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Beauty for business
Beauty for business
The arts enrich everyone no matter who you are.
Jan Björinge, CEO Umea2014, encourages culture-fuelled prosperity
“Don´t use us culture as a tool for economic growth!” is a common objection when we discuss culture and business in Umeå. It´s interesting, because Umeå is one of the best examples of culture driven economic growth in my opinion. In fact, I believe Krister Olsson, the Umeå businessman interviewed in this issue (read it here), is a hero in local development of culture and business.
In the past many great artists and composers were employed by kings, dictators and capitalist patrons of the arts. Of course artists across all genres want to be independent, creating art for arts sake and not for ‘the powers that be’ using the arts for reasons they were never intended. At the same time most artists want an audience, and to create emotions and movement. The more different kinds of culture we experience as an audience, the more likely that our perspectives widen, that we become more curious, creative, and innovative. If citizens participate in a diverse cultural life something happens to the creative climate of the whole municipality.
Culture creates curiosity, and curiosity is the spark of creativity, which in turn feeds the innovative process. Innovation produces new services, products, and design. It’s the engine behind economic growth as well as the hope for a sustainable development in the world.
Umeå2014 European Capital of Culture is an investment in culture driven growth based on a successful history and working towards a legacy of sustainable economic growth and further local and regional development.
Participating in a vibrant cultural life will influence our creative capacity independent of whether we are working in industry, services, or science. Culture driven economic growth is not about a delimited creative and cultural sector, it´s about culture as the oxygen for all sectors. It´s not about ‘the creative class’ (Rikard Florida) as such, it´s about human growth for all citizens.
Umeå started to invest in culture in the mid 1970s and we have invested much more in culture than the average Swedish municipality. Brave investments created a rich and diversified cultural life attractive to the citizens. Many citizens became co-creators in a variety of festivals, sports events, and hundreds of NGO´s.
The result is a booming, dynamic city, attractive to both cultural workers and business investors, as well as students, and new citizens from all over the world. Umeå is one of the most rapidly growing cities in Europe, according to Eurostat.
From the business side, as you will read in the interview, the entrepreneur and real estate developer Krister Olsson is a very good example of how business can contribute to attractiveness of a city and help increase property prices in a win-win for everybody. Private investments can contribute to the cities beauty, making for exciting public places for creative meetings that are beneficial for all business and real estate owners in the region.
Comments:
Already Günter Grass, when President of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, said culture should not be used to fill hotel beds, for artists need also a time when they do nothing, in order to replenish their energies.
Today Berlin is in danger of loosing the cutting edge in the competition to remain a creative city, for that depends on many spaces to be had at an affordable prize, so that artists can experiment and strive without worries whether or not they get an exhibition at which they sell their works, in order to survive. If everything is directed towards only what has a prize, what does this do to the perception of the arts, asked Marianne Wagner of the Freie Museum.
These are just small examples of a general notion that the concept of Richard Florida leads but to an explosion in real estate speculation which drives out the artists and therefore the creativity originally meant when speaking about doing not only something for the arts independently, but for a different and very human self understanding.
However, reference is made to current discussions and the possible rejection of a culture led kind of economy as envisioned by the CEO - first time such a term appears within the context of European Capitals of Culture, and this in comparison to what difference it makes if there is not a manager but an artistic director like Eric Antonis in charge - here a sample of one especially with Philippe Kern of KEA and one of the strongest proponents of the Cultural and Creative Industries:
Thanks to all contributors to KEA Creative Europe.The network counts 3000 members.Creative Europe is now the name of the European Programme.KEA wishes to connect creative minds and projects.
Philippe Kern Founder and managing director at KEA European Affairs Top Contributor
Comments
Giuseppe Mazziotti, Fabricio Chavarro and 16 others like this
9 comments
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Dominique C
Cofondateur du blog Les ARMES secrètes de la POESIE
Top Contributor
Créative Europe, joli nom en français aussi. Merci de m'accueillir dans ce groupe.
