class, Florida observed, is marked by high job mobility. Instead, it seems like teachers are organized in the manufacturing class model: unionized, entrenched (by tenure), etc. The concept of state-wide curriculums and standardized testing, as well, seems to be an attempt to take the creativity out of the hands of the teacher, and standardize the system of education.
Perhaps this is the success of the charter schools and private schools: they are more likely to create a creative class environment for children. In fact, it may be that the creative class is better served by being taught in a creative class environment simply because it is a creative class environment, and the students will be modeling the place they will have to work for the rest of their lives.
The same applies to arts institutions and arts education. We need to take a look, because in some regards it feels to me like many people in the creative field are not working in that environment. And this may be why some of these institutions fail.
Just a thought.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sense of Community II: Arts Factories
One of the interesting historic notes discussed in Rise of the Creative Class is how the original Factory came into being. Obviously, in the original market days, labor was divided into a community: someone would gather raw materials, sell it to a merchant, and the merchant would sell it to an artisan to turn into a finished good.
As the level of finished good grew in complexity, it might go through multiple of these stages: someone gathers raw materials, sells it to a merchant, merchant sells it to an artistan who turns it into a refined good, refined good is sold to a merchant, merchant sells it to another artisan who finishes the good. This was called factoring.
Eventually, someone figured out that the middle-man could be skilled by assembling all of the parts of a product’s development under one roof: in a factory. Now a factory owner buys the raw material, and his workers usher the raw material through all of the steps of its development until the end.
However, it is clear that in the developed world, this model is breaking down, as it is no longer profitable to employ men in a factory at wages they are accustomed to. The cost of each worker has gotten too big. Partly, this is because of the conditions of the worker: back when each artisan was self-employed, he set his own hours and conditions, and would work to produce as much as he needed to support himself. But the factory aims to maximize its own profits, which makes the hours and conditions increasingly difficult.
On a seemingly unrelated subject, my brother and I came to discuss the armies of amateurs who now exist, and seem to want to do valuable but low-quality jobs for no pay. For instance, whereas an amateur couldn’t compete full-time making furniture, because Ikea would drive him out of business, he could create small amounts of low-quality and low-cost items to sell informally, so long has he does this in his leisure time aside from a sustaining job. Once a man takes up this sort of job outside of work hours, he no longer has quite the same pressure to make ends meet through his furniture business, and therefore is free to enjoy himself and make as little or as much as he needs.
As a mindgame, I asked my brother to consider whether it would be possible for a company or project to harness the armies of amateurs to contribute bits of work, remotely, at their own pace. This is the equivalent of Factoring, but without the factory.
It was only later that I realized that this is already being done, largely through the power of the internet. For instance, Wikipedia harnesses large amounts of amateur experts, without compensation, to create a repository of knowledge. Each person contributes in their free time, without expecting pay, up to their abilities.
Other open source projects are equally Factoring projects: Linux, for instance, is entirely built by programmers in their free time pushing around bits of code to build an operating system which now competes with Windows and OS X.
I also came across a curious real-world example of this as well. In Alaska, my family came across a beautiful small Musk Oxen farm. This farm operated by raising musk oxen, then sending those raw materials to various indigenous tribes to be knitted into sweaters or blankets. These tribesfolk were paid the same no matter how much they put out—they were only required to make at least one sweater or blanket. Then the blankets/sweaters are sent back to the farm, which gathers them all and sells them. This co-op structure is basically using an army of skilled amateurs to convert furs into sweaters.
Now, since this is an arts blog aiming to discuss the development of arts communities, it is time for me to cut to the chase. What I am getting at is that this model could be used to build an arts community. Rather than creating a single, complex organization (an arts Factory), the arts could be “Factored” out to a distributed number of arts amateurs, who contribute as much or as little. But once they’ve contributed, they’ve got a tie (at least a weak tie, possibly even a strong tie) in to the arts community.
When I had the conversation with Walt (at <100k Project) and some of Walt’s friends about arts community development, the idea I came up with at the time is to have a project that goes out into the community to collect stories and present them as part of an evening of theater. In a way, this is factoring, inasmuch as it factors the job of the playwright into the community. This is what The Laramie Project did, although the Laramie Project was sort of factoring colonization, because the results of their work left their community (StoryCorps is the same way—and came up for criticism for Walt for this same reason).
At any rate, this is a model for a small number of artists to build a larger arts community. By factoring out the creative work, they start to create an arts community that lives outside of themselves. At the same time, they lower the participation threshold, which is one of the most important barriers to the creation of an arts community.
