Skip to main contentJames DePreist's final concert last week as conductor of the Oregon Symphony may also serve as the swan song for an idea. DePreist was lured to Portland 23 years ago by this city's power brokers not only to give the orchestra cachet, but also to serve as a figurehead for the culture at large and boost Portland's attractiveness.
DePreist's legacy is a mixture of success and failure. He did manage to put his orchestra on the map, but did he succeed in putting Portland there? If a new, controversial theory is correct, the city's artistic vitality may have more to do with what has happened in such venues as the Meow Meow all-ages rock club than in the Arlene Schnitzer auditorium. If author Richard Florida is right, the idea of "trickle-down" culture will need to be scrapped.
Florida, a 45-year-old professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, came to town last week to speak to the Americans for the Arts annual convention, which landed in Portland during a broiling Rose Festival weekend. Among the 500 or so in Florida's audience were Portland's government and arts leaders. Most of them were already intimately familiar with Florida's red-and-white-covered book The Rise of the Creative Class, a manual for turning a city into a mecca for creative people and, by extension, creative industries.
For many Portland arts leaders, this book is more than a bible--it's a call to alms. For cash-starved arts organizations, it offers the hope of salvation in the form of government advocacy and funding. On the speaking circuit, Florida has become a star attraction. On the Friday before he spoke in Portland, he regaled a group of jaded newspaper editors at an alt-weekly convention in Pittsburgh wearing flip-flops and jeans. By Sunday he was here in a sharp suit.
But what's his message? Florida puts forward the hypothesis that a new class of individuals has risen within the culture that has, as he writes in his book, "shaped and will continue to shape deep and profound shifts in the ways we work, in our values and desires, and in the very fabric of our everyday lives." This "creative class," Florida believes, is the vanguard in a cultural movement that will be as powerful as the industrial revolution.
Florida doesn't look like an economics professor. He's boyishly handsome, and capitalizes on it. He can speak for an hour without any notes. Rather than rely solely on statistics, he'll take his eyeglasses off and use them as a prop to explain his philosophy.
There's great fluidity within Florida's theory of the creative class. In short, anyone who possesses an innate respect for diversity, merit and creativity and who is paid for or devoted to using his or her mind is a member. But what makes Florida stand out is that he's the first social commentator to wade into the current cultural flux and offer navigation. The changes he charts are reverberating throughout American city halls, especially Portland's.
In fact, Mayor Vera Katz established a Cultural Economy Initiative a year ago as a means to take up Florida's challenge and hired economic development specialist Rosie Williams to lead the charge. "We're asking artists what brings them here," says Williams. "And, more importantly, how can we keep them here."
Katz and Williams have had two meetings with artists and young entrepreneurs to discuss the issues confronting Portland's Bohemia. "The primary focus is on affordable rents and health care," says Williams, a longtime Katz ally. "We're interested in ways to address these questions." At the moment, the city has a slim budget for the initiative, just under $100,000. But the energetic Williams is seeking other forms of funding (both state and private) while emphasizing the wisdom of the enterprise to Portland's business community. She may not have to argue too strenuously: She says City Commissioner Erik Sten and the Portland Development Commission have become Floridian as well.
Using various statistical data and indices, Florida shows that many cities in America have become magnets for high-tech and new technologies because they offer a rich, urban lifestyle along with a commitment to diversity. Florida finds more businesses relocating to cities that have a base population of intelligent, young, creative people.
According to Florida, it's not a coincidence that Seattle and Austin are known for both their tech industries and music scenes. That's because there's an interplay of energies where one aids the other, and vice versa. Companies need bright, talented staff; bright, talented people live in cities that have high artistic, bohemian and gay quotients; companies move to those cities.
Portland comes out quite well in Florida's estimation. What the city sorely lacks in racial diversity is offset by an exploding art scene that encompasses music, film, dance and writing. Even with the bleak state of the economy, people are still flocking to Portland to take advantage of its relatively low rents and its tolerant, if not supportive, atmosphere...the very bedrock of a creative class.
Many artists have concerns about the city's new approach, questioning the sincerity of the mayor's interest. "I'm distrustful of any attempt to simplify the complexity of culture into a lifestyle," says Bryan Markovitz, a PR flack by day, artistic director of the Liminal Performance Group by night. "People are using Florida's book to distill the elements of a creative community into a shopping list for economic development," he says.
Llewyn Máire, executive co-director of 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts, agrees with Markovitz. "I'd prefer the city adopts tendencies rather than policies," says Máire. "They should be supportive without being intrusive." As one of the artists that met with the city, Máire noted the apprehension among peers: "When we were asked what we wanted, [filmmaker] Matt McCormick said, 'Leave us alone.'" Williams has sympathy for such criticisms: "We should really be in a backseat position."
But is taking any position necessary? Portland seems to be attracting creative people without municipal efforts, luring even a top-tier film director like Todd Haynes, who will tell anyone who asks that Portland's arts scene is one of its best selling points.
If some artists seem suspicious, it's not just paranoia. The mayor's newfound enthusiasm for the fringe fits uncomfortably with her draconian policies against postering, community mural projects and loitering. Some suggest the Cultural Economy Initiative is mere packaging for business brochures.
The mayor must also decide how far her devotion to Florida's theories go. For Florida makes it clear that the new creative class and its employers are not interested in sports stadiums, neither are they principally drawn to the old institutionalized arts: repertory theater, opera or the symphony--regardless of who's conducting. Is our mayor ready for the revolution?
by Richard Florida
(Basic Books, 404 pages, $27.50)
"Authenticity comes from several aspects of a community -- historic buildings, established neighborhoods, a unique music scene or specific cultural attributes."
How Portland rates (among regions over 1 million population):
High- Tech Index Rank: 10.
Gay Index Rank: 20.
Bohemian Index Rank: 6.
Overall Rank: 16.
magazine just named Portland the ninth-most important music scene in the U.S.
WWeek 2015