Writing in The Nation, Jeff Chang makes a powerful case for it.
“[T]he creativity stimulus” goes far beyond job creation and even economic development. Culture is not just something conservatives wage war on. The arts are not just something liberals dress up for on weekends. Creativity can be a powerful form of organizing communities from the bottom up. The economic crisis gives us a chance to rethink the role of creativity in
making a vibrant economy and civil society. Artists as well as community organizers cultivate new forms of knowledge and consciousness. One of the unsung stories of the past twenty-five years is how both have used creativity to inspire community development and renewal. Creativity has become the glue of social cohesion in times of turmoil.
He notes that creativity was a key hinge-point of Obama’s victory and that a creative communities approach is transformational, post-partisan, and progressive.
Deeply rooted in the communities that made Obama’s victory possible, these centers understand their work as transformational. Their communities are the most vulnerable to assaults on creativity, but they are also incubators of the most innovative ideas and movements of our time. This “creative communities” approach has created a vigorous and vital alternative to neoliberal and neoconservative versions of change.
I could quibble and say that Chang is mistaken when he refers to me as a “boom era theorist” uncritically reflecting the framing of my argument (largely by social conservatives) “as attracting new chai latte-sipping bourgeois into decaying parts of town.” Rather the core principle of my work is that every single human being is creative.
But Chang’s writing in The Nation is too important to get bogged down in that. I’m ecstatic that the progressive left is beginning to see the value of creativity to connecting people and building the broad cross-class, cross-race, and cross-cultural cohesion so critical for broad social and economic transformation. I agree broadly with Chang’s argument. Creativity is key to our economic and social future; it’s the basic building block that ties us together; it is the way to upgrade and improve working and service class jobs. It provides a whole different road-map to a broad and shared prosperity beyond backward-looking bailouts and stimulus plans.
Perhaps, we’re beginning to see a turning point in the conversation about our economic future.