Relationship between culture and the economy

I really didn’t mean to do another blog post about Richard Florida so soon, but I came across a paragraph in a new book by esteemed urban scholars Paul Knox and Heike Mayer that explains that arts and culture create more than just economic value for communities (Florida’s research shows that creativity and economic success are linked; Knox and Mayer say, “so what?”):

“Community-based theories suggest that the use of arts and culture for small town sustainability and regeneration should go beyond its instrumental value (i.e., economic competitiveness, creation of creative industries, etc.) and integrate the intrinsic characteristics of creativity. Creativity is not just about innovating or creating new things, products, processes or consumer experiences. Rather, creative endeavours shift our thinking and change strereotypes. Through the arts and culture, residents and artists can imagine a different future for a community or a place, and they can introduce paradigm shifts once they empowered through creativity.”

This quote better explains what I think we are trying to do with Ignite Boise, than any explanation I have come across: get people to imagine their community in new ways.

In the last week or so I also discovered an interesting fact about the University of Texas at Austin: it has the largest collection of university owned art in the United States at its Blanton Museum of Art, AND has America’s third leading university based technology commercialization office - it produces more patents and spin-offs than all but two other American universities. Coincidence? No.

Florida, Mayer and Knox are all correct. There is economic benefit to be gained by developing a community’s arts and culture. But there are other reasons for purely creative endeavors not the least of which is building the capacity for a community to envision itself in new ways, and there are strong signs that Boise is moving in that direction.