So from time to time we're called upon, somewhat blandly, to prove -- Yes Prove -- the value of public art, and by extension, creative placemaking, and by extension, creativity.
Some of us believe in the intrinsic value of living creatively, and some of us, on an intuitive level, believe that there are real, measurable, tangible benefits. Yet to anyone but the most die-hard statistician, faced with measuring those benefits, the task can't appear anything other than daunting.
The problem is that the benefits are so many, they feather out so far . . . who can say where the limit falls?
If I'm a wealthy entrepreneur in 10 years because I am an nurtured by a supportive community of innovators today, will the future money I pay in yearly taxes count? Or even simpler: what about the money saved each year by not cleaning up graffiti from a wall that's now a mural . . . does that count? And what about the deterrent effect on the next wall over? Does that count, too?
It's not that we don't have some language to talk about these things -- sure, foot traffic. sure tourism. sure talent clustering. sure.
But for the many of us who care about creative placemaking -- who are at the forefront of the dialogue or in the trenches making it happen -- we ourselves are creative. We care about and believe in creativity deeply, as a way of life, and may be a wee tad bit romantic and disinclined -- just sayin' -- to spend too much time convincing people of something we see as self-evident or splitting hairs over numbers.
So what can be done to fold data collection into our efforts, encourage monitoring of outcomes, and promote distribution of these numbers in a field that could use some bolstering in this regard?
We're operating in the penumbra left by Richard Florida's glaringly optimistic pre-recession parade of books, lectures, and profitable (for him) recommendations. Even with more conscientious efforts at turning this emerging practice into accepted policy, the information is still often vague, tirelessly recycled, or circularly referenced, with much of it tying back into the NEA's Creative Placemaking by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa, whose work -- under their own names, their consultancies' names, and the names of various clients -- forms a huge bulk of the information being released.
It's a great primer, but we need more to justify claims about the economic importance of this practice; whether such claims are necessary, of course, being a whole 'nother field of inquiry. I'm not saying -- as many detractors are -- that this field is only viable if the facts and figures prove it so. But we do often reference this instrumentalist viewpoint, and as such, we'd better have quality numbers on our side -- after all, numbers are what we're looking for when we approach foundations and investors.
So, suffice it to say, when I had the chance to hear opinion on this issue straight from the horse's mouth -- Jamie Bennett was at the City Club last Friday -- I asked.
All this preamble is a bit much to fit into a quick question for a general audience -- though I tried, and the result may have been . . . less than eloquent. Mealy-mouthed though I was, I think it was important to play, for a minute, a representative of the number-hounding crowd that wants to see everything in columns with decimal points and ten-year projections -- the devil's advocate. I think it's important to win these people over -- play their game and our own too -- but the hesitancy to meet these folks where they are from our side (or the NEA's) is, I think, telling.
I was hoping Jaime would provide for me the argument I've so often struggled to make myself. Instead of affirmation, I got confirmation that much more work is needed.
And more, to be fair, is on its way.
Anne Gadwa begins to explore the "fuzziness" of vibrancy, comparing the NEA's definition to the slightly softer version offered up by ArtPlace; but the paper, which is primarily based on self-citation of her and Markusen's earlier works, doesn't really move beyond an admission of this fuzziness.
Create Equity moves further in cataloguing some of the challenges and approaches used in valuing creativity thus far, and even more encouraging is the Philadelphia Culture Blocks program, which has actually made strides toward concrete metrics taken through a variety of approaches -- and funded, most hearteningly -- through an Our Town grant.
For better or worse, we are (Jamie's words, not mine) "creating a field." And like any field in the natural sciences, the social sciences, even the arts -- after all, what is music if not math, and painting if not chemistry -- there are numbers to be reckoned with. Numbers, after all, what fill out the checks that get the projects built.