A growing disparity of wealth and education opportunities
in America producing a cultural divide
So far I've outlined a number of threats to creativity that
might be said to have general negative effects on people's
ability to be creative, outspoken, unorthodox and intellectually
equipped for the 21st Century.
One of the most powerful and bountiful source of creativity
for America is her arts and cultural sector. The more people
who can experience the arts and cultural activities, the more
likely they will practice those arts themselves. The more
people who do creative activities earlier in life, the more
likely they will continue to do those activities later in
life.
While tens of millions of Americans pursue creative hobbies
and creative experiences, there is a real barrier to creative
expression in America. There is a cultural divide in America
that is another expression of the economic divides that grow
larger every year. This divide is expressed by:
- who has access to arts and culture experiences in school
- which influence future likelihood to attend arts events
and appreciate cultural experiences, - who attends arts and
culture events and spaces - which influences who volunteers
and contributes funds to creative enterprises and organizations.
- who gets to be a creative professional in America.
The
Rand Corporation, a research agency long associated with
the Defense and State Departments, turned its attention to
the state of the arts in America for a series of studies and
reports. "The
Performing Arts in a New Era" was published in 2001. They
took an in-depth look at attendance at arts and cultural events.
Here is a chart summarizing the participation rates in the
performing arts by level of education. The types of participation
are given as "Doing," that is, personally practicing
a performing art form; "Attending" a performance in
person and experiencing a performance via some form of "Media."
The highest level of Attending are adults with graduate
school education - just south of 30%. While about 65% of adults
with graduate school education participate in the arts in
some way via electronic Media. In almost each instance the
amount of participation increases with higher educational
attainment. There is a huge jump from people who completed
high school and people who completed college - over 100% increase
in Attending numbers.
It seems pretty obvious that we have a cultural divide in
America along traditional class and economic lines - as expressed
in levels of education.
One finding from this chart is the dismally low level of performing
arts "doing" across all levels of American society. Clearly,
levels of attendance step up dramatically with increased levels
of education. Another noteworthy development is how access
to media starts to level out the differences in class. This
data is already ancient and given the proliferation of cell
phones and Internet access, one can speculate that more Americans
are experiencing some form of the performing arts via the
media. It's also important to note that there is tremendous
room for growth in both Doing and Attending arts experiences
in America. Rates of attendance also follow disturbing racial
lines, as revealed by the 2004
U.S. Statistical Abstract. Generally, Whites over 18 years
old are at least twice as likely to attend an arts event than
African-Americans or Hispanics. The only exception is attendance
of a jazz performance. 13% of African Americans attended at
least one jazz performance in 2001, while 11% of White adults
did.[12]
For example, the numbers of people over 18 years old who
attended a non-musical play were: Total population = 11%,
Whites = 14%, African-Americans = 7% and Hispanics = 6%. Access
to the arts is a critical aspect of a well-rounded education
and reams
of studies have documented how doing and participating
in the arts and using the arts in education leads to heightened
academic performance. As ticket prices climb for cultural
events, there is a danger that arts experiences presented
by formal, nonprofit cultural organizations will become out
of reach for a majority of Americans. We can only hope that
churches, community organizations, block clubs and schools
continue to program cultural events and activities that their
members can attend at little or no cost.
This exposure to the arts is becoming a rarer and rarer
experience, especially for schools serving mainly minority
students. The Council for Basic Education was founded in 1956
"to ensure all elementary and secondary school students an
excellent education in the basic liberal arts subjects --
English, history, science, mathematics, the arts, civics,
geography and foreign language." In March 2004 the Council
issued a report with the doleful title, "Academic
Atrophy: The Condition of the Liberal Arts in America's Public
Schools".
The amount of time being spent teaching the arts is decreasing
and will continue to decrease - with more high-minority schools
experiencing more of the loss. 25% of all principals reported
decreases in instructional time for the arts (only 8% reported
increases) and 33% anticipated future decreases. 36% of high-minority
school principals reported decreases here; of these 35%, over
a third reported large decreases. 43% of high-minority school
principals reported future decreases likely, and of those,
42% expected large decreases.[13]
Ironically, the Council, itself, went out of business in
October of 2004. So, if attendance at arts and culture events
is influenced by income and educational status and exposure
to the arts in school is also influenced by these factors,
would you be surprised to learn who gets to be an artist in
America?
