A recent speech by Thomas Sevcik, managing director of Arthesia, (a think tank that consults large institutions on cultural positioning and strategies), caught our eye for its provocative conclusions, but also because he and his firm have been hired by Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and Memphis Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to develop a brand for our community:
Because of these new powerful dynamics, the traditional beneficiaries of the world’s brain drains can no longer take their historical magnetism for granted. Attracting talent has become a major preoccupation for civic leaders and many of them have found inspiration in theories such as those of Richard Florida, whose popular books from a few years ago, The Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, describe “creative capital” as essential to a city’s economic success in the new globalized world. As Florida wrote in Flight of the Creative Class, “Concentrations of creative talented people are particularly important for innovation…Ideas flow more freely, are honed more sharply, and can be put into practice more quickly when large numbers of innovators, implementers and financial backers are in constant contact with one another, both in and out of the office.”
However, as is often the case, civic leaders tend to make use of popular theories in diluted or superficial forms. As Thomas Sevcik lamented, “Poor Richard Florida – his theory is very right but it was then misused for short-term thinking. I am not criticizing his claim for creative capital.” What Sevcik does criticize is the resulting phenomenon, what he describes as “The use of art and culture [and] the culture industry as a simple marketing tool, a superficial way of trying to gain momentum for a city…and it’s not really helping the cities.”
Sevcik posed several challenges to the accepted wisdom about the impact of the creative industries on cities. Along with questioning the Bilbao Effect, he targeted the value of the “creative industries” themselves. He posited that the creative industries are actually innovation-averse, citing several studies that argue that, due to chronic under-funding, ”once [creative industries] find a formula [of] how they can sell a product – a special type of website or special strategy – they tend then to sell the same thing over and over.” Comparing the culture sector to others such as biotech or the financial industry, Sevcik claimed that the latter is more creative and innovative than the culture industries.
Sevcik came equipped with an answer to his critique of the superficial cultural fix. Education, he declared, is the area that deserves more focus and which has the greatest potential to truly develop culture, creativity and, as a result, cities. It may not promise immediate, visible gains that officials can point to as achievements and “progress,” but a more bottom-up approach that seeks to mend and change the actual cultural fabric of the city is what seems to be in order.
To read more, click here.
Interesting. I think the take-away here is that you can’t polish just one facet of the diamond and expect it to shine. Education is the foundation for everything else and deserves our utmost attention and lifelong commitment. But we also need jobs and good government services and superior healthcare and universities and great public buildings and spaces and sports and music and museums and parks and festivals and…well, you get the picture.
But going back to education as the foundation for everything else, what if Shelby County and its environs could be marketed as the most educated in the United States? What if we developed a plan, “Education 2020,” and resolved that by the end of the year 2020, 10 years, every able adult in Shelby County would have a high school diploma or a GED? And that would be a minimum. We might be able to use the school buildings that are deemed surplus. A demonstrated outgrowth of higher levels of adult education is a higher level of infant and preschool learning, so we would be addressing both ends of the spectrum. We might even expand the curriculum and offer classes in, say, parenting or nutrition. There are lots of possibilities.
Best of all, we’ve killed two birds with one stone: better education and branding!
This is not my original idea, by the way, but was part of a “what would you do” conversation. I think it’s a good idea. What do you think?
I completely agree that education should dominate the focus of cities ESPECIALLY ours. I’m also glad someone is challenging the “everything follows art” rationalization. The question here, is how does this apply to Memphis. While I haven’t heard Sevcik speech, this argument for needs a nuanced application for our great town.
Memphis is ALREADY a cultural brand. This is the Mecca for popular music. This is where it began. We can not escape that nor should we try. You can’t go anywhere in the world without seeing an elvis fan. Has anyone traveled abroad lately? I see Memphis cigarettes EVERYWHERE. What our brand lacks is proper control and expansion. This “creative capital” will not die here even though it seems many are trying to kill it. If we make the creative class here a priority, not only will the city become more livable, but our artists will have this massively powerful Memphis brand behind them.
The argument ”once [creative industries] find a formula [of] how they can sell a product – a special type of website or special strategy – they tend then to sell the same thing over and over.” applies strongly here as seen on Beale street.
Or does it?
As an artist myself, I can tell you that Memphis actually attracts artists because of our brand. What is doesn’t do, is RETAIN them. The same brain drain issues we see in other sectors apply here as well. As cultural innovation develops, it leaves to become profitable. This is a great place to BE an artist if you’re already established. This is not a great place to BECOME an artist. Many of our bands move to New York to make it, and our film people go to LA.
Artists have and always will be one of the most important part of Memphis, and they deserve to be backed strongly by the city.
“Artists have and always will be one of the most important part of Memphis, and they deserve to be backed strongly by the city.”
I am complete agreement. But how do we do this? What does this look like? Who supports the backing?
“It may not promise immediate, visible gains that officials can point to as achievements and “progress,” but a more bottom-up approach that seeks to mend and change the actual cultural fabric of the city is what seems to be in order”.
This is the primary reason that such a simple formula and ideal has not been universally implemented either locally or nationally. There are so many that need employment- maybe simply saying they need to be occupied is closer to the truth- that an economic development agenda that tends to monopolize all resources in attracting new jobs for immediate benefit develops. This is inherent in our political system. Even continued education programs that seek to enhance the existing workforce require 2 to 4 years to effectively enact a change. These time periods simply extend beyond any elected positions expiration date where another individuals that typically advertises faster (if not cheaper) results. We as a society are very fickle and tend to vote for overriding change when faced with social or economic hurdles even if such change is in fact detrimental in the long run.
Aaron- keeping the above in mind, I think it requires a solid footing composed of community foundations whose existence and program are tooled to outlast any one individual’s commitment or tenure. The counterpoint to this approach is such organizations can become dangerously stubborn in supporting outdated methods or striving to enforce unrealistic agendas.
Urbanut: What you describe sounds like what is trying to be accomplished with the Bioworks organization and the foundations that support it. Let’s hope their efforts pay off, although as you mentioned, their work is long term so we may not see any large scale employment come from that effort for a number of years. It is encouraging to know that 100% their first graduating class ( from the Bioworks charter school) went on to college.
My own personal favorite approach to job creation in the inner city is Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperative Corporation – its existence is owed to a collaboration of multiple stakeholders- i.e. The Cleveland Foundation, Kent state university, hospitals, the Mayor’s office and a number of other groups. We need to somehow network more of our nonprofits towards a similar shared vision.
We can only hope that these groups are indeed actually creating novel innovative strategies to supporting and growing a entrepreneurial culture. We’ll see.
To Aaron: Hey, I know what you mean. Cleveland is doing it big in the non-profit sector. There is a initiative in Memphis to unify our non-profit sector. The organization spearheading the change is Greater Memphis Neighborhood, it was just started within the last year.
Thanks for the info Businessman2010. I read the executive summary. The study did mention the Cleveland effort. I’ll have to do some further reading to figure out how exactly jobs will be created.
The guy is 100% correct.
If you don’t fix the education system, you are directly undercutting any REAL creative thinkers and severely undercutting the future of your city. Without a quality education system that focuses on delivering results that exceed national standards as it’s BASIC core goal, which it should easily achieve, then you got a hand full of nothing and you’ll leave with half of that.
He’s wrong about one thing, you can’t put all creative thinkers into one box and have them all fit. Some will innovate whenever appropriate. Of course, once success is achieved, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but, be careful to keep an eye out for changing conditions, results, and adjust as needed all the way to starting all over again.