Advising and evaluation
Philippine, since KEA advocates so much the 'creative and cultural industries', and therefore sees the Creative Europe programme in such a positive light, please read the review by Robrecht Vanderbeeken.
http://www.stateofthearts.be/?author=1
If you want, we can talk more about what his review means in terms as to where the EU wishes to take culture.
ciao
hatto
Gabriele Giampieri, Dominique C GUILLERM like this
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Dominique C
Cofondateur du blog Les ARMES secrètes de la POESIE
Top Contributor
Merci Hatto pour ce lien extrêmement instructif ! La lecture en est longue et parfois ardue mais assez convaincante. Du coup, on a atténué l'enthousiasme de la première version de notre article : < L'Europe EST sa culture, pas juste un marché culturel ! > http://armesecretepoesie-axodom.blogspot.fr/2014/04/leurope-est-sa-culture.html
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Philippe
Founder and managing director at KEA European Affairs
Top Contributor
Rubrecht is right to send warning signals. He is wrong to paint everything in black. I guess his aim is rather to take a stance against what he calls 'neo liberalism' instead of looking at ways to make culture and art more central to society's developpements.
I do not recall making any comments on the Creative Europe programm. I guess time will tell whether we should positive about it. The programme is the result of political compromises essentially in favour of Europe's film lobby. However the budget increase to support cultural activities not a small victory , Is it ?
Petya Koleva likes this
Advising and evaluation
Dominique, you might want to look at the speeces given by Michael D. Higgins, now President of Ireland and a poet himself; see
There is an enormous sadness at the heart of Europe by Michael D. Higgins
http://poieinkaiprattein.org/culture/position-papers/there-is-an-enormous-sadness-at-the-heart-of-europe-by-michael-d-higgins/
The cultural space by Michael D. Higgins
http://poieinkaiprattein.org/europe/european-debate-2/position-papers/the-cultural-space-by-michael-d-higgins/
Philippe, the money supposedly gained for culture does not stand up to the loss of indepdent funding for the arts and culture. You speak about it having only value when contributing to the development of society, but what kind of development do you mean? If this is valorized solely in economic terms, then you are no longer talking about any cultural development. I think Ruprecht articulates quite a clear stance as to why your constant advocacy of creative and cultural industries leaves no space to the arts and culture. It is quite a different ball game, so to speak, if you talk about fashion design, but even famous fashion designers would admit they are not artists.
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Philippe
Founder and managing director at KEA European Affairs
Top Contributor
I never advocated that fashion designers are artists, even if some can pretend to such status such as Steven Mc Queen or Missoni. Generally they are creative professionals. There cannot be art and culture without artists - I recommend you read the contribution i just made on Culture in EU External Relations.
Petya Koleva likes this
Advising and evaluation
I did not say you said...The argumentation for or against the EU given the highest priority to cultural and creative industries has to be seen out of two perspectives: what does it mean for artists and cultural workers who would like to rely to some degree of certainty upon such European funding which does justice to their circumstance of work, and what policy options do politicians like to adopt, but which might be misleading in many ways if not all the consequences are discussed. The review by Ruprecht does offer an insight into an evaluation of the Creative Europe programme as it promotes mainly 'cultural and creative industries', and therefore it would be good to know what you say to this criticism as I consider you to be a prime promoter of this policy option after having proven in the eyes of the EU Commission what value culture adds to the economy. Basically I am saying the promotion of 'cultural and creative industries' is not a cultural but an industrial policy.
Petya Koleva likes this
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Petya
Managing director, trainer and consultant at Intercultura Consult
Dear gentlemen,
I am reading your comments and finding truth in all of them. This makes me remember an article by a colleague that is discussing the difference between cultural indicators (mostly relying on social and economic data) and arts indicators (qualititative as well as quantitative). To my mind we are at the early phase of the programme but the exhange is fruitful and needed because culture and values are of essential need to other sectors that are not GDP contributors but spenders such as defence, crime, education, social welfare etc.