A 2004 study "Information
on Artists III" conducted by the Columbia
University Teachers College Research Center for Arts and Culture
looked at the condition of artists in the San Francisco Bay
Area. It reported that 76% of the artists were white (compared
to 90% from a similar 1988 study). The report pointed out
that U.S. statistics for 2000 showed the white non-Hispanic
population as 49.7% in San Francisco city and county, 59.5%
in California and 75.1% in the country.
This is a small sample but I think the conclusion is valid:
if you're white and wealthy you're much more likely to have
exposure to the arts and enjoy arts instruction as a youngster.
This trend shows up as life-habits as whites are more likely
by a factor of two-plus that they will attend arts events
as an adult. It shows up as career paths as whites seem to
be over-represented in the arts. My own experience as an arts
manager in Chicago and attending conferences in ten states
is that arts management is a predominately white domain. (A
quick survey of the Internet reveals a similar skewing of
whites being represented in other creative professions: The
Commission
for Architecture and the Built Environment, a British
organization, reported on the ethnic composition of British
professional schools and found that in 2000 the great majority
of the students were white -- 74% of architecture students;
82% of architecture, building and planning students;
66% of the law students; and 61% of medicine and dentistry
students. A study in the November 2004 North
Carolina Medical Journal reports that the healthcare professions
are overwhelmingly white (89% of dentists, 83% of managers,
76% of doctors and 82% of nurses). Healthcare is part of the
creative economy - what
Richard Florida termed "creative professionals.")
These observations are tempered by the understanding that
many people, regardless of race or class, access music via
the radio, Internet and street-level performances and that
many people attend cultural events in informal and non-traditional
settings, such as churches, block clubs, and the like. It
also recognized that many people engage in creative activities
or hobbies without labeling them as "creative."
I've argued that we
are all creative in one or more ways. The more creative
we can be, the more likely America will experience continued
benefits of creative outputs - beautiful works of art, though
provoking writing, life altering medical discoveries, new
businesses and inventions, and social change organizing that
will challenge and uplift us. In order to have a creative
America where every citizen can be as creative and as inventive
as she can be, and therefore contribute to her utmost, we've
got to eliminate these barriers to experiencing and DOING
creativity.
"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only
tragedy is to allow part of us to die -- whether it is our
spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness" - by Gilda
Radner
Let Richard Florida Have the Last Word (almost) My
views owe a great deal to Professor
Richard Florida. His 2002 book, "The Rise of the Creative
Class," has become a best seller and has placed creativity
squarely on the public policy landscape. He's traveled extensively
in the United States and internationally lecturing on his
findings.
He has made the case that a region's (or nation's) economic
future is most closely tied to the management, nourishment
and acceleration of that region's creative assets. He has
said that creativity is driving our global economy and that
creativity resides in people and that creative people need
creative places to live and work. He's reduced his prescription
for economic success to the "Three Tees" - "Technology,
Talent and Tolerance." If you want to maximize the creative
outputs of your region - do everything in your power to maximize
the production and quality of these dynamics. I would suggest
that these qualities are a place to start. The word "tolerance"
offends many human rights activists and social commentators.
As one writer, consultant and civic activist commented in
a public lecture on creativity and regional competitiveness,
"As a lesbian, I don't want to be tolerated. I want to
be included - I want to be welcomed and valued."