As the level of finished good grew in complexity, it might go through multiple of these stages: someone gathers raw materials, sells it to a merchant, merchant sells it to an artistan who turns it into a refined good, refined good is sold to a merchant, merchant sells it to another artisan who finishes the good. This was called factoring.
Eventually, someone figured out that the middle-man could be skilled by assembling all of the parts of a product’s development under one roof: in a factory. Now a factory owner buys the raw material, and his workers usher the raw material through all of the steps of its development until the end.
However, it is clear that in the developed world, this model is breaking down, as it is no longer profitable to employ men in a factory at wages they are accustomed to. The cost of each worker has gotten too big. Partly, this is because of the conditions of the worker: back when each artisan was self-employed, he set his own hours and conditions, and would work to produce as much as he needed to support himself. But the factory aims to maximize its own profits, which makes the hours and conditions increasingly difficult.
On a seemingly unrelated subject, my brother and I came to discuss the armies of amateurs who now exist, and seem to want to do valuable but low-quality jobs for no pay. For instance, whereas an amateur couldn’t compete full-time making furniture, because Ikea would drive him out of business, he could create small amounts of low-quality and low-cost items to sell informally, so long has he does this in his leisure time aside from a sustaining job. Once a man takes up this sort of job outside of work hours, he no longer has quite the same pressure to make ends meet through his furniture business, and therefore is free to enjoy himself and make as little or as much as he needs.
As a mindgame, I asked my brother to consider whether it would be possible for a company or project to harness the armies of amateurs to contribute bits of work, remotely, at their own pace. This is the equivalent of Factoring, but without the factory.
It was only later that I realized that this is already being done, largely through the power of the internet. For instance, Wikipedia harnesses large amounts of amateur experts, without compensation, to create a repository of knowledge. Each person contributes in their free time, without expecting pay, up to their abilities.
Other open source projects are equally Factoring projects: Linux, for instance, is entirely built by programmers in their free time pushing around bits of code to build an operating system which now competes with Windows and OS X.
I also came across a curious real-world example of this as well. In Alaska, my family came across a beautiful small Musk Oxen farm. This farm operated by raising musk oxen, then sending those raw materials to various indigenous tribes to be knitted into sweaters or blankets. These tribesfolk were paid the same no matter how much they put out—they were only required to make at least one sweater or blanket. Then the blankets/sweaters are sent back to the farm, which gathers them all and sells them. This co-op structure is basically using an army of skilled amateurs to convert furs into sweaters.
Now, since this is an arts blog aiming to discuss the development of arts communities, it is time for me to cut to the chase. What I am getting at is that this model could be used to build an arts community. Rather than creating a single, complex organization (an arts Factory), the arts could be “Factored” out to a distributed number of arts amateurs, who contribute as much or as little. But once they’ve contributed, they’ve got a tie (at least a weak tie, possibly even a strong tie) in to the arts community.
When I had the conversation with Walt (at <100k Project) and some of Walt’s friends about arts community development, the idea I came up with at the time is to have a project that goes out into the community to collect stories and present them as part of an evening of theater. In a way, this is factoring, inasmuch as it factors the job of the playwright into the community. This is what The Laramie Project did, although the Laramie Project was sort of factoring colonization, because the results of their work left their community (StoryCorps is the same way—and came up for criticism for Walt for this same reason).
At any rate, this is a model for a small number of artists to build a larger arts community. By factoring out the creative work, they start to create an arts community that lives outside of themselves. At the same time, they lower the participation threshold, which is one of the most important barriers to the creation of an arts community.
Sense of Community I: Strong and Weak Ties
(I wrote this entire post, and then hit "save as draft" instead of "publish." Whoops)
The Thriving Arts Report, as well as Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class and most other publications on the subject, regard a sense of community as one of the bedrocks of an artistic community—which, as that sentence clearly reveals, is a tautology. You need community to have a community.
What is generally meant is that a general community builds and supports specific communities: New York City is one community, but it is composed of smaller component communities: the New York Biking community, or the New York arts scene, or the community of people interested in astrology in New York City. Because the city supports the concept of community, it is easy to create specific sub-communities at whim. In a small town with a strong general sense of community, it is much easier to start an arts community, because it builds on that community.
It is important to define our terms, or else they become so vague as to be uselessly philosophical. Here, community is the sum of ties between people. When you have a town in which people’s ties are to each other, it can be said to have a community.
