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creative capital
I was listening to Minister Lyn Kosky speaking at the opening of Victoria's State of Design Festival the other day. She gave a lengthy speech that emphasised the diversity of Victoria's design talent, and how the government and RMIT have been working to lower entry barriers to the design industries for youth. All worthy stuff, and very reminiscent of American Richard Florida's writings.
Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" has had many MPs and mayors buzzing with excitement. I've heard the basic premis of the book (I haven't read it) is that if you encourage creative sorts to live close in to your town, they will stimulate the economy for you. Like live cultures thrown into a jar of yoghurt mix. His argument is summarised in
this smaller essay. It basically tells any cities that want to prosper to be as hip'n'cool as they can. Families and 'burbs and blue collar jobs are not as cool for the economy as tattooed young graduates being creative all night in grungey studios downtown.
While all this attention can't be a bad thing, it isn't really the creations themselves that the pollies are interested in, more the economic advantage in concentrating design activity within their constituencies, and not someone else's. The flyer for the Festival notes that, "growing Victoria's design capability will increase our global competitiveness, attract new investment and create jobs."
A friend of mine wondered if there was a danger in slickly packaging Victorian Design and selling it on prime time like this. He was thinking if there were parallels with Melbourne's laneways, which were discovered and promoted heavily by Tourism Victoria and the council, much to their detriment.
If design is going to be packaged by the State, what kinds of design? It seems from the State of Design Festival's exbihition at Melbourne Museum that good design this year is modern and urban - we are not seeing the latest in doilies, car jacks, and nappies here. It's the first year, so it will be interesting to see how this exhibition broadens in the future, while maintaining the consistency that an exhibition needs.
Another friend said while we were walking through the exhibition, "where's the process?" Yes, the back breaking, late night, 8 cents an hour part... If governments are interested in supporting the many tiny creative businesses in their cities, a more effective way might be to focus on helping those businesses stay afloat.
Some links:
A bleak future, if imagination is not nurtured
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/28/1090694025879.html
Andrew Refshauge, deputy premier of NSW
"I also like the idea that instead of having the arts we can afford, we need the arts for the economy to boom."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/08/1060145845016.html
Richard Florida HQ
http://www.creativeclass.org/
test your city
http://66.203.65.75/~popup/city/index.php
Canberra wants YOU
http://www.citynews.com.au/news/Article.asp?id=1963
The Right don't like : "The Curse of the Creative Class"
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html
Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" has had many MPs and mayors buzzing with excitement. I've heard the basic premis of the book (I haven't read it) is that if you encourage creative sorts to live close in to your town, they will stimulate the economy for you. Like live cultures thrown into a jar of yoghurt mix. His argument is summarised in
this smaller essay. It basically tells any cities that want to prosper to be as hip'n'cool as they can. Families and 'burbs and blue collar jobs are not as cool for the economy as tattooed young graduates being creative all night in grungey studios downtown.
While all this attention can't be a bad thing, it isn't really the creations themselves that the pollies are interested in, more the economic advantage in concentrating design activity within their constituencies, and not someone else's. The flyer for the Festival notes that, "growing Victoria's design capability will increase our global competitiveness, attract new investment and create jobs."
A friend of mine wondered if there was a danger in slickly packaging Victorian Design and selling it on prime time like this. He was thinking if there were parallels with Melbourne's laneways, which were discovered and promoted heavily by Tourism Victoria and the council, much to their detriment.
If design is going to be packaged by the State, what kinds of design? It seems from the State of Design Festival's exbihition at Melbourne Museum that good design this year is modern and urban - we are not seeing the latest in doilies, car jacks, and nappies here. It's the first year, so it will be interesting to see how this exhibition broadens in the future, while maintaining the consistency that an exhibition needs.
Another friend said while we were walking through the exhibition, "where's the process?" Yes, the back breaking, late night, 8 cents an hour part... If governments are interested in supporting the many tiny creative businesses in their cities, a more effective way might be to focus on helping those businesses stay afloat.
Some links:
A bleak future, if imagination is not nurtured
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/28/1090694025879.html
Andrew Refshauge, deputy premier of NSW
"I also like the idea that instead of having the arts we can afford, we need the arts for the economy to boom."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/08/1060145845016.html
Richard Florida HQ
http://www.creativeclass.org/
test your city
http://66.203.65.75/~popup/city/index.php
Canberra wants YOU
http://www.citynews.com.au/news/Article.asp?id=1963
The Right don't like : "The Curse of the Creative Class"
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html
Comments
"[Richard Florida's] distillation of creativity into the kind of prescription routinely proffered by management consultants makes me fairly sure that what he's selling is not the virtues of creativity but rather the ingredients of a formula."
She has read the book and decided that the definition for "creative class" might easily describe the "yuppie" of the 80s - ie youngish people with degrees who spend lots of money on food and drink. The class is very broad, including, "management, business and financial operations, law, health care, and high-end sales." Creatives as we might imagine them to be, poorer sorts interested in the arts, fall into small subset called the "Super-Creative Core". Sounds a bit radioactive.
