By Ben Ma
In his 2005 monograph, Cities and the Creative Class, Richard Florida seeks out the value of the arts in a society that relies on technological advancement for economic development. He sees the creative sector as, “…the great leveler. It cannot be handed down, and it cannot be owned in the traditional sense. It defies gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and outward appearance” (Florida 2005, 5). In other words, he positions creativity and the creative impulse as something uniquely human: it defies the binary of capitalist production and social advancement through the artist’s ability to center culture. Interestingly, he sees creativity as something that “cannot be owned” by Western convention. Famously, the live performing arts, are live, ephemeral experiences which capitalize on co-presence and affect to shape and/or contradict the audiences’ mind. As of late, I have felt as though this industry is clearly not for everyone (which is reaffirmed by Florida). From arguing with my dad to entering spaces full of STEM thinkers, the arts are consistently the punchline, scapegoated for the shortcomings of culture.
Florida’s work highlights the creativity theory’s recognition that, “…all growth is not created equal” (2005, 24). This principle is meant to comfort artists, but I am interested in Florida’s expansion which exposes the displacement of the artist due to gentrification that stems from the culture’s capitalist endeavours. I write this post in the dare I say “post-COVID” era, and I am riddled with questions surrounding arts culture and arts productivity and a redirection of arts creation through governmental funding methods. How does the notion of government funding impact arts creation (content-wise), especially when the arts are trying to be utilized as a framework for cultural (re)building? Is there a form of censorship in appealing to the granting bodies in times of crisis? Furthermore, I am curious about what role, if any, do the arts actually play in revitalizing community.
To deconstruct these thoughts, I turn towards current funding models led by the government, to investigate the perceived role of the arts as culture. National conversations with stakeholders interviewed for the Pandemic Preparedness in the Live Performing Arts reveal that, on one hand, current funding models are quite out of practice for the people it is trying to support, and on the other, funding recipients may experience burnout due to consistent demographic-style reporting for granting bodies that quantifies the artist’s existence, rather than support the cause of their work. Interestingly, Meghan Lindsay exposes contemporary funding practices carefully align themselves with, “‘…evidence-based’ frameworks for evaluating the social and economic outcomes of engaging with the arts [… for] linking public benefit[s] to non-arts portfolios (health, education, economic development, social cohesion, etc.)” (2023). Such frameworks that jeopardize the “arts portfolios” tries to establish a universality to the art, ultimately exposing the, “…role of values, positionality, and beliefs, encouraging a self-conscious reflexivity that spells out how discourses of logic, legitimization, and rationale are not neutral, but rather complex sites for class and breed” (Lindsay 2023). In short, Canada’s arts funding models seem to operate in opposition to the creativity theory as it tries to recognize all growth as equal, without accounting for the community-specific needs or issues artists may try to stage.
Non-population dense/hotspot locations such as the Northwest Territories compared to places like Toronto and Vancouver are of course expected to have different cultures due to the rich diversity across Canada. However, national arts funding processes remain quite similar. In 2021, the Canada Council for the Arts launched the Reimagine the Arts campaign to directly interact with artists. A major disparity was the experience of arts creation and consumption up North, “due to their remoteness and lack of adequate arts infrastructure” (Hill + Knowlton Strategies 16). I find this idea counterproductive in addressing a larger, systemic issue whose epicenter sits at the capitalist expectation that arts growth must be done to support the broader culture that it is immersed in. Moreover, this issue, in my opinion, requires a larger, interdisciplinary conversation that calls for an amendment of the treatment of Northern arts, culture, and society.
It is true that one can simultaneously experience challenge and joy, yet should this be central to the theatremaker’s career? In my opinion, the arts hold much more value than simple economic re-building. Furthermore, I do not believe that there is a “national identity” that is worth upholding at this time, as each province, even municipality, holds significant cultural/social differences that problematize notions of cultural unity. Additionally, as we navigate away from COVID-19 social disruptions, different voices are finding different stories that demand and deserve stage time. Overall, it seems as though the arts’ ephemerality is indicative of the zeitgeist in a post-COVID era: mass (over) production as a method to mask systemic and social issues.
Furthermore, criticism of Florida’s work has identified two major gaps in the creativity theory and idea of the Creative Class: a) a lack of local talents and overreliance of external sourcing, and b) the aggregation of classes. Firstly, several economists have contested Florida’s demand for designing cities to attract artists. These major concerns are based on gentrification processes that raises costs of living in locations that were already inaccessible. Jamie Peck questions the validity of completely altering a city’s design through structural changes and district creation (2005, 741), while Andy C. Pratt builds off of Peck’s idea, clearly highlighting the issue where, “…cities and regions have lost the faith in generating their own wealth and have begun to believe that wealth could only come from elsewhere” (2008, 109). Both Peck and Pratt raise the issue that seems to be central to many arts funding models in contemporary practice: who gets funded? Florida certainly believes that attracting the external Creative Class is more beneficial.
Funding priorities and precarity plague the artist’s creative process. Yes, we find ways to work around these constraints, but should it be our responsibility to constantly go rogue with the financial support we receive to rebuild a community/culture that undermines and/or undervalues our work due to the conflation between diverse economic prosperities? Stefan Kräte traces the lifecycle of the Creative Class: “[t]he original creative scene is then pushed to relocate in other lower-value locations, and a new cycle of the generation of the inner urban ‘scene districts’ is set in motion” (2010, 842). Evidently, there is a concerning feedback loop that is created which does not suggest a permanent, stable economic advancement for the impacted “inner urban ‘scene districts,’” rather, by participating in this cycle, one risks funding the external Creative Class – who holds less stakes in the overall experience of community wellbeing – ultimately signalling to potential local creatives that their work is insufficient for the community(ies) that one finds themselves to be part of. In my utopia, I suggest finding ways to detach arts from its ‘home’ in cultural and heritage (and even sports) sectors, to grant artists with full autonomy over the work. It is my hope that this dissolution will remove the social pressure from the content found in the live performing arts, thereby pressuring the other sectors to critically engage with socio-political issues offloaded to artists.
Works Cited
Florida, Richard. 2004. Cities and the Creative Class. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
Hill and Knowlton Strategies. “Reimagining the Arts 2021-26 Strategic Plan: What We Heard Report.” Canada Council for the Arts. Accessed April 22, 2024. https://www.reimaginethearts.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CCA_EN.pdf.
Kräte, Stefan. 2010. “‘Creative Cities’ and the Rise of the Dealer Class: A Critique of Richard Florida’s Approach to Urban Theory.” Urban and Regional Research 34, no 4: 835-853. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00939.x.
Lindsay, Meghan. “Affect, Accountability, and the Social Impact of the Arts.” Philanthropy & the Arts (September 26, 2023). https://philab.uqam.ca/en/home-blog/affect-accountability-and-the-social-impact-of-the-arts/.
Peck, Jamie. 2005. “Struggling With the Creative Class.” Urban and Regional Research 29, vol 4:740-770. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00620.x.
Pratt, Andy C. 2008. “Creative Cities: The Cultural Industries and the Creative Class.” Series B, Human Geography 90, no 2:107-117. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40205039.