In Irvine, for instance, I personally have a few ties to other people in the city, but I literally have no ties to anyone else on my street. I have been once or twice to a block party, and I helped the woman across the street try and sell something on E-Bay, but other than that I have no ties to anyone on the street.
In New York City, I live in a part of Brooklyn called Williamsburg—also known as Hipsterburg, thanks to the particular community that lives there. I can’t pretend that I know too many of my neighbors who were strangers, but on the other hand I have plenty of friends who live in that part of town. As a matter of fact, I live there now because of the numbers of my friends who live there. It is nice to be looking at moving into a building where a fellow theater-person lives, knowing that my former roommate is around the corner and one block away and my other friends are two blocks in the other direction. When I was in Alaska, I met for the first time the ex-boyfriend of a good friend of mine who also lived one block away from this location.
So in order to build a community, there needs to be an attempt to build ties. Community-tied activities are the way to do this (for instance, I went to a quite successful Annual Cupcake Cook-off in Williamsburg).
The question is, what quality of ties are to be built? There is a distinction created by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and re-used in Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class between “strong ties” and “weak ties.” According to both, the new generation has shifted to favor more weak ties as opposed to a few strong ties. The difference between them is that Putnam sees this as something corrosive, and Florida sees this as simply part of the new economic transition into the Creative Class-dominated economy.
One of the failures of the attempt to create arts communities, which I mentioned in my last post (Needed: Secretary General), is the negative side of the “Champion” effect. An arts community is created around a “Champion,” who fights day and night for the arts community. And then they leave or die, and then the movement is done.
This is, perversely, an example of how strong ties may weaken an arts communities. After all, there is a rather high threshold to cross before one can be said to have a “strong tie.” If an arts community is based on strong ties, it will drive out those without the time or inclination to form strong ties. Thus, a champion will invest large amounts of time and effort into forging strong ties around himself. The community becomes defined by those strong ties, and when the champion leaves, those strong ties leave with them.
On the other hand, a large network of weak ties is more stable, because removing any one person only removes a bunch of the weak ties. Of course, if the network of weak ties is too small, then you’ll have a small and dispassionate community. But it is easier to build a small network of weak ties into a large network of weak ties.
In other words, it is much more sustainable to have an arts community in which everyone in the community is invested a little bit than to have an arts communities in which a few people have invested a lot. This, I think, is what the Thriving Arts Report means when it says that the strength of arts communities are not based on the strength of their organizations, but are actually structured like social movements. If you look at the life of a social movement, you’ll see that most of the members of a social movement are in fact only loosely affiliated with the social movement. They enter and leave fluidly. The movement does not demand so much of their time or attention, except at crucial junctures.
For instance, suppose you have a small network of people who start an open-mic night. Every week, people are invited to come sit in a café and read some bits of poetry. Each week, more people are present, and some person who come have a bit of poetry—their own or pre-existing, it doesn’t matter—and they read. Six or seven weeks into this, there are maybe twenty or so regulars, ten of which consistently bring poetry. The originator of the poetry reading stays for a period of time, but after six weeks is forced to leave. Let’s be charitable and say that she is leaving because her grandmother in another city is very sick. Because of the low requirement of resources, and the easily repeatable nature of the evening, the people decide to still show up the next week and read their poetry. The originator may be gone, but the poetry club has a pretty good chance of surviving.
Now let’s look at another champion who wants to create a theater community. She wants it to be a Professional theater, so she goes to the bank and to the local stores and to the municipal government, spends her time filling out grants, and eventually lands $5,000 to do a first production. She attracts a number of people who are interested in acting or crewing, and they do a big production—let’s say The Elves and the Shoemaker. This champion has strong ties to the people who have been helping her run this $5,000 theater, but she still has very little tie to the audience—she won’t until the first production.
Five or six productions later, this theater company has a regular audience of maybe 150-250. The woman herself is forced to leave (once again, let’s be charitable and say it’s another sick grandmother). Suddenly there’s a power vacuum. Are the actors going to step up to be the managing director of a theater company? Did she train someone to do the complicated jobs of hiring, balancing a budget, applying for grants? Certainly, no matter how much her audience appreciates her work, none of them can come in because the structure she created is a complicated one that requires training and knowledge to run.
The poetry group can operate like a movement: it can continue itself. But the theater company can’t operate like a movement. So not only is the Thriving Arts Report right that the strength of an arts community is based on its ability to survive as a social movement, it should further say that the complexity of an organization can hurt its chances to survive.
