The View from Zero Gravity

Cognitive Surplus: put it to work..

I love synergistic thinking. Clay Shirky has hit on something that I appreciate with all my quirky soul. A fascinating analysis of the side-effect of paradigm shifts on the humans trying to cope with them. This is an excerpt from the transcription of the video presentation I’ve included at the end of this posting. Worth watching …

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders–a lot of things we like–didn’t happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn’t until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom….

Council supports Cultural Plan in tough times

Despite the need to make deep cuts in spending as a result of steeply-reduced revenues, Vancouver City Council recognized the importance of maintaining the momentum on implementation of the Cultural Plan as a contributor to local economic regeneration.

Full details of how the budget reduction will impact the implementation process has yet to be heard, but in the immediate term this decision helps sustain the commitment of multi-sector stakeholders to keep working together on development.

For a brief description of what Council decided, see Arts Notes in the Georgia Straight April 9 – 15, 2009.

Emerging Habitat for a Creative Economy Threatened by City Budget Cuts.

This is an excerpt from an email alert I sent to my networks in the creative community earlier this week. The ‘troops’ rallied and spoke eloquently on behalf of this keystone project, we continue to advocate and the decision is on Tuesday April 7 09 at the regular Council meeting:

Vancouver City Council considers cutting implementation of Cultural Plan

At last week’s Council meeting, City staff presented a report on recommendations for ways to increase revenue and cut expenses (a response to the economic downturn and resulting drop in City revenues). Informing these recommendations was a consultation done with citizens in January using various means, including a Mayor’s forum. Included as one of the recommended cuts – considered a low priority project (based on this public input) – is the implementation of the Cultural Plan, which this year includes the Facilities Plan and the Cultural Tourism Strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

Alternatives to Creating “Yet Another” NonProfit Arts Organization

When artists and creative sector groups begin to face the need to fundraise and establish a more organized and permanent structure for the projects they want to develop, the question I am most frequently asked is: “How do we form a nonprofit society?” followed closely by “Where do we get grants and how do we apply?”

Less rarely, do people ask themselves the question that is my first response: “Why do you want to do that?” and then “What else have you considered?” Read the rest of this entry »

Mt. Pleasant Community Centre Building – Convert to Arts Centre or Demolish?

There are a number of projects that are gathering interest and momentum in Vancouver these days. The work of the City’s Office of Cultural Affairs to develop a Cultural Plan that will not only ensure a Creative City that is healthy for the arts but also for the economy, has engaged an incredible spectrum of stakeholders. The Creative Spacemaking workshop led by Artscape, the world’s leading experts in cuture-led regeneration, was a triggering event for action, which is now made difficult by the economic reality the City is facing.

The decomissioning of an older Park Board property has presented an opportunity that could ensure an interim measure of development while the bigger projects stall. There is a will on the part of the community to save the Mount Pleasant Community Centre building – and its outdoor pool – when the programs move to their new building on September 1, 2009.

The following article appeared in the Georgia Straight on March 12, 2009:

Mount Pleasant arts centre on shaky ground
By Jessica Werb
A battle over daycare facilities at the old Mount Pleasant Community Centre could make or break plans to convert the centre into an arts hub. The idea was first floated in March of last year by then park-board commissioner Spencer Herbert. The community centre is scheduled to move into a new facility at 1 Kingsway in September, after which the old facility (at 16th Avenue and Ontario Street) is to be demolished. A before- and after-school program for students at Simon Fraser Elementary School is currently housed in the building, and will be moved (to view the article online, go to: Arts Centre Article

My response to this item lays out the position proposed by a group of nearly 30 artists and arts organizations who have been meeting to build a strategy for re-purposing the old building. Read the rest of this entry »

Artists are a renewable resource.

Artists are a renewable resource. They often produce so much out of thin air that it seems like photosynthesis to me. And they seem compelled to produce creative ideas and objects regardless of the outcome, unable to resist some cellular imperative – kind of like salmon heading upriver to spawn and then to die. If given the right environment, an ecology of opportunity and assets, this creative potential – nascent knowledge capital – CAN renew and participate in sustainable growth and development for a lifetime. Or burn out and be lost.

Their diversity and resourcefulness make them adaptable to many environments, and they are good at camouflage – this makes it hard to spot some species.

Like many other resources, though, the creative output of artistic practice has been harvested by third parties who then resell or repackage it as their own. Many artists are complicit in their own exploitation. This is a story as old as time, and as clear as a wagging finger. Who you are and what you do are so tied up together that you can be overly vulnerable to the hooks of doubt, fear and desire.

How? By undervaluing our skills and our work, by believing that agents, commercial galleries, film producers, advertising companies, or broadcasters need us and thus have the artist’s best interest in mind. And through lack of self-marketing and career self-management skills – not taught or encouraged through the early years of career guidance in most systems – to ensure that a relationship with a third party is a partnership to be negotiated rather than a replay of the old Cinderella – Prince Charming fairy tale. And who knows how that really ended, anyway?

Stop clear cutting the creative sector. Stop overfishing the art product. Sustainability is possible, but knowledge and support, mentoring and training in marketing and management are needed. Where are the tree planters, the hothouse of culture? Why must nurturing artists be akin to a grow-op?

And where are the centurions of culture to guard the new plants as they grow?

Do silos need busting?

As I sat in a room full of creative thinkers, stimulated beyond belief by feeling connected and understood – hearing about the innovative projects that represented “Silo-Busting Strategies” from different parts of the world – I realized once again that there were assumptions in the room that needed to be challenged. Even here, especially here.

Once an illustrative concept has been applied to a problem area, used to describe something complex in a sort of shorthand, the reification of the concept’s shorthand into ‘the thing itself’ begins. Read the rest of this entry »

Advice to an overworked arts manager

Here’s the summary of a conversation I recently had with a member of an Artist-Run Centre’s management collective. I sit on the Board, and chair the HR committee:

Read the rest of this entry »

More opinion on the Creative Class

(from a posting I made to the Sirolli Institute Public Forum on April 21, 2007, which generated a little bit of a buzz)

….I apologize in advance for the length of this rant, but here goes..

The coveted Creative Class referred to by Florida, is that ‘class’ of knowledge worker whose earnings are large and whose skills are portable – we want them to settle in OUR city to dispose of those earnings. The desire is not for creative people, per se, but for access to the cash flow of those who are currently the economic stars.
Read the rest of this entry »

The ‘Creative Class’: Did I Pass or Fail?

There has been something bugging me amidst all the ballyhoo about the arts driving the economy, the rise of the creative class and the cult of innovation. I live in a city swimming in creativity, stuffed with artists, overwhelmed with visual stimuli, intellectual smorgasbords and art smarts.

Do you remember that old show Columbo, where the rumpled, seemingly inept detective played by Peter Falk, would come back again and again to the suspect with just ONE MORE little nagging question… that’s how I feel, it’s like a slightly rough edge on a tooth. Just won’t go away, and keeps bugging you until you do something about it. Read the rest of this entry »