Creative Cities: The Warhol Economy

1
Creative Cities The Warhol Economy

• Elizabeth Currid
• University of Southern California

2
Some basic questions

• Is there a role for creativity in urban centers?
• Why should we care?
• If it matters, how does creativity work in
  cities?

3
First, art and culture matter.

• 4th Largest Employer in NYC and LA (2000 Census)
• 3rd Largest Employer in London (Arts Council of
  England)
• Most represented of all industries in NYC and LA
• 21 billion impact on New York Citys economy.
• 50-60 billion annually in revenues for Londons
  economy.
• Cultural industries were responsible for 1 in 4
  jobs in London from 1995-2000
• Source Bureau of Labor Statistics, Alliance from
  the Arts, NYC, Arts Council of England and GLA

4
The creative industries Art, culture and media
(Location Quotient)

• Occupation NYC Boston SF LA
  Chicago
• Fashion Designers 15.98 0.00 2.01 4.78 0.43
• Fine Artists 4.98 3.39 2.01 1.47 1.59
• Musicians and Singers 6.79 0.97 3.19 3.41 1.18
• Art Directors 4.90 1.98 2.96 1.83 1.70
• Writers and Authors 2.89 1.48 2.10 2.98 0.00
• Film and Video Editors 6.09 1.44 1.75 8.79 0.57
• Producers and Directors 4.15 0.00 2.46 6.21 0.69
• Overall Creative LQ 4.48 1.30 2.09 3.26 1.12

5
Data and methods

• Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data
  collection
• Participant observation
• 80 semi-structured, open-ended qualitative
  interviews with New York City-based cultural
  producers and those who work in cultural
  industries
• Cultural producers fashion designers, artists,
  musicians, graphic designers, graffiti artists
• Gatekeepers Curators, gallery owners,
  fashion/art critics, editors, nightclub and
  entertainment venue owners

6
The social milieu

• One night these dudes invited me out for drinks.
  I didnt
• want to go, then I said to myself go, so
  youre in their
• sites, thats business for me but its fun
  Ricky Powell, photographer
• Three types of social milieu that facilitate
  the cultural economy
• Nightlife
• Industry Events
• In situ interactions Spatial Proximity
  (Neighborhoods)

7
The importance of the scene

• Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Tim Buckley, at Max's
  Kansas City, NYC, 1968.
•  

8
The social milieu

• Cultural producers use their social lives for
  career mobilization (sometimes consciously,
  sometimes not)
• The social milieu offers the perpetual
  possibility to advance their careers
• In this respect, cultural producers expressed
  ambivalence towards their social lives.

9
Social mechanisms
The clustering of cultural industries and their
accompanying workers indirectly facilitates (via
the milieu) three types of micro-social
mechanisms

• Networking and weak ties (Granovetter 1972)
• Crossover between interlocking art worlds
  (Becker 1982)
• Transaction costs

10
I. Networking
The concentration of labor pools, firms,
gatekeepers allows for an efficient and
instantaneous means of mobilizing people around
projects

• Getting a job use of weak ties
• Access to gatekeepers
• Assessing taste in a highly uncertain
  environment (Hirsch 1972)

11
Networking Getting a job

• I was out on a date three weeks ago, I was
  really bored. I went to get another drink and
  ran into someone from Creative Time a public art
  organization and he put me in touch with a music
  house, a place I was going to contact. I got in
  touch with them and now I am going to send a
  demo.Where you socialize, your social life
  completely determines your worklife and vice
  versaWe all go to the same places after a
  gallery opening, we go to the artists dinner
  etc.. a DJ

12
Networking Access to gatekeepers

• Artists go to shows to meet people who write
  about art, meet them again and again at gallery
  openings and shows, pretty soon call them up and
  invite them to their show. artist
• I was really hoping Jeffery Deitch would be here
  tonight so that I could talk to him about my
  upcoming show. - artist

13
NetworkingAccessing taste, observing fads
and fashions

• A lot of designers were coming to our
  neighborhood Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Hedi
  Slimane at Dior, Dolce and Gabanna, John Galliano
  would come to look at the crowd and dancecatch
  the vibe, because thats their job, to see whats
  going on in the air Larry T, DJ

14
II. Interlocking art worlds
Agglomeration allows cultural industries to
constantly engage each other across separate
fields resulting in new combinations of jobs,
products and evaluation.

