April 28, 2003
More Evidence a 'Young Creatives' Conference Is Needed
Received an interesting email from Charles Heying, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University (who some of you may know from my previous posts about the Mt. Tabor Reservoir issue), commenting upon last Friday's "young creatives" panel discussion. I wanted to pass along some of it here, because some important issues are raised.
For the sake of context, and I managed to utterly neglect this point in my previous two posts on this panel discussion, most of the conversation about "young creatives" was sparked by the Richard Florida book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. I bring it up now because Heying refers to his work.
Heying's first interesting comment:
Richard Florida's description of the creative class has one remarkable area of omission, he excludes social, civic or political activists. I don't think this is accidental, even though one of the supportive studies of his work found that cities that ranked high on the creative class index also ranked high in "protest politics." Given that political activists are often the ones that structure the environment where creativity might flourish and given that the discussion on Friday was largely around how the public sector might create incentives for the location of the creative class, this is a considerable oversight. [emphasis added]
In his email, Heying also outlines the pitfalls of focusing so much attention on one age group, particularly in an economic context, although it applies to a creative one as well: It might foster the view (or further the existing one) that as people get older, they become less economic, or creatively, desirable.
We definitely need more chances to get into all of this. As we wait to see if any further panel discussions, if not an outright conference, on these issues arises in the future, I am considering starting a group weblog for people interested in continuing all of this in some sort of public arena.