Thriving Arts, Thriving Cities

After an amazing month at the Banff Centre, followed by a super-duper road trip (41 days in a motorhome with my family, covering over 13000 kms across Canada and back through the US), I am back at Calgary Arts Development as President & CEO.

I returned to the office on September 17th after being in Calgary for two weeks (we got back in time for school!). Almost immediately, we began or concluded hiring for 3 positions that had transitioned while I was away. And then there were board meetings to prepare for and an audit of our granting programs to put to bed. And of course, in a busy place like Calgary, I’m out at events and meetings 3 or more nights a week, including last weekend, during which I hit at least 8 different venues or events.

I’m full of energy, engaged in my job, can’t wait to take on the next challenge…. but… I went from cruising to nearly full speed in a matter of days. Today, I observed the impact of this change of pace on how I think.

I’m preparing for a strategic planning session with my Board of Directors on October 9th. The bulk of the agenda is a report back and discussion of my thinking during my sabbatical. I spent time reviewing this blog today as preparation for that meeting… and I hardly recognized my own writing! Looking back at it now, I recognize that I was really able to “just think” while I was in Banff. Throughout this blog, I see observations and connections that I couldn’t make today, given the flow of activity I’m in. I know I want to do that kind of strategic thinking, to be creative in that way… but instead, it is like those insights are just out of my grasp, the great idea is on the tip of my tongue… 

So I have a dilemma: it is my job to think at a high level and to look to the future, but(!!) it feels like an indulgence to actually take those chunks of time away to do this work.

With this blog, and in my humble opinion, there is clear evidence that “taking time to think” works. Slowing things down leads to more creativity. It really does.

When I’m “at work,” I enjoy taking on the world issue by issue, problem-solving in the moment, proposing tactics about how to get over the next hurdle. Time really flies. But when I was in Banff, time flew by too. There were days where I’d start in the studio at 7:30, and not realize the time until I was hungry at 3pm or so. Clearly, for long-term, strategic and/or creative thinking, my brain benefits from time away from issues, linearity and urgency, and needs to wander, dive deep and let insights emerge.

So… I’ve decided to make my sabbatical experience juxtaposed against my regular work life Part A of a series of experiments in learning to work my brain. Part B, I’ve decided, is to test whether other interventions, requiring less time away from the day-to-day flow, can lead to the same level of quality thinking I was able to experience during my sabbatical.

Relevant Conclusion! As I start this test, I’m going to draw on books and wisdom related to the creative practice of artists. Funny thing? I never thought of what I do as needing a “creative practice” until I was confronted with these two versions of myself today.

Talk to working artists, especially younger artists in the process of building a body of work, and you’ll hear two key themes: I need more time to do my art and I need the space in which to do it.

This is OLD news.

Part of the challenge facing the sector is how to effectively communicate the reality of life as a working artist—what it takes to build a successful career—to those outside the sector. I’m always in search of a good metaphor to help do this, and after a few weeks at the Banff Centre, talking to artists about their time at the Centre, about their practice at home, how their city supports what they do, etc., the “time and space” metaphor popped into my head today.

Over the past 6 or 7 years, I’ve dabbled in coaching minor hockey and community soccer. As a coach of youngsters who tended to be there more for fun than as the start of a professional career, I wanted to keep things simple. The dominant theme I used was “time and space.” In hockey and soccer, when on offense, you want players to develop the individual capacity and the ability to work together to create space in which to make a smart play, and the time necessary to make good decisions. When defending (at least how I coached…), we coached putting pressure on the opposition to take away time and space. This causes rushed decisions and the difficulty of maneuvering to make a play in tight quarters. Tactically, this approach causes mistakes and turnovers.

People who are into team sports will understand this intuitively, and can probably explain it better than I can!

The similarity to the life of a working artist is straightforward: providing time enables the artist to fully develop their ideas (and over time, a track record in the form of a body of work) and providing space provides the tools to execute those ideas to the standard they set for themselves.

So when a city has a high cost of living, including high rent for work spaces, artists in the process of building a career will have less time AND less space in which to work. They WILL be frustrated and look elsewhere. Cities that want to be attractive to artists will put in place policy interventions and programs that create time (eg: grants that include healthy artist fees to allow the artist to work full time as an artist) and space (eg: subsidized/affordable studio/rehearsal space).

As I noted earlier: OLD news. Not a revelation to anyone working in the arts. But maybe it will help with advocacy. A simple message, something people can relate to, that gets to the core of what it takes for a city to support its artists.

So the next time you’re talking to someone who understands time and space like this, try saying “you know how in hockey, you have to create time and space to make great plays? It’s the same for me, I need time and space to make great art.”

Try it… tell me how it works!

