An interesting new series of articles from Yes! Weekly started June 6, 2102
My comments on Ogi Overman’s introductory story.
My comments on Ogi Overman’s introductory story.
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| The twenty-something on the right is interested in the art of the master craftswoman warping a traditional loom. Until the Piedmont ‘creative class’ catches up, it will be up to a few rare young adults like this one to hold down the fort. (Photo: Betsy Renfrew) |
Some Yes! readers cannot recall or did not experience a time when downtown culture consisted of a couple of lonely outposts such as the Green Hill Center for NC Art. Forever and a day the problems of GH were to keep the doors open and carry on with pretty good to very good exhibits and programs. As the new Central Library and Children's Museum appeared, things began to turn around for downtown in general. For everyone craving something to do on Sunday mornings besides attending church, downtown development was something of a godsend.
But in my view, lengthy art discussion — whether it involved painting, performing arts, cultural ideas, or technology — rarely took place before downtown's revival and there was little interest demonstrated by the arts community, if interest is measured by action.
Artists and creatives set the tone and terms for the rest of the community's cultural engagement. Practically speaking, it works like this: Artists and creative types are heavily engaged in some topic, others on the fringes listen in, become interested, and join the circle. Sometimes the fringe people have money to invest in projects, so they become sponsors and donors. Others, who are businessmen, technologists, students, researchers, and so on, extract useful ideas for their own endeavors. Some wind up having a big economic impact. Most don’t.
One sees bits and pieces of this in Greensboro and Winston-Salem today, but it has never reached the point of "take off" that author Richard Florida writes about. (Here in Greensboro, we have this crazy notion that former mayors and well-intentioned committees determine whether art thrives or dies here.) Local universities have not been able to sustain the Design, Arts, and Technology Symposium, a troubling sign if one believes that a good portion our creative class resides in academia.
In my view, it's pretty simple why Greensboro is not an "ideas place":
(1) Sharper Shop Talk. The quality of art talk has never been sharp. Artists thrive on criticism, also known as feedback. If there's no feedback loop, it doesn't matter how qualitatively good the work is. Here arts people and creative types are themselves to blame. In its most heated form, art criticism can be mean and tough. If it's Southern politesse, it goes nowhere, contributes nothing. Our region is known for artists and creatives who pass through, on their way elsewhere. Why do they go elsewhere? Because the conversation is sharper, richer, and more engaging.
(2) Different Things. If art talk is diverted into discussions about careerism, economic development, and so on, then fine, because artists should be involved in regional development. But it’s not the same thing as hardcore, opinionated artist-to-artist art talk. We here in the Triad waste a lot — A LOT — of time and money chasing big grants to investigate “the creative economy” (and people are trying to build careers based on this kind of “expertise”).
(3) Fighting Urban and Mental Sprawl. As a creative type myself, I see tons of talent in action and hear lots of great ideas everyday. Unfortunately, the creatives I engage with aren’t on the Official List of Creative Types as we know and understand them here in the Triad. Instead, we insist on classing them as refugees, immigrants and “newcomers” — stifling pigeon holes that don't allow for artistic growth or a 24/7 free flow of ideas. Just about every well-educated professional I've spoken to has commented on the closed nature of Triad culture — a tribe here, a tribe there. They weren’t talking about refugees and immigrants. They were talking about us mainstreamers. The plight of refugees and immigrants simply sharpens the focus on the unartistic, undesigned metropolis we’ve allowed to develop, the sprawl that got us the number three national ranking a decade ago. Sprawl isn’t just a commuter’s inconvenience or city planner’s headache. Sprawl is the end result of a collective lack of imagination.
But before I’m accused of running down Greensboro — a city whose visual attractiveness speaks for itself — I confess I like Greensboro, but for all the reasons not written about in Chamber of Commerce literature, not listed in real estate propaganda, and not illustrated in our Central Library’s mural. I like Greensboro because it holds the potential of turning itself around, of eventually “getting it” that no one is going to come from the outside (like Google) to confer national “coolness” on us. Instead of imitating others or waiting for the economy to recover, we could do a lot on our own to improve things.