Florida's Three Tees have provided a jumping off place for
many regional economic development initiatives seeking to
compete on the basis of their creative assets. I'll take a
stab at a Creativity Agenda later in this book. In 2004 Professor
Florida started publishing follow-up material that reflected
new research that compared our creative class status to the
rest of the globe. In the January/February 2004 issue of
Washington Monthly, Florida's article "Creative
Class War - How the GOP's Anti-Elitism Could Ruin America's
Economy," started to make the political argument for creativity
in America. The article called attention to our position with
regard to other countries. One of the trends Florida tracked
was the rate at which countries are gaining or loosing creative
jobs. He shows how Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium,
Italy and Ireland are outpacing America in their overall creativity
production; with Germany, Spain and Austria close behind us.[14]
It's clear from his international research that America
by no means has a lock on the levers of the Creative Economy.
Other countries have grasped the concept of growing their
economies by intentionally nurturing their creativity assets.
In the article he urges both political parties and their candidates
to pay attention to the imperatives of the Creative Economy
and the conditions under which creativity and creative people
thrive. He concludes the article with this observation, "The
challenge for the GOP, if it wants to avoid running the economy
into the ground, is to stop sneering at the elites, the better
to win votes in their base, and to start paying attention
to economic policies that might lift all boats. The challenge
for Democrats, if they want to win, is to find ways of reaching
out to the rest of the country, to convince at least some
of its many regions that policies which operate to the interests
of the creative class are in their interests as well." Unfortunately,
neither party or their candidate adopted this point of view.
Florida develops this analysis in his 2005 book, "The
Flight of the Creative Class - The New Global Competition
for Talent." He offers a snap shot comparison of the United
States to 44 other countries along what he's defined as the
Global Creativity Index. The index is a summary of his three
chief metrics: Technology, Talent and Tolerance.
He compares 45 countries and the United States came out
fourth after Sweden, Japan and Finland. Switzerland, Denmark,
Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Germany are close behind.[15]
There are a number of lessons to take away from this work.
For our purposes, I think the main lesson is this: creativity
resides in people and creative people live and work all over
an increasingly inter-connected planet. Increasingly, the
economic scorecard is about growing, rewarding and leveraging
the talents of the creative workforce. No one nation has a
immutable dominance in maintaining and nurturing a creative
workforce. If one nation squanders its precious human capital,
another nation will benefit. If one nation makes its creative
citizens unwelcome or scares away creative workers from abroad,
these creative people will go where they are welcome and rewarded.
He concludes the book with this:
"Maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but I think the United States
can continue to be a beacon of openness for the creative class
-- and, indeed, for the whole of humanity. It has a long history
of resourcefulness and creativity to draw on, and it has transformed
itself many times before, rebuilding after the Great Depression
and bouncing back after the Asian manufacturing boom of the
1980's.
The role of the United States in generating creativity and
talent is a concern not only for U.S. businesses and policy
makers, but for all nations. American universities and corporations
have long been the educators and innovators for the world.
If this engine stalls -- or if political decisions about immigration,
visas, and scientific research put sugar in its tank -- the
whole world will have to live with the repercussions.
The creative age requires nothing short of a change of worldview.
Creativity is not a tangible asset like mineral deposits,
something that can be hoarded or fought over, or even bought
and sold. We must begin to think of creativity as a common
good, like liberty or security. It's something essential that
belongs to all of us, and that must always be nourished, renewed,
and maintained -- or else it will slip away." Sounds like
fighting words to me. Are you ready to roll up your sleeves
and put your creative energies where your creative values
are?
Do You Believe Creativity is at Risk in America?
I've tried to make the case that while I believe America
is about creativity and opportunity, there is a shadow on
the land that threatens our precious national heritage. While
I believe it's the American way to embrace the new and welcome
the different, many of our civic leaders appear to disagree.
I want to live in a country where creativity flourishes
and intelligence is celebrated. I want America to stand for
unbridled opportunity without respect to any pre-conceived
classification, designation, origination, orientation or specification.
What do you think?
If you make your living from creativity or hold creativity
as a core value for your own life, then you might want to
stand up for creativity as it, like the environment, can't
protect itself.
Do you care enough about state and future of creativity
in America to become a creativity champion? Are you proud
of your place in America's creative heritage?
Are you mad enough at the toxic dumpers in our creative
ecology that you will act?
If you do and you are - then it's time to get ready, get
set and lead!