Obviously, in a more robust community, it is possible to keep a complex arts organization moving, because it will have a broader base of trained administrators and artist professionals to draw from. But if the community audience is not full of professional artists, it will still have a wide gulf between itself and its audience.
So if we’re going to create a Sense of Community, our arts programs should be structured in such a way that any member of the community could perpetuate it, requiring nothing more than the desire to keep it going.
Sense of Community I: Strong and Weak Ties
The Thriving Arts Report, as well as Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class and most other publications on the subject, regard a sense of community as one of the bedrocks of an artistic community—which, as that sentence clearly reveals, is a tautology. You need community to have a community.
What is generally meant is that a general community builds and supports specific communities: New York City is one community, but it is composed of smaller component communities: the New York Biking community, or the New York arts scene, or the community of people interested in astrology in New York City. Because the city supports the concept of community, it is easy to create specific sub-communities at whim. In a small town with a strong general sense of community, it is much easier to start an arts community, because it builds on that community.
It is important to define our terms, or else they become so vague as to be uselessly philosophical. Here, community is the sum of ties between people. When you have a town in which people’s ties are to each other, it can be said to have a community.
In Irvine, for instance, I personally have a few ties to other people in the city, but I literally have no ties to anyone else on my street. I have been once or twice to a block party, and I helped the woman across the street try and sell something on E-Bay, but other than that I have no ties to anyone on the street.
In New York City, I live in a part of Brooklyn called Williamsburg—also known as Hipsterburg, thanks to the particular community that lives there. I can’t pretend that I know too many of my neighbors who were strangers, but on the other hand I have plenty of friends who live in that part of town. As a matter of fact, I live there now because of the numbers of my friends who live there. It is nice to be looking at moving into a building where a fellow theater-person lives, knowing that my former roommate is around the corner and one block away and my other friends are two blocks in the other direction. When I was in Alaska, I met for the first time the ex-boyfriend of a good friend of mine who also lived one block away from this location.
So in order to build a community, there needs to be an attempt to build ties. Community-tied activities are the way to do this (for instance, I went to a quite successful Annual Cupcake Cook-off in Williamsburg).
The question is, what quality of ties are to be built? There is a distinction created by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and re-used in Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class between “strong ties” and “weak ties.” According to both, the new generation has shifted to favor more weak ties as opposed to a few strong ties. The difference between them is that Putnam sees this as something corrosive, and Florida sees this as simply part of the new economic transition into the Creative Class-dominated economy.
One of the failures of the attempt to create arts communities, which I mentioned in my last post (Needed: Secretary General), is the negative side of the “Champion” effect. An arts community is created around a “Champion,” who fights day and night for the arts community. And then they leave or die, and then the movement is done.
This is, perversely, an example of how strong ties may weaken an arts communities. After all, there is a rather high threshold to cross before one can be said to have a “strong tie.” If an arts community is based on strong ties, it will drive out those without the time or inclination to form strong ties. Thus, a champion will invest large amounts of time and effort into forging strong ties around himself. The community becomes defined by those strong ties, and when the champion leaves, those strong ties leave with them.
On the other hand, a large network of weak ties is more stable, because removing any one person only removes a bunch of the weak ties. Of course, if the network of weak ties is too small, then you’ll have a small and dispassionate community. But it is easier to build a small network of weak ties into a large network of weak ties.
In other words, it is much more sustainable to have an arts community in which everyone in the community is invested a little bit than to have an arts communities in which a few people have invested a lot. This, I think, is what the Thriving Arts Report means when it says that the strength of arts communities are not based on the strength of their organizations, but are actually structured like social movements. If you look at the life of a social movement, you’ll see that most of the members of a social movement are in fact only loosely affiliated with the social movement. They enter and leave fluidly. The movement does not demand so much of their time or attention, except at crucial junctures.
For instance, suppose you have a small network of people who start an open-mic night. Every week, people are invited to come sit in a café and read some bits of poetry. Each week, more people are present, and some person who come have a bit of poetry—their own or pre-existing, it doesn’t matter—and they read. Six or seven weeks into this, there are maybe twenty or so regulars, ten of which consistently bring poetry. The originator of the poetry reading stays for a period of time, but after six weeks is forced to leave. Let’s be charitable and say that she is leaving because her grandmother in another city is very sick. Because of the low requirement of resources, and the easily repeatable nature of the evening, the people decide to still show up the next week and read their poetry. The originator may be gone, but the poetry club has a pretty good chance of surviving.