Dominique C GUILLERM likes this
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Dominique C
Cofondateur du blog Les ARMES secrètes de la POESIE
Top Contributor
En effet, Petya !
Cet article sur la différence entre indicateurs culturels et indicateurs artistiques est-il disponible en ligne ?
Vous mentionnez à juste titre des domaines qui ne contribuent pas au PNB (produit national brut) : défense, etc. Mais j'en ajouterai un autre qui est bien plus proche de l'art et de la culture : la recherche fondamentale. Il arrive souvent qu'une découverte ne devienne une source de profits que très longtemps après.
De même, Albert Camus (l'un des auteurs les plus lus dans le monde avec "L'étranger") ou Maurice Ravel (dont le Boléro est le numéro 1 des exportations de musique française...) n'auraient pu imaginer leur apport financier au commerce extérieur de leur pays, et à la culture européenne.
Advising and evaluation
Dominique, already in 2000 but especially after the WSSD (World Summit on Sustainable Development) did we develop models for cultural indicators, and this with an expert of the European Commission. This development got stuck because usually politicians will only want to recognize such indicators which they can affect with their policy measures, and then be proven as having been successful.
Quite another methodology evolved out of the understanding of 'cultural impact studies', but its base line should remain the same, namely what can and do people support not only in the short, but in the long run.
For example, if you follow up the recommendation by Bob Palmer with regards to European Capitals of Culture, then it is all about the creation of such specific audiences which continue to support not merely the arts in general, but become lovers of dance, theatre, etc. And the cultivation of these audiences requires still many other things to sustain the most important aspect of all, namely receptivity. Thus critics, but also special ways of interacting with audiences e.g. the theatre director Grotowski developed here new techniques and relied at the same time on ritualized forms of chanting so that the human voice becomes audible, show how theatre productions evolve over time. But all that is missing in discussions talking about culture, generally speaking, and therefore becoming really a new type of ideology.
As for Camus, Marseille 2013 wanted to refer to this author in order to restart the dialogue not only with Algiers, but with the entire Middle East having gone through so many changes since the Arab Spring started in 2011. Yet the necessary 'dialogue between cultures' has not come about because both sides cannot agree on some deeper and more basic value dispositions.
Philippine, you asked me to look at your latest report to culture in foreign relations. Can you pleace give me the reference as to where I can find the contribution of KEA. One person who attended the most recent conference on this subject in Brussels said to me afterwards it was mostly rhetorics and nothing really of substance.
To give this discussion perhaps another angle or perspective, culture is also in learning to know how to use cultural resources, and this is best done by investing in them. This includes setting standards and in knowing what are artistic achievements in handling instruments, or materials, while opening up perspectives to imagine still other possibilities.
If I understand the last point you are making, Dominique, then I would say the arts and therefore culture is lost if its very concept would depend upon money as guidance as to what needs to be done.
A good question is what do we have in mind when not so much teaching, but giving children growing up opportunities to learn to speak in not just any but in a humane language. Here then enters the most crucial point so easily forgotten by those who drive the cultural industries into the economic direction and try to foster a kind of cretivity leading on to innovations of if not products then such services which mean business opportunities. Here Marx said decisive is that we use such a language which addresses the human self conscioiusness in the other and therefore as well in ourselves. And this is only possible when the language combines categories of productivity and creativity. As this is impossible if culture and economy are seperated (the economist Louis Baeck called it the Atlantic tradition), it depends how the economy is included in and governed by culture. For this reason the Western model of economy is deemed by many in the Mediterranean countries as not being workable, and indeed their households are other units to making decisions than global corporations. We need to understand that difference and comprehend the underlining conflicts as to which decision making process shall prevail as it depends on how we assess successes and failures.
A Good Easter to all
hatto
Athens 17.4.2014
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