David Barrie

Arts, culture and development: creating "more for less"

For over a decade, the creative industries, especially the visual and performing arts, have been seen as important drivers of competitive advantage in the U.K., especially for 'post-industrial' cities, communities and real estate.

But in an age of fiscal tightening, social enterprise, green enterprise and infrastructure are fast becoming "the new black", with their promise of new employment, new markets and a new alignment of development, sustainability and social justice.

The challenge for the arts/creative sectors is stark. To make matters worse, culture may thrive everywhere but bankers' bonuses don't - and these are a key source of philanthropy and investment.

Earlier this month I led a one-day 'masterclass' on culture and urban renewal, supported by Arts Council England, Sheffield City Council and New Start that asked the question: In a time of 'more for less', can cultural enterprise offer value for money and different models?'

My answer is "yes" - but with two first thoughts.

First, cultural people need to assume the mantle of a warrior class, go to the gun cabinet and engage immediately with particular symptoms of downturn: empty properties, low rental demand and struggling businesses.

So, point one, take up your weapons, get down and get dirty.

 

Point two, promote public association and use this to make markets for new enterprise - and for inspiration, take a look at the current DIY Urbanism exhibit at the Urban Center in San Francisco.

In a fit of pre-'masterclass' nerves, I wrote down two lists of things that I find inspiring in the fuzzy thing we call 'culture': one list of 'creative places', the second of 'creative culture'.

And instead of arias, artworks or award-winning, architect-designed spaces, I was prioritising places that stage and express imagination, excitement or communal experience.

Now a lot of what I've listed doesn't address key issues of recession such as food, shelter, transportation and security - or at least directly.

But they do suggest that in a time of 'more for less' we should

• highlight business and entertainment solutions to social problems
• continue to shift creativity away from edification to the nurturing of talent and self-help
• make social spaces in which that talent can collectivize and excel
• take a leaf out of Facebook and launch hundreds of new applications every day

And a given is the principle scratched on the beam of a studio in East London, photographed by Viktor Vauthier: 

So here are my lists:

 For Creative Places...

Hub, Angel, Islington, London

Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield

Kitchen at the St. John restaurant, London

Latitude Festival, Suffolk

Union Street Orchard, London

People dancing beside a lake in North Beijing, China (seen a few years ago)

Wardrobe making studio, Scottish Opera, Glasgow

Chictopia - a website for user-generated fashion content

The offices/flat of culture website http://www.lookatme.ru, Moscow

Gardens of Musee Branly, Paris

Backstage, New York Fashion Week (seen a few years ago)

Upstairs room - turned in to a bar - of Malcolm, a former coal-worker, Castleford, Yorkshire

Chalk drawings for a vintage clothing store, pavement, Shoreditch, London

Studio of Georg Baselitz, Germany (seen a few years ago)

 

For Creative Culture...

Work of Manchester dupstep/2-step producer Synkro

Streetstyle photography of Yvan Rodic

Fashion blogger Wedge Heel

Cycling cafe 'Look Mummy No Hands'

Park Slope food co-operative, Brooklyn

Grameen Bank and other micro-finance organizations

Florence and the Machine's live performances

Green Demolition company Buffalo Re-Use

Social innovation project Southwark Circle

Under Age Festival, Hackney

Work of fashion designers Rodarte & Stolen Girlfriend

X-Factor
 

Feel free to hate what's here - but please do your own list.

In the meantime, I'll

Images courtesy of: 1. Pasquale Ottaiano. 2. The New Black. 3. Jake and Dinos Chapman. 4. Viktor Vauthier. 5. Banksy via Tony Hisgett.

 

 

 

 

 

Militant Optimists

One thing that inspires cities and their development is the Thirteen Tribe of civic life: the ‘Militant Optimists’ who are committed to improving the world, prepared to organize and "give it a go".

In a few weeks time, the ability of Government and all of us in the U.K. to Mobilize the Militants will be put to the test, with the announcement by HM Treasury of the Spending Review and publication of the (sexily-entitled) Decentralisation and Localism Bill.

Key policy drivers behind the Bill are the introduction of a new system of collaborative planning, new powers of local decision-making over local plans and a new framework of incentives for development.

The Government calls it 'Open Source Planning'.

Hand Made is a great book by innovator and educator Tessy Britton that's just been published in the U.K.

