What, Exactly, is a Creative?

No single question has gotten more discussion than the definition of who or what constitutes an artist, a designer or a creative. What constitutes creativity in the business sector? At the studio focusing on economic factors, panelist Jack Templin of Providence Geeks laid out an interesting cluster of clusters (definitions are totally mine, so go ahead and correct me in a comment):

• Art - generally meaning studio art and "high brow" performing arts
• Culture - non-art museums and some part of humanities
• Design - commercial images and creations
• Entertainment - low brow performing arts and non-arts venues (nightlife)

These four clusters, he felt, had a certain symbiosis and supported each other. For the purposes of the Cultural Plan, they seem to be settling around a definition that would put art at the center and then include the relavant portions of the other three clusters. And, for those purposes, that make quite a bit of sense. 

But for my purposes, this cluster of clusters - this mega-cluster - is incomplete. 

To begin, the geeks are not included. Geeks like the arts, music in particular. I joked with Jack, "How many of the geeks are in a band?" And the answer is a lot of them. (The reason for this anomaly is that both music and computers are based on mathematics.) Geeks also play a vital role in the arts-based megacluster. Digital technology drives a large portion of the work in the design and entertainment clusters, so creatives in those areas can end up being very geeky, indeed.

The fact that Jack was asked to sit on the panel - and that it made imminent sense that he do so - shows how close these two clusters are. When tech companies look at relocating, different states' tax policies are rarely issue #1. They want a place where their people can be happy and comfortable, and that means a lively urban lifestyle. Invariably, they want diverse ethnicities and an active local arts scene. Good transit helps, too, but that's another conversation.

The other cluster that's missing from this megacluster is the green cluster. The logic isn't as clear as with the geeks, but the connections are strong with a significant portion of creatives. First off, if they get to build anything, they want to build it green. This segment is generally urban in mindset as well as location, so public transit plays an important role in their lives. Many of them play a direct role in environmental organizations. And they like to connect their creative work to this cause. 

All Roads Lead To Real Estate

It seems like virtually all of the conversations wind up talking about real estate and the cluster of issues associated with it.

• Financing - and how the deck is stacked against creatives
• Environment/green building
• Zoning - and how the deck is stacked against creatives
• Leaseholder security - and how the deck is stacked against creatives 

Creatives, not surprisingly, tend to be non-traditional in their approach to space. A finished space with a good address does not fit the bill. Rather, an unfinished or sem-finished space at low cost will serve nicely, even if it's in a backwater like, say, Pawtucket.

When creatives rent a low-cost space, they do so knowing that, at some point, they will have to leave that space so that the owner can enrich himself. It could be for higher rents, or redevelopment, or the building's sales. But, inevitably, the creative will be evicted.

Like most people, creatives are generally happy to see their neighborhoods improve, but not at the expense of their own security. Cities need to find methodologies that allow neighborhoods to improve while maintaining a certain amount of low-cost, unfinished space for creative use. 

Contemporary placemaking supports this notion. The authenticity or liveliness of a place depends largely on diversity. As the demographics of a neighborhood narrow, so does its appeal as a place.

Community First

For those who primarily identify as artists, this last point - that they shouldn't have to leave their own neighborhood when it starts to improve - leads to the thought:

Niether should anybody else.

That is, if it makes sense for artists to enjoy a certain accomodation so they can stay in a certain neighborhood even though they're poor, then all low-income people should be afforded that same accomodation, regardless of their place in the creative ecosystem. If it makes sense to create a program to help artists buy and renovate abandonded properties, then it makes sense for that program to be available to everybody who feels they can successfully renovate a property. 

These artists break from the tradition of artist-as-elitist. If anything, they are populists, even proletarians. They want to be a part of the community where they live, and they want to use their talent and energy to improve that community, not just for themselves, but for all its members. As Bert Crenca said at that meeting:

I don't know how to build an art space. I just know how to build a community.

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When national big-box chains enter a small market, the local businesses tend to suffer. While these chains claim to improve local life by bringing more goods at lower prices, they often have a negative effect in that businesses that had previously served that market go under. This is the so-called Wal-Mart Effect.