Florida's overly-debated ideas might not really be about getting lots of stencil-spraying flash gurus into the city, but more about getting more wealthy professionals in who like to spend.. creatively. This could be why this proposition has been seized upon by councils and governments - lure in more of this 'creative' crowd and more businesses will open to cater to them. In turn the city becomes much more attractive as a place for offshore businesses to set up a local base - they need cities that will be vibrant yet safe - places where their wealthy professional staffers will be comfortable living.
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1151
What he called "creative class" is in my opinion, no more than the wealthy elite, the new and young who have dismissed studies of philosophy, arts, or any other creative area, for those new opportunities that give quick money for the new hi-tech industries. Creative according to Florida are the computer program developers, or so called "architects", they could also be accountants.
If anything, I give him the credit to having put the term creativity upside down - no many can do this and get away with it - as for Florida, creativity is not the realm of the artists (painting, music, architecture...), but the domain of those who can buy it.
These ideas are very handy for some councils undergoing gentrification, as they can present the change as attracting the "creative class" rather than the old fashion wealthy. It just makes it more palatable to the old working class locals that will have to move away.
Florida went as far as to describe the new "creative class" as the type of people who would travel with ease anywhere in the world, while enjoying all those different local food tastes ( I believe he was talking of airplane food and local 5 star hotels!). They would also be able to speak a few languages. I believe he generally means two languages including English, please note that I am not quoting.
By the way, I met a few East Timorese that would be happy to try any food at all, most speak up to five languages, so do most of the people in Morocco. The Timorese work and actually produce goods! They don't go around the world contaminating and producing not much at all - but sorry, they are not the creative class according to Florida.
?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/News/Special-saucer/2005/05/11/1115584998296.html
Good to see talented Victorians acknowledged nationally, there are so many of them.
The Australian also reported on a wild west footpath brawl (of a sort): "Durack says a perfect example of that conservatism is the controversy over a 17,000sqm extension to the historic Treasury Buildings in Perth's CBD. An irate Lord Mayor Peter Nattrass was recently pictured on a public footpath arguing with architect Geoff Warn that his jagged-edged, ultra-modern glass and steel design - which is supported by the Heritage Council - would ruin an "iconic" old building."
If you're wondering what they were arguing in the streets about, you can see pictures of the building here. And this news release from Donaldson and Warn's website gives a hint of the tensions.
The Star on tries to sum up some rather negative views:
"To them, Florida is a pitchman, an opportunist, an elitist, a sham. Worse, he's here, in our city that works. And our city is listening. And now the province is, too."
"His ideas are exclusive, divisive, and naïve. He is dangerous, they say. And he needs to go."
Heather McLean, of the Creative Class Struggle group, says of the Florida credo, "it's a very celebratory and safe way of looking at capital accumulation... People like cool places, sure; they're positive stories. But there are people that get dispossessed, or removed, or erased in these narratives."
Stefan Kipfer, of York University's Faculty of Environmental Studies, says Florida's output has changed since he went commercial (on a rather nice salary): "It's research designed to sell. This is no secret; Florida makes money as a consultant, so his fame is really based on his ability to convince a client to buy his product... That's the thing about salesmanship and research that is consultant-oriented: It develops not concepts, but catch-all terms that work differently in different contexts."
Hard to tell here whether Kipfer is protesting Florida ideas or his working outside the presumeably unbiased universities.
Florida protests the protests. "There are lots of people who say, in order to attract the creative class, we need to build latte bars, and music venues, and stadiums... In critical theory, that's what happens to a text. People have been very effective on both sides in framing my work." Is he sincere when he says, "I'd love to engage these groups, because I think what they have to say is important, and actually, I find myself... I find myself agreeing, intuitively agreeing, with much of their critique."
It would be interesting to hear from the Victorian Government, five years down the track, what their design boosterism has done for Victoria. To address their 2004 statement that "growing Victoria's design capability will increase our global competitiveness, attract new investment and create jobs."
And have designers' experiences working with and for the various levels of government improved in the last five years?
whats been done to the concrete floor of Fed Square Winter Garden is illustrative enough of the big picture.
didn't think of that.
probably the cobblers gave advice on the solution.
Now what was the topic again...
to the topic. there seemed to be more design around before it became a design city.
The floor at Fed Square and the things that go on it = Prof Kim Dovey chanting the new baby boomer tram route city mantra today. Dovetail had his mouldy old kennett voodoo doll out and probably burned a Keating effigy he'd kept spare before he went to work today.
Kennett = an idea of melbourne as tokyo? take the entire city and double its density. democratic?
sustainable? possible? doable? 1/50th done. Canned a crap museum in the wrong place and put it in a better place and ran a red hot international comp and almost built it. minor achievements. Design from the top down. No BS.
The 21C bozos = A city modelled on a free range egg farm, a bracks stump with shit gold tables on a cancer molecule kath & kim plastic floor. einstein fix up is tram track Paris facade western town?
as if getting punters to the slave factories on time after the petrol runs out is an idea about a city.
Design weak suggestion for melbourne. Hold a shut the f$%k up festival for the next 10 years.