»The Creative City«

The following text previews the panel of the WORLD CULTURE FORUM. The proceedings of the panel will be published here after the 2nd WORLD CULTURE FORUM 2009 (October 8th – October 10th).

Balance: Economics, Art and Society

Approach:

This panel will discuss the underlying meaning of the world’s “cultural creators,” meaning artists, architects, designers, cultural supporters and the bigwigs behind the development of modern society. The city is not only a place that profits from the creative forces that live there, since the simultaneous, unspoken pull of the modern metropolis draws in the creative classes and serves as a basis for their workaday lives. The underbelly of city living also needs to be addressed, precisely because it has become the source of income for a great number of people within this class.

Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Günter Faltin – Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Peter Marcuse – Columbia University NY
Dr. Philipp Klaus – INURA Zürich Institut
Prof. Nikolaus von Kaisenberg – Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft

Presentation: Markus Föderl – Schweizer Rundfunk

Place and Time

Saturday, October 10th, 2009
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 a.m.
Gläsernes Studio in der VW Manufaktur

Additional Information:

Partner/Initiator: WORLD CULTURE FORUM
Simultaneous Translation in German and English

Concept in detail

The US economist Richard Florida, in his theory of the “creative class” (2002), showed that a society’s creative workers and the innovations they introduce are crucial to the economic growth of regions. The British urban researcher Charles Landry has shown that cities and regions that aspire to sustained success and viability have to be able to train, attract, and retain creative talent. The “Creative Cities” panel will build on Florida’s and Landry’s arguments in its discussion of the significance of creative men and women (artists, designers, the arts and culture community, creative entrepreneurs, etc.) for the development of modern societies. The panel will understand the city not simply as a space that profits from the presence of creative men and women, as it is the modern city in particular that has and will continue to serve creative people as the very basis of their work. Besides the positive potential of a “creative class,” as described by Florida and Landry, the panel will touch on the potential downside of the shifting working conditions which people in “creative” professions are often forced to live under (see Richard Sennett: “The Corrosion of Character”/”The Culture of the New Capitalism”).

Main hypotheses

-The city as natural habitat of the creative class?

-Art/culture as engine of change?

-Revitalization of urban development by the arts and culture community/the creative economy?

-The artist as prototype of the modern entrepreneur

-The creative class: between self-fulfillment and self-exploitation

-The “corrosion of character” (Sennett): Liberation or curse?/The “corrosion of character” as downside of the creative class?

-Has the creative class risen to become a factor in a location’s attractiveness—or has it been degraded to such?