BALLE, then, is a voluntary business organization that seeks to mediate this effect by strengthening local, independent businesses. To this end, they convened their New Economy Roundtable. I asked Robert, who's fairly new to blogging, to sum up the basics of the workshops: 

There is a movement afoot to transform the economic system in America as a “whole system” that improves the well being of more people from all walks of life, ethnicities, and income levels. BALLE's newest multi-organization collaboration, called the New Economy Roundtable, has been organized as an open network and platform for change. This is an action-oriented movement. As one participant put it, “we will organize ourselves into an 'overwhelming force' (like the Marines).” 

Thirty organizations gathered in DC for the half-day summit and approached these four tasks:

1. Sharpen the vision
2. Identify member practices (such as community capital) requisite to creating the new system
3. Prioritize initiatives to take action on two fronts. Priorities can be policy, practice, or mobilization of constituents:
   1. Start now priorities and get results within 6 months --”Green Energy Victory Bonds.”
   2. Start now and get results longer term such as “Create a Common Investment Fund.” 
4. Organize for action without creating a new organization; rather, combine a network and platform for action

Members of the Collaboration include: Ashoka, Boston College Institute for Responsible Investment, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, Calvert Foundation, Grameen Foundation, Green for All (formerly Coop America), Investors Circle, National Community Development Institute, Social Enterprise Alliance, and Social Investment Forum.

As this effort progresses, we'll try to keep you up-to-date. Check back later in the spring for more info. Also, we'll be starting a Local Economy conversation with Providence & Beyond 2009, see here for more details

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On the panel: Thom Deller and Garry Bliss

RL: Of these at least 10 elements in transit, which are most important?

TD: Let's not talk about what to include, let's just put it all in. RI is narrow in view, not good about interrelationships. How did Portland, OR do such a good job? Started with city planning - the idea of an intermodal city. In RI, we take a suburban/rural approach that denies what's required for urban centers. Can we "big brother" a no-car mandate as Portland did?

To ban parking in Portland, they had sweeping control over building across the entire region. We'd need to control every building permit from New London to New Bedford.

GB: Re - 2007 snowstorm - irony of the day was that Gov Patrick committed money for rail in New Bedford and Fall River. We'll lose development to those cities because we're not investing like MA is. Need to recognize the economic benefit of urban areas and urban lifestyles. Story of VA city trying to make least-walkable stripmall town into walkable urban space. 

TD: Must have land use that lets these things work naturally. Must have integrated land use, not separated. "The Bodega Exception" - every few blocks, add a couple of storefronts. 

GB: Some changes need outside force. Oil prices created huge behavior change, RIPTA lines overcrowded. (As far as art busses, we already have some performance art experience in some cases.) Technology to reduce rider anxiety - bus alerts stops when it will arrive. On bike share - 1, we wear helmets, not like Europe and 2, we like to sue each other. We need to solve those problems.

RL: In say, Olneyville, what can we do first.

TD: Have a bike path, but doesn't go past No. Prov./Johnston. Need to clean up storefronts. Need to get RI Housing mill convertion complete. 

GB: System shock when striped lanes are installed. RI people had a big reaction.

RL: Other external forces?

GB: Street cars in Prov. If we can get some stimulus money, we could get that moving. One street car line could transform the way people think about public transit in RI. Must show a pleasant, secure experience.

RL: Buses in Brazil

GB: Try to simulate street car. Stations where people pay and board as a group. Stations farther apart. Can have dedicated lane to protect it from traffic problems. Can have preference or override at traffic light. Stations can have services, amenities. Challenge: bus transit does not spur development the way a street car does. Rail shows commitment.

RL: Comments on other sites.

TD: Basic problem is how do we develop the complete space. Urban sites have best chances for impact from transit. Cranston least.

RL: What are the elements to watch? Must think about interrelationships? How about connections?

XX: RI is a worst offender about transit - state RFP for large site requires lots of parking, no mention of transit.

BF: Stimulus could let us "go bold." What are we going to do? People will change only for good reasons. What are the demo projections for Prov/RI? 