The book draws together people working in innovation, social media, service design, education and the environment in the U.K. - as well as the inspirational June Holley from Athens, Ohio - and through case studies and opinion-pieces, sets out new ways for the public to be involved in local affairs.

I've written an article on 'Militant Optimists' for the book - uploaded here.

In projects that we've delivered with clients, we've used different tactics that have centred on 'Militant Optimists' and sought to aggregate their talents in an open source way to effect real change - with an emphasis upon the need to acknowledge multiple groups and different types of human relationships. 

The Government's plans for Open Source Planning seem to signal four useful approaches to involving the community in development plans: 

• Support and build the formation of local community groups
• Support and partner new coalitions of local groups
• Support and partner new local enterprise to trigger public benefit
• Go 'viral'

We'll share the viral option here soon. We think of it as Open Source Place-making - and it's inspired a programme we've just created for a large development site in Glasgow, Scotland, commissioned by the Scottish Government and designed to help move its development forward.

Why bother with any of this?

Why not just commission mass local polling or consultation that grants the public an opportunity to comment on plans prior to built approvals in a big tent, rather than a small, chilly hall?

The Mayor of the City of Yokohama, Japan nailed one answer - published in a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers called Cities of the Future - when he said that one of the most important issues facing cities today is to realise a society which makes the most of its citizen's potential.

Until now, "effective" public involvement in urban development in the U.K. has relied upon a certain kind of communications design/public relations: putting up a local exhibition, leafletting, asking the community to participate in sponsored days-out and respond to proposals. 

In an age of 'Open Source Planning' and unlocking latent potential, will this kind of engagement and community boosterism be enough?

What seems sure is that in an age of Big Society, the financial viability of businesses, development or place-making plans will require people to look again at social impact, how people are contributing to civic progress and what the plan does to shift people in to being producers, not consumers of tax resources.

At the centre of this will be the Militant Optimists - the "grasstops", rather than the "grassroots" of local life who are central to helping streets, neighborhoods, towns and cities find a groove.

Involving this group in development isn't brain surgery.

But it does mean embracing two ideas that don't come easy to statists or monopolists: that profits follow people - rather than the other way round - and the public can only make informed decisions if they have the right data.

Images courtesy of 1. Author. 2. Lloyd Davis. 3. Yvan Rodic. 4. Architectire + Design Scotland & Snook. 

Food Glorious Food

In the push to overcome shrinking investment in social services, energise towns and cities and develop more self-funded local activities, there's real value in encouraging innovation around food - and beyond the 'barnyard realism' of urban agriculture or farmers' markets.

As an article in environmental blog Grist recently said, smart cities are (un)paving the way for urban farmers and for sure, it's great to promote and exploit the value of using redundant land to 'grow your own' - and something that we've done a lot, for example in an urban farming initiative that was featured recently in a report on design, sustainability and innovation by a U.K. Government department and exhibited in Toronto, moving to New York soon.

Innovative food retail and production is vital to the creative economy of cities, the sustainability of their resource management and the freedom of choice offered by places that real estate developers and local government create for residents and visitors alike.

Here's three things that I've spotted recently.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, a vehicle for exotic toppings like wasabi-pea powder, olice oil and cardomon, according to an article in New York magazine, one of *twenty-five* food trucks featured that are the next step up the evolutionary ladder from the traditional sidewalk food cart.

The Smile Restaurant and General Store, New York whose clientele are described in a review in New York magazine as an abundance of vaguely hippieish people milling about in lumberjack shirts, hand-stitched moccasins, skinny jeans, lush whiskers, and tattoos. ! :)

And Ontario-based dairy and cheese producer Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co whose founder Petra Cooper was the subject of a recent profile in Fortune magazine that majored on her change of career from president of a unit of publisher McGraw Hill Ryerson Canada, after learning that an island on Lake Ontario had 19 wineries but no artisanal diaries.

Now I am no foodie AT ALL and as fast as you can say "KFC bucket", I'll race for a non-artisan plate of this:

But these food micro-enterprises are vital to high-quality infrastructure at a community scale and underscore innovative food retail and production as generators of employment.

They express freedom of choice, provided you have the money, and allied to the collective action or 'new urban commons' of many food growing schemes form part of the 'creative food economy' and public infrastructure that makes for a healthy city.

Images courtesy of 1. Yvan Rodic. 2. bitchcakesny. 3. The Smile. 4. Finn O'Hara Photography. 5. I've got a Lust for Life.