Now let’s look at another champion who wants to create a theater community. She wants it to be a Professional theater, so she goes to the bank and to the local stores and to the municipal government, spends her time filling out grants, and eventually lands $5,000 to do a first production. She attracts a number of people who are interested in acting or crewing, and they do a big production—let’s say The Elves and the Shoemaker. This champion has strong ties to the people who have been helping her run this $5,000 theater, but she still has very little tie to the audience—she won’t until the first production.
Five or six productions later, this theater company has a regular audience of maybe 150-250. The woman herself is forced to leave (once again, let’s be charitable and say it’s another sick grandmother). Suddenly there’s a power vacuum. Are the actors going to step up to be the managing director of a theater company? Did she train someone to do the complicated jobs of hiring, balancing a budget, applying for grants? Certainly, no matter how much her audience appreciates her work, none of them can come in because the structure she created is a complicated one that requires training and knowledge to run.
The poetry group can operate like a movement: it can continue itself. But the theater company can’t operate like a movement. So not only is the Thriving Arts Report right that the strength of an arts community is based on its ability to survive as a social movement, it should further say that the complexity of an organization can hurt its chances to survive.
Obviously, in a more robust community, it is possible to keep a complex arts organization moving, because it will have a broader base of trained administrators and artist professionals to draw from. But if the community audience is not full of professional artists, it will still have a wide gulf between itself and its audience.
So if we’re going to create a Sense of Community, the arts programs should be structured in such a way that any member of the community could perpetuate it, requiring nothing more than the desire to keep it going.
What is generally meant is that a general community builds and supports specific communities: New York City is one community, but it is composed of smaller component communities: the New York Biking community, or the New York arts scene, or the community of people interested in astrology in New York City. Because the city supports the concept of community, it is easy to create specific sub-communities at whim. In a small town with a strong general sense of community, it is much easier to start an arts community, because it builds on that community.
It is important to define our terms, or else they become so vague as to be uselessly philosophical. Here, community is the sum of ties between people. When you have a town in which people’s ties are to each other, it can be said to have a community.
In Irvine, for instance, I personally have a few ties to other people in the city, but I literally have no ties to anyone else on my street. I have been once or twice to a block party, and I helped the woman across the street try and sell something on E-Bay, but other than that I have no ties to anyone on the street.
In New York City, I live in a part of Brooklyn called Williamsburg—also known as Hipsterburg, thanks to the particular community that lives there. I can’t pretend that I know too many of my neighbors who were strangers, but on the other hand I have plenty of friends who live in that part of town. As a matter of fact, I live there now because of the numbers of my friends who live there. It is nice to be looking at moving into a building where a fellow theater-person lives, knowing that my former roommate is around the corner and one block away and my other friends are two blocks in the other direction. When I was in Alaska, I met for the first time the ex-boyfriend of a good friend of mine who also lived one block away from this location.
So in order to build a community, there needs to be an attempt to build ties. Community-tied activities are the way to do this (for instance, I went to a quite successful Annual Cupcake Cook-off in Williamsburg).
The question is, what quality of ties are to be built? There is a distinction created by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and re-used in Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class between “strong ties” and “weak ties.” According to both, the new generation has shifted to favor more weak ties as opposed to a few strong ties. The difference between them is that Putnam sees this as something corrosive, and Florida sees this as simply part of the new economic transition into the Creative Class-dominated economy.
One of the failures of the attempt to create arts communities, which I mentioned in my last post (Needed: Secretary General), is the negative side of the “Champion” effect. An arts community is created around a “Champion,” who fights day and night for the arts community. And then they leave or die, and then the movement is done.
This is, perversely, an example of how strong ties may weaken an arts communities. After all, there is a rather high threshold to cross before one can be said to have a “strong tie.” If an arts community is based on strong ties, it will drive out those without the time or inclination to form strong ties. Thus, a champion will invest large amounts of time and effort into forging strong ties around himself. The community becomes defined by those strong ties, and when the champion leaves, those strong ties leave with them.
On the other hand, a large network of weak ties is more stable, because removing any one person only removes a bunch of the weak ties. Of course, if the network of weak ties is too small, then you’ll have a small and dispassionate community. But it is easier to build a small network of weak ties into a large network of weak ties.