TD: It's not money, it's 'think' that we need. How do you change the mentality? 

[Can't keep up with this question and answer. Main theme - we need more signage with bike paths, bus stops, etc.]

JR: 2 things in play. 1 - government is broke and its gonna get worse over time. 2 - because government is broke so they're about talk. Instead, coalitions of groups that are economically linked: large employers and institutions need to come together and do something. almost doesn't matter what we do. jut do something. 

TD: 2 things in mayor's stimulus - 1 fix cars, 2 - street cars.

GB: Rides a Vespa. Surprised by how bad RI drivers are, and how bad roads are. 

RL: Key point - move people, not cars.

TD: True that we make to many plans and don't do enough 'doing' - only way to fulfil my job is to make things happen.

JR: Transit is people; transport is stuff. Transit + Transport = Transportation

GB: Non-gov leaders - universities and hospitals w/ their own transit systems. But they're closed.

BF: What are the demographics for PVD - projections.

TD: We don't do projections because they are too unreliable, particularly with minority populations. 

[Irony - because I got here so early, my 2-hours on the parking meter ran out before we took a break, so I ran out to feed the meter. Joke's on me - there's already a $25 ticket on the windshield. Why didn't I take the bus?]

Picking up the thread again.

TD: Not going to solve the funding issues until we reduce government at state and local levels. Already, cities and state have cut and cut. Now another 20% across the board.

GB: It's now an issue of developers and investors seeing the value of transit-oriented development. Company policy: no parking space, pay half the monthly bus pass, remainder auto deducted from paycheck, bus pass delivered to desk every month.

XX: Hidden costs cloud the discussion and action from both gov and private sector.

CH: Citizen responsibility is good. Transit choice is freedom to make a choice. How can you expect people to make that choice if there really isn't any choice?  Our system isn't strong enough to justify the choice. We need an economy and policies that create a real choice.

PM: What about Detroit? Is it like investing in the typewriter just as computers are coming on the scene? 

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Ha! Beat you to the punch. Before you can tell me ALL the errors in the little Providence & Beyond movie, I'll fess up to the ones I've found.

• Yes, I know that Amtrak regional stops in South Kingstown, not North Kingstown
• Yes, I know that's a shot of RISD, not Brown. It was a good shot and the Zip cars are not associated with the institution. Zip cars are a private enterprise that serve colleges primarily.
• Did total miles driven in the US really slip for the first time? I'll check that out. If it's not the only dip, it's one of the only dips.

What else is all wrong? Leave a comment and let me know.

PS. I'll be live blogging a little later. But first, I must premier this erroneous film.

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The original idea of the drop-in sessions was that people would show up with wireless laptops for one-on-one sessions. Mostly, I had hoped to help true newbies in the Providence & Beyond network get a little guidance and hand-on experience with the web 2 tools.

As it turned out, only one of the five dropper-inners was from P&B. Plus, we only had 2 computers to share. So instead, I gave a mini-version of my web 2.0 spiel and then we talked together about a wide range of web 2 opportunities.

As is more and more common these days, there were a lot of questions about Twitter. It's sometimes hard to explain why Twitter is so important among the web 2 crowd. As Jeff asked, "Where's the depth?" 

It's hard to get much depth in 140 characters - the limit for a Twitter message. Rather, Twitter is about breadth and speed. My Twitter network has people all around the world. I see many "good morning" messages from Asia and Austraila as I'm getting ready for bed. It's a 24-hour source of first hand news and comment.

I admit that most of the news is along the lines of "this milk's gone bad".  But when something important happens, it generally gets out on Twitter before it reaches the news wires. 

This is not to say that Twitter has no depth. Or, more accurately, Twitter is backed up by all the depth you could want. Many Twitter messages include a link to something on the Internet like a blog post, a video, etc. Thus, Twitter acts as gateway where larger content documents are given in abstracts of 140 characters or less. 

Our next drop-in session will be next Wednesday, December 17th from 4 - 6 pm. RSVP if you can, or just drop in. As always, bring a laptop - wireless preferred. 

