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.
So… who is the creative class, to be lured here by our high bohemian index, if not the folks we already have filling our galleries and sidewalks?
News flash: I don’t think Richard Florida (with apologies in advance for quoting his quoters, he may never have meant this himself) means to say that all creative people constitute a class of people. It means those creative people who PRODUCE a certain revenue-stimulating form of creative output. An ‘upper-income and have choices about where to work’ kind of Class.
This is just old economics clothed in lululemon workout pants.
The reason artists have the kind of dubious annual income from their work, is largely due to the nonstandard nature of that work, and because our social and economic structure is still built around the ol’ industrial model of work, earning, widgets and capital.
If I’m a knowledge capitalist, why can’t I get a bunch of investors to back me? Lets turn the Creative Class into a credit course, and get this figured out.