In other words, it is much more sustainable to have an arts community in which everyone in the community is invested a little bit than to have an arts communities in which a few people have invested a lot. This, I think, is what the Thriving Arts Report means when it says that the strength of arts communities are not based on the strength of their organizations, but are actually structured like social movements. If you look at the life of a social movement, you’ll see that most of the members of a social movement are in fact only loosely affiliated with the social movement. They enter and leave fluidly. The movement does not demand so much of their time or attention, except at crucial junctures.
For instance, suppose you have a small network of people who start an open-mic night. Every week, people are invited to come sit in a café and read some bits of poetry. Each week, more people are present, and some person who come have a bit of poetry—their own or pre-existing, it doesn’t matter—and they read. Six or seven weeks into this, there are maybe twenty or so regulars, ten of which consistently bring poetry. The originator of the poetry reading stays for a period of time, but after six weeks is forced to leave. Let’s be charitable and say that she is leaving because her grandmother in another city is very sick. Because of the low requirement of resources, and the easily repeatable nature of the evening, the people decide to still show up the next week and read their poetry. The originator may be gone, but the poetry club has a pretty good chance of surviving.
Now let’s look at another champion who wants to create a theater community. She wants it to be a Professional theater, so she goes to the bank and to the local stores and to the municipal government, spends her time filling out grants, and eventually lands $5,000 to do a first production. She attracts a number of people who are interested in acting or crewing, and they do a big production—let’s say The Elves and the Shoemaker. This champion has strong ties to the people who have been helping her run this $5,000 theater, but she still has very little tie to the audience—she won’t until the first production.
Five or six productions later, this theater company has a regular audience of maybe 150-250. The woman herself is forced to leave (once again, let’s be charitable and say it’s another sick grandmother). Suddenly there’s a power vacuum. Are the actors going to step up to be the managing director of a theater company? Did she train someone to do the complicated jobs of hiring, balancing a budget, applying for grants? Certainly, no matter how much her audience appreciates her work, none of them can come in because the structure she created is a complicated one that requires training and knowledge to run.
The poetry group can operate like a movement: it can continue itself. But the theater company can’t operate like a movement. So not only is the Thriving Arts Report right that the strength of an arts community is based on its ability to survive as a social movement, it should further say that the complexity of an organization can hurt its chances to survive.
Obviously, in a more robust community, it is possible to keep a complex arts organization moving, because it will have a broader base of trained administrators and artist professionals to draw from. But if the community audience is not full of professional artists, it will still have a wide gulf between itself and its audience.
So if we’re going to create a Sense of Community, the arts programs should be structured in such a way that any member of the community could perpetuate it, requiring nothing more than the desire to keep it going.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Sense of Place III: Richard Florida's View on Creating Arts Communities
Well, not directly. Richard Florida's seminal book The Rise of the Creative Class doesn't particularly speak about the arts as a distinct phenomenon. His book is mostly concerned with the Creative Class, which encapsulates artists, engineers, architects, etc. etc. etc. We are only included inasmuch as we are part of that movement, and when Richard Florida talks about the "Rise" of the Creative Class, it doesn't feel like he's talking about us: he's talking about our creative cousins in the Entertainment world, or in the Software world, or the Engineering world. Whereas those other realms are exploding, the fine arts and drama continue to decline.
Before I say anything more, bear in mind: I'm on page 3 of the book (which is better than it sounds; I've made it through two prefaces already).
But his conclusions seem just as valid for the arts world as they are for the other realms. And whereas the Thriving Arts Report speaks to small communities (10-30k, on average, it seems), the Rise of the Creative Class is basically only talking about cities.
So one of the points he makes exceedingly early on (p. xxviii, before you even get to Chapter 1) is that for the Creative Class, as opposed to other industries, people don't follow jobs, jobs follow people.
That's a big whopping surprising point, and it seems to jive pretty well with my own personal experience, is that people make their choice of where they want to live based on, well, where they want to live. Which from a common-sense perspective seems like a duh moment, but it's in opposition to the economic supply/demand view that people will be driven to where there are job opportunities.
The art community is probably the biggest proof of this. Why do theater people pile into NYC when they could probably start a company much, much easier in a low-rent, low-competition community? Because they'd feel left out, unsupported; there isn't a "community" to join.
R. Florida goes on to postulate that place has become the central organizing unit of the economy, not job. Whereas previously, people lived in Flint, MI for their whole lives because that's where their job was, and they met and knew people because those were the people in their local economy.
SO: What does this mean for our "generating arts communities" conversation?