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New Format

As Providence & Beyond evolves, we are trying to focus on five sites in the area. This will let us see how the different issues we investigate affect the same location or lab site.

Rather than bring in an outside speaker, as we have in the past, we decided to dedicate that time to an introductory multimedia presentation and a panel discussion, starting with prepared questions from Robert Leaver based on the presentation. Then the panel took questions from the group at large before joining us the "traditional" cafe tables. Our panelists - from left to right - were:

• Josh Miller of Local 121
• Greg Gerritt of the Urban Agriculture Task Force in Providence
• Catherine Ady from Woonsocket City Planning

We at New Commons felt the format worked well, generating focused conversation that centered on our region, rather than the issue. So we talked about urban food - as it applies to our cities, specifically. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Did this new format have any impact on the events that transpired? Who knows. But remarkable things happened. That much is certain.

Idea 1: Connecting Community Gardens with Restaurants

Thinking: Josh Miller told us about how Local 121 has become a defacto sponsor of a local community garden by purchasing their crops. And the evolution of their relationship is instructive.

At first, the gardeners brought whatever produce they had to the restaurant, and Local 121's chefs would create menu items based on what was available. This limited the amount the restaurant would buy because, since the menu was already set, these could only be used on 'specials'.

But, over the next winter, the restaurant and the gardeners met and planned their summer together. The chefs were able to request specific crops that, given a regular and ongoing supply, could support 'regular' menu items. Gardeners could plan their crops to meet this demand and help the chefs plan a highly localized seasonal menu. 

Linking & Doing: Joe Vaughan from LISC seized on this idea of linking community gardens with restaurants, because finding an ongoing revenue stream to at least partially fund the costs of running a community garden would be key to enabling community gardening at the Sustainable Communities sites. He is actively pursuing the idea with restaurants.

Idea 2: Creating a Portfolio of Brownfields for Remediation

Thinking: This idea grew out of a discussion of the main challenge of siting urban community gardens in the Providence region: virtually every square yard of available soil is contaminated. Remediation costs money. Then Terry Gray of DEM put forth a most remarkable notion. He said he could more easily fund the remediation of a large portfolio of small sites than he could fund the remediation of each site individually.

Linking & Doing : Margaux Morrisseau of NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley works in an area dotted with contaminated sites. She is developing a portfolio to bring to DEM. 

We'll try to keep you posted on how these projects unfold. Hopefully, we'll have be able to play a direct role in creating more community gardens in Providence & Beyond.

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Luckily, all you need to make a network map is a two-column spreadsheet that associates A with B. As long as you enter the same entity with the same spelling, the network mapping tool combines all the references to that entity into a single point whose size is determined by the number references. Entities with lots of connections are big dots connected to smaller dots.

In my two minutes at Creative Providence, I asked people to list:

• - themselves
• - their organization (if any)
• - their 3 - 5 strongest connections 

I got about 30 cards, and the spreadsheet has about 160 lines. Do you have connections to include? Leave a comment and I'll add them to the dataset.

If the embed is working properly, you can click on the elements in the network to see what they are connected to. If the embed below doesn't work, try it on the Many Eyes website. You may need to refresh your browser a couple of times.

After Rosemary had transcribed the "tablecloth" notes and the "pin board" results, I poured all that text into Many Eyes and created this tag cloud.

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There are no speakers. There are no attendees.

There are only participants. Participants teach, participants learn. 

As it turned out, I taught two different sessions at NewB Camp and became a huge fan of unconferences. I gave a great session at Enterprise 2.Open in Boston in June and, on the train home, vowed to create an unconference for my "tribe" in the Rhode Island economy.

What About Us?

The Creative Economy is a wonderful talking point, but it's very hard for the state to get a sense of how it is affecting the overall economy. The vast majority of this economic segment flies well below the radar of the state's economic development group. How can you count a company when the company is just a single person and it isn't even legally incorporated?

So the concept is to have a business conference for microbusinesses, freelancers, artists, independent workers - The Long Tail in the greater Providence area.When do we get to go to a conference that's designed around our needs?