Reading through the Kanazawa Creative City Steering Program (again, thankfully in English!), I’m struck by the precision of the actions they’re taking and the clear collaborations they’ve outlined. Here’s an example of the kind of precision I’m talking about:

Promotion of Rare Traditional Craft Industries

To promote the industry, the Kanazawa Japanese-paper Umbrella Study Group (Established in 2009) invites lectures from the biggest production site for Japanese-paper umbrellas and receive training and guidance. We have added the study of Futamata Japanese paper to the subjects of the rare traditional craft industry school, and will cultivate Broussonetia kazinoki, the material used to make Japanese paper, on a trial basis.

Organizer: Kanazawa City

Supporters: Japanese-paper craftsmen, Kanazawa Craftwork Business Creation Agency, Kanazawa Craft Hirosaka, Kanazawa Forestry Association

Creative City Index: Gent

A warning that this post is an example of where things get a bit messy in the city/arts policy field. The word “creative” is now used to describe almost any strategic improvement initiative at the city level. Often, the arts are positioned as a leading wedge in a city’s efforts to become more creative (arts are ALWAYS creative, right?). So, sometimes, what looks like an “arts policy” is actually linked to broader efforts to unstick gummed up administrative processes. 

Charles Landry’s work (author of the report linked to above) is focused more on holistic problem of how to make cities generally more creative. It links the functional realities of planning and administration to the citizen’s experience of the city.

There is something interesting about how to get all of pieces of large municipal administration corporations to align to support the kind of activities that a thriving arts scene requires. Here’s a quote from the research Landry conducted on Gent that illustrates the significant challenges that lie between saying and doing in the realm of arts policy:

Being creative in today’s context is hard as all cities face a paradox, which Ghent is trying to navigate. A stronger culture of risk aversion is emerging, whilst simultaneously more creativity and non-standard solutions are being demanded. These two logics create a tension. A risk culture focuses on tying everything down and making it predictable, whilst today creativity means creating trusting environments where there is little blame culture and where exploring is seen as good and mistakes can be made. The creativity paradigm fosters a collaborative organizational setting where everyone is alert to the possibilities and the need to adapt and where given or formulaic solutions are tested and challenged. It implies giving trust and developing relationships based on taking and sharing responsibilities.

Great article showing how difficult it is to “engineer” the success of an art scene. There are, however, clear factors that you can nudge into place that sow the seeds for takeoff. “Luck favours the prepared city?”

Near the Banff Centre. Morning mind-clearing hike. No more noise.

A UNESCO City of Film (though almost impossible to find anything about this anywhere other than the UNESCO website…), Sydney has an inspiring website outlining the results of a visioning process: Sydney 2030

Under the “Learn in 2030” banner, we find an extensive set of initiatives for arts and culture. They provide a very detailed report on cultural facility development, including an appendix that benchmarks Sydney against 5 or 6 other cities around the world. This is valuable information! Thanks for sharing, Sydney!

(Thankfully!) presented with an English translation, Reykjavik’s culture policy has elements in common with Dublin (both UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature… I’m working my way through all of the Creative Cities today)… that is, it is a long list of commitments and initiatives that cover the full range of interventions one could imagine. As a small city with a long history, these interventions are probably easier to enact than in other, more diverse, and again, younger cities. But… much to learn!

Here are some parts of the policy that stood out to me:

In order for art to serve its social purpose as a source of new and original ideas, it must have the freedom to develop on its own terms. Art should not only be a source of pleasure; its role is also to disrupt, to surprise, and to point out what we might otherwise not notice, or even not wish to see.

In order for arts in the city to flourish, suitable workspaces and exhibition venues must be available at reasonable rates for artists, both young and older.

The importance of culture in the City administration is to be undisputed. Organisation of cultural matters is to be clear, and management systematic.

It is important to uphold the importance of cultural life in all areas of City administration . Thus the Culture Policy must be taken into account in other policymaking in the City administration .  

A quick glance at the 2010-2017 culture strategy for Dublin gives the impression of a place that really really wants to do whatever it can to support the growth of the arts. There is an incredibly long list of initiatives that cover many programmatic angles. It frankly seems impossible… unless there’s a lot of money involved (there may well be…).

Here are two priorities indicated in the plan that I find interesting:

• “We will enable the use of the city’s fabric for arts practice” (is there buy-in throughout the civic administration? If so, I’m interested to see how this plays out in day-to-day reality)
• “We will articulate the distinctive cultural character of the city as an attractor of economic investment and a talented workforce” (so, it is not just that there is a culture scene… it is distinctive and valuable. Possible lesson: know why you’re different, invest in what makes you different, promote your distinctiveness)

I’ve often thought that Brian Eno’s concept of “collective genius” might make an interesting way to assess the impact of a cultural policy, or perhaps to describe the high level goals of the policy. I think there would be a few intriguing implications of this approach:

• the policy would put artists/creatives at the centre
• there would have to be a very light touch to programs, this can’t be engineered
• you’d have to have patience
• friendly competition would be encouraged, as would open debate
• you would find ways to connect to what’s happening around the world, in fact, exchange would probably be aggressively encouraged

The first time I read the Kevin Kelly’s piece linked above, I remember being incredibly energized. Still true today.