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Thoughts on the creative class

There's been some local buzz on the state of Greensboro's creative class, stemming from an article this week in Yes! Weekly and a post on Ed Cone's blog. Those conversations have focused particularly on the role of artists in the city's economic development, but I've also been pondering the roles of cultural creatives as they relate to the sustainability and green movements.

What I have distilled from this complex dynamic is that both the existence of a creative class and the sustainability movement are outgrowths of the country's shift toward a post-industrial, postmodern society, encompassing every economic and social sphere from religion to education and agriculture. In general post-modernism shuns government or corporate centralization and control and can be ambivalent about certain modern conventions. A postmodern society also aims to leverage (as opposed to disregard) the wisdom of pre-modern civilizations along with modern technologies and understandings of the natural world to deal with challenging ecological and social problems.

Other people have written about the intersection of these roles since sociologist Paul Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson termed "cultural creatives" in 2000.

Ray and Anderson described cultural creatives as those who: 

"care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and about self actualization, spirituality and self-expression. Surprisingly, they are both inner-directed and socially concerned, they're activists, volunteers and contributors to good causes more than other Americans.... What makes the appearance of the Cultural Creatives especially timely today is that our civilization is in the midst of an epochal change, caught between globalization, accelerating technologies and a deteriorating planetary ecology. A creative minority can have enormous leverage to carry us into a new renaissance instead of a disastrous fall. The book ends with a number of maps for the remarkable journey that our civilization is embarked upon: initiations, evolutionary models, scenarios, and the elements of a new mythos for our time. The Cultural Creatives offers a more hopeful future, and prepares us all for a transition to a new, saner and wiser culture."

It seems to me any conversation about the role of cultural creatives in Greensboro and the region needs to include not only their effect on economic development initiatives but also their role in catalyzing a wider consciousness and action around sustainability here. I think particularly of the new Sustainable Greensboro organization, whose founder does most organizing for that online, and the Elsewhere Artist Collective, which maintains a vertical garden in its back alley. And Billy Jones, who was quoted in the Yes! Weekly article, is a passionate recycler who raises chickens at home.

It's clear that the sustainability movement will have more traditional manufacturing components but much of it requires research and education, tinkering and experimenting, community organizing and social networking, and persuasion and criticism through arts and media. And contributions will come from both the formally employed and un- or underemployed.

It might not always be appropriate to rely on 20th century metrics when assessing the strength of a local creative class (or any class in general). Will employment rate or median income statistics remain the best way of judging the community's health, especially when formal wage employment may never return in the same way? How do we best assess how people are getting their basic needs met while having the opportunity to experience meaning and self-actualization?

One quote that stood out to me in the Yes! Weekly article is one by Andrew Brod, a UNCG economist, commenting on the creative economy's lack of stable long-term employment and defined benefits:: "We'll have a much less secure workforce (in the future). The push for an ownership society may not be for everyone. When society turns that way it becomes harder for people seeking security."

In a sense, security is elusive and in the eye of the beholder. And in these economic times many people find that by relying on debt their search for security actually leads to less security. How many of us are truly "free and clear" home and car owners?

Many people will have to make peace with the fact they might never own a home, at least for the foreseeable future. I expect that over time, the American Dream will be less focused on homeownership and owning things in general. In fact,  the famous industrial designer William McDonough envisions consumers leasing many capital goods rather than buying them (such as cars and appliances) so that manufacturers can reclaim and recycle/upcycle them.  And given that cultural creatives have been described as very mobile (although they might not always be that way), it makes less sense for them to be strapped to a lot of material baggage.

Of course, a society that minimizes centralization, has access to virtually unlimited information, and frowns upon environmentally irresponsible business practices begs the question of how people will earn a living and define wealth in the future.

Update: A follow-up thought: I guess a more direct question one could ask is what kind of structures and institutions should dominate economic life in the region in the future? Will publically traded corporations and for-profit companies continue to play a dominant role? Will non-profits and community-owned enterprises? Or self-employed entrepreneurs?