If you're on your own or are thinking of striking out on your own, you probably have lots of questions. Sure, you've got great expertise in some areas, but no one person can know everything. That's the downside of being on your own. So this unconference could help you fill in the gaps in your knowledge:

• Are you on top of your tax situation?
• Do you know when to use a trademark, a servicemark or a registered copyright?
• Are you growing? Do you need to grow? 
• Are your prices too low? Too high?

But, more important, you can share those areas where you have expertise. Or at least experience.

Leave a comment if you're a solo worker, freelancer, artist, etc. You know who you are. What would you want to learn? What can you teach?

(Confession: my original attempt to build this as SISE Unconference "parallel" to BIF-4 did not gain traction. But the idea is a good one, so I'm going to "let it live." )

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That small wiki is rapidly becoming a big wiki. In fact, at the very first workshop in the project, the need for a self-help resource was immediately obvious, as was the fact that its scope would need to grow considerably. 

Help Desks in general have the unenviable responsibility to help users solve problems "on the spot." And little issues have a tendency to become big problems at times of stress - like at deadline. Like any user group, students, faculty and staff at PC don't really care about who is responsible for what. They just need their problem solved.

What does this mean at PC? It means that if students have trouble getting online when they're at the Library, they ask librarians for help. If a professor can't get the projector in a particular classroom to work properly, they call the Help Desk. 

Except the library isn't supposed to handle IT help, and the Help Desk isn't supposed to handle Media Services issues (what we used to call A/V). 

But that's just like a user - trying to get information wherever they can. 

What we decided at that first workshop was that the PC Self-Help Wiki would need to cover anything and everything except academics. So now it includes IT, Library Services, Media Services, Residential Life, Dining Services, Off Campus information, and Safety/Security.

What's really amazing is how fast it's grown. Yes, I know that wiki is Hawaiian for "quick." But this was REALLY quick. At our orientation session last week for the new crop of Help Desk techs, we spent 45 minutes working on the wiki. 45 minutes.

And it better than doubled in size. 

Plus, "the kids" so "get" this web 2 thing that they were creating content us old folks never considered. Bus schedules, on-campus events, even first-hand knowledge of where and when it's safe to go at night. 

Simply put, this is web 2.0 at it's very, very best - highly engaged users who care about the topic and want to share their knowledge.

The bonus: it will only grow and improve with time. 

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How do you get from plan to agreement?

Always ask for things they think they can do. Give the leader a good chance to convince his/her network to take on the task. If necessary, go physically to support the leader to the network, but better than that, coach and train the leader to succeed.

(Missed the question) Story about bringing together public school and Latina religious group. Cross-pollination produces better than expected results and a very large donation from overseas based on the great work done to date.

How was city government involved?

“As appropriate.” The leaders are there at the roll out event, but only one was on the stage. “Values based organizing” unites on values, so people come together without needing government. The one politician was a part of the QoL agreement as a regular citizen.

Who is the “we” that did the initial interviews?

CDC partnered with Southwest Organizers and set out to eliminate a keep-the-neighborhood-white group. Which they did. Their organization is now pan-ethnic. Follow the link to watch the video.

What is the role of the gay community in this conservative, religious neighborhood?

“We don’t have many gay people.” He will reexamine.

What about youth leadership?

Southwest Youth Collaborative is very engaged with many other community groups. They run a hiphop festival.

Is Cease Fire involved?

CF is a team of men who have mostly been in prison for serious crimes, but have changed their lives. They work directly with youth. They brought shootings down 85%.

How do you fund this effort?

[Redacted as classified.]

To get people to agree to agree, you start with “doing while planning” project. For example, very small intergenerational program to get kids together with old folks. Proves it’s not all just talk.

How do you get buy in for values-based organizing?

First, grow from existing relationships. It’s just as important to think about who makes the call as who gets the call.

Cafe Topics

Moving from individual leadership to corporate/organizational leadership

Using relationships to attract resources

Regressive government/real estate cabal

How to identify key leaders

How do you break from convention to the new approach

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