Well, in the same vein as the Thriving Arts Report's "Background Values" (of which Sense of Place was one, in agreement with R. Florida), Florida puts forward a few Indexes to try and to forecast where the Creative Class congregates. I haven't gotten to the full indexes (I'm on like p. 30 now that I'm at the end of this post), but so far he's mentioned:
The Gay Index
The Bohemian Index
The Melting Pot Index
all of which he uses to comprise:
The Tolerance Index.
What he's basically saying is that there is one central Background Value that the Thriving Arts Report missed: there needs to be an OPEN community for arts (and other creative classes) to thrive.
Yet the Thriving Arts Report cites two fantastic examples of arts CREATING the open community (arts integrating the Hmong and the Amish in small Minnesota towns). This, I think, goes back to my father (a manager--Whyte's Organizational Man--who rose through the ranks of the Creative Class of Software Engineering) and his reaction when I told him about this: the cycle is recursive, either recursively positive or recursively negative.
If you have an open society, artists come. If artists come, creativity thrives. If creativity thrives, artists come. Etc. And the opposite is true.
But at any rate, what we're aiming at is breaking the cycle, and therefore Richard Florida seems to be saying (so far) that this is what's necessary to cultivate arts (and other creative fields):
1) Recognize that place is more important than economy.
2) Recognize that place is a cultural, creative experience.
3) Recognize that cultural, creative experiences require openness and tolerance.
So, there's one revelation so far. There are others on their way.
P.S. Richard Florida also explains, in his chart, why every single artist I've met from Florida (the state) has been from Gainesville, including the head of my program. Gainesville is on his list alongside Boulder, CO at the top of small communities with high Creative Index scores.
Before I say anything more, bear in mind: I'm on page 3 of the book (which is better than it sounds; I've made it through two prefaces already).
But his conclusions seem just as valid for the arts world as they are for the other realms. And whereas the Thriving Arts Report speaks to small communities (10-30k, on average, it seems), the Rise of the Creative Class is basically only talking about cities.
So one of the points he makes exceedingly early on (p. xxviii, before you even get to Chapter 1) is that for the Creative Class, as opposed to other industries, people don't follow jobs, jobs follow people.
That's a big whopping surprising point, and it seems to jive pretty well with my own personal experience, is that people make their choice of where they want to live based on, well, where they want to live. Which from a common-sense perspective seems like a duh moment, but it's in opposition to the economic supply/demand view that people will be driven to where there are job opportunities.
The art community is probably the biggest proof of this. Why do theater people pile into NYC when they could probably start a company much, much easier in a low-rent, low-competition community? Because they'd feel left out, unsupported; there isn't a "community" to join.
R. Florida goes on to postulate that place has become the central organizing unit of the economy, not job. Whereas previously, people lived in Flint, MI for their whole lives because that's where their job was, and they met and knew people because those were the people in their local economy.
SO: What does this mean for our "generating arts communities" conversation?
Well, in the same vein as the Thriving Arts Report's "Background Values" (of which Sense of Place was one, in agreement with R. Florida), Florida puts forward a few Indexes to try and to forecast where the Creative Class congregates. I haven't gotten to the full indexes (I'm on like p. 30 now that I'm at the end of this post), but so far he's mentioned:
The Gay Index
The Bohemian Index
The Melting Pot Index
all of which he uses to comprise:
The Tolerance Index.
What he's basically saying is that there is one central Background Value that the Thriving Arts Report missed: there needs to be an OPEN community for arts (and other creative classes) to thrive.
Yet the Thriving Arts Report cites two fantastic examples of arts CREATING the open community (arts integrating the Hmong and the Amish in small Minnesota towns). This, I think, goes back to my father (a manager--Whyte's Organizational Man--who rose through the ranks of the Creative Class of Software Engineering) and his reaction when I told him about this: the cycle is recursive, either recursively positive or recursively negative.
If you have an open society, artists come. If artists come, creativity thrives. If creativity thrives, artists come. Etc. And the opposite is true.
But at any rate, what we're aiming at is breaking the cycle, and therefore Richard Florida seems to be saying (so far) that this is what's necessary to cultivate arts (and other creative fields):
1) Recognize that place is more important than economy.
2) Recognize that place is a cultural, creative experience.
3) Recognize that cultural, creative experiences require openness and tolerance.
So, there's one revelation so far. There are others on their way.