• Three approaches
• Flexible career paths
• Symbiotic peer review
• New forms of cultural goods (Hebdige 1979)

15
Art worldsFlexible career paths
Just did a billboard on the LES. Not graffiti
but since Ive mastered graffiti, I can do
commercial jobsIt was a 5000 job so that will
hold me down for a couple of months Meres,
graffiti artist

• Cultural producers establish career trajectories
  outside of their primary industry. Three
  approaches
• Add art to nonartistic industries
• Use artistic skills to contribute to other
  cultural industries
• Credibility in one industry transferred to
  another
• I make a living just being the Claw Claw,
  graffiti artist
• (e.g. Graffiti artists design sneakers for Nike,
  hip-hop artists establish clothing lines)

16
Flexible career pathAndre the Giant has a posse

• Shepard Faireys graffiti art has turned into a
  major clothing, design and music conglomerate

17
Art worldsSymbiotic peer review

• It used to be the real fashion press that makes
  or breaks your career. Now its if Lindsey Lohan
  wears your dress Cynthia Rowley, fashion
  designer
• Established and successful cultural producers
  often act as gatekeepers in defining what good
  art is
• Occurs across industries (e.g. Marc Jacobs as
  fashion designer and purveyor of cool music)

18
Art worldsCultural referencing

• Cultural borrowing and referencing of various
  different industries to generate new products
• Subculture transformed into mainstream
  commodities

19
III. Transaction costs

• When I lived in San Diego and I would bring my
  stuff to New York, no one would ever call. Its
  so much by chance, by running into people.Its
  quick when people need things they pick up the
  phone and call but so much is just instantaneous
  and they need it now and its just too much
  work to contact that guy in San Diego.They may
  have the sincerest effort to call me but why
  would they when they can just find someone on the
  street? graphic designer

20
Transaction costs Less trouble is less trouble

• While it is only a small amount of trouble to
  call that guy in San Diego theyre not going to
  do it
• Its not even necessarily an active choice to
  pick someone in New York, but by virtue of being
  there, in situ, these exchanges occur and are
  by extension easier than making an effort even
  a small one

21
Transaction costs

• The chances of a SPIN a music-oriented
  magazine writer being at a show in Kansas City
  is unlikely but here he could be out with his
  friends, not even working, and you can be heard
  by him. The chances of being seen by the right
  people is much higher. musician
• Cultural industries rely on spontaneous ad hoc
  project networks that involve a dense and diverse
  network of firms and labor pools that can
  constantly combine, recombine, connect and
  disconnect
• Being in the same place optimizes these dynamics.
  Its just that much easier if the labor pool is
  instantly available

22
Why place (and thus policy) matters

• These mechanisms are unique to the clustering
  of firms and labor pools in the same place.
• Exactly the same person with exactly the same
  skills would have dramatically different (and
  limited) opportunities if located somewhere else
• The mechanisms reinforce themselves More
  people, more firms ? more potential for
  networking, cross-fertilization less transaction
  costs
• These are the dynamics that build place-based
  cultural reputation (New York fashion, London
  artists, Hollywood films)

23
Policy through practice Creating the places
where art and culture happen
24
1. Cultural industries matter to urban economies

• Should be supported as much as other industries
• Place is branded by the cultural production that
  occurs there and benefits from this association
  (e.g. tourism, attracting more of the same firms,
  talent etc.)

25
2. Reconsidering how the arts are funded and
subsidized

• To support the arts, lets start with supporting
  the artists themselves.
• While the formal art world is important, many of
  the important interactions within the cultural
  economy occur in the informal milieu and across
  various sub-sectors.

26
3. Place is the crucial node where it all happens

• Through zoning and housing subsidies,
  policymakers can encourage the agglomeration that
  encourages the dynamics associated with
  successful cultural centers.

27
4. Too much of a good thingEconomic developers
as anti-gentrifiers

• Preventing certain types of growth that push out
  cultural producers.
• Proactive responses to the Soho effect or the
  Hoxton effect.