P.S. Richard Florida also explains, in his chart, why every single artist I've met from Florida (the state) has been from Gainesville, including the head of my program. Gainesville is on his list alongside Boulder, CO at the top of small communities with high Creative Index scores.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Returning to the Field
So, I let this blog lapse for a while because it seemed extremely purpose-less and rambly, I would just make bitter commentary about politics and theater with no particular knitting theme except they interested me, and they have to do with culture. But now I'm picking this blog up with a new mission. Recently, I've become interested again in how we, as artistic citizens, can return the civic-artistic culture to strength.
My attention to this subject has in the past ebbed and flowed--at one point I was inspired by the concept of "Artistic Literacy" as propounded by Augusto Boal, and by the introductory arts classes at NYU where I study, to think about how a new arts curriculum could be designed to interest young children in the arts. I think most art classes today focus too much on the instructive, skills-based approach (teaching how to play the violin, teaching how to draw an accurate person) without giving enough of the reason to play (music appreciation, an appreciation of color and form). Instilling the concept of art as a method of communication is important to me, because I feel like when art goes wrong is when it forgets that it's a conversation.
So this thread of my life lapsed as I got involved in my own, smaller world of study, the theater company I'm working on starting, the publishing company I'm working on starting, my actual full-time job during the week, and silly things like family and my social life.
A few months back I stumbled across the >100k Project. You really ought to read his description of the project for yourself, but the thrust of it is using funding models to create sustainable, independent theater (and other arts) in small rural and exurban communities.
Lately, I've become really inspired by it, especially with this week's announcement of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement that finally has assured me that President Obama takes this as seriously as I do. The >100k project and WHO-SICE (I pronounce it "Whose Is?" for fun) seem like a match made in heaven, and the NEA grant that >100k has already won makes it look like reality.
So now I'm going to be thinking about this a lot more. I'm doing research, trying to put together my own statistical models (I'm not a statistician but my mother and father have both studied some in undergraduate and graduate schools so we'll be working together). I'm hoping that with the new Data.gov website and the general power of the internet, I'll be able to do enough research to really contribute some new knowledge.
Part of my goal is based around the work Richard Florida has done in trying to quantify the "Creative Class" as he calls it. The Cultural Economy is a subset of the Creative Class, and I think I want to figure out what our role is in it. I've just bought "The Rise Of The Creative Class" so this is my dumping ground for ideas related to it, and to the topics that >100k tosses my way.
I will probably still blog about other things as well, all theater and politics related, but with that clear focus in mind, I think I really can make this blog a regular and useful resource.
My attention to this subject has in the past ebbed and flowed--at one point I was inspired by the concept of "Artistic Literacy" as propounded by Augusto Boal, and by the introductory arts classes at NYU where I study, to think about how a new arts curriculum could be designed to interest young children in the arts. I think most art classes today focus too much on the instructive, skills-based approach (teaching how to play the violin, teaching how to draw an accurate person) without giving enough of the reason to play (music appreciation, an appreciation of color and form). Instilling the concept of art as a method of communication is important to me, because I feel like when art goes wrong is when it forgets that it's a conversation.
So this thread of my life lapsed as I got involved in my own, smaller world of study, the theater company I'm working on starting, the publishing company I'm working on starting, my actual full-time job during the week, and silly things like family and my social life.
A few months back I stumbled across the >100k Project. You really ought to read his description of the project for yourself, but the thrust of it is using funding models to create sustainable, independent theater (and other arts) in small rural and exurban communities.
Lately, I've become really inspired by it, especially with this week's announcement of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement that finally has assured me that President Obama takes this as seriously as I do. The >100k project and WHO-SICE (I pronounce it "Whose Is?" for fun) seem like a match made in heaven, and the NEA grant that >100k has already won makes it look like reality.
So now I'm going to be thinking about this a lot more. I'm doing research, trying to put together my own statistical models (I'm not a statistician but my mother and father have both studied some in undergraduate and graduate schools so we'll be working together). I'm hoping that with the new Data.gov website and the general power of the internet, I'll be able to do enough research to really contribute some new knowledge.
Part of my goal is based around the work Richard Florida has done in trying to quantify the "Creative Class" as he calls it. The Cultural Economy is a subset of the Creative Class, and I think I want to figure out what our role is in it. I've just bought "The Rise Of The Creative Class" so this is my dumping ground for ideas related to it, and to the topics that >100k tosses my way.
I will probably still blog about other things as well, all theater and politics related, but with that clear focus in mind, I think I really can make this blog a regular and useful resource.
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