Creative Places + Spaces 2005

At the Creative Places + Spaces conference in Toronto last year, I met a couple of colleagues from Breda University in the Netherlands, who run a number of creative industries-related courses - but in a leisure management context, which is quite different from the approach we're taking at QUT, but also includes exciting new concepts such as ' imagineering'. This week, Peter Horsten and Arend Hardorff are in Brisbane to visit QUT as well as a number of other local organisations (such as Michael Doneman's Edgeware) and explore opportunities for further collaboration. Last night, Ann and I took them out for dinner at the Tibetan Kitchen, and ended up chatting until the restaurant staff had to tell us in no uncertain terms 'we're closing now'. Let's hope we can maintain the connection - good to see you again, guys...

After a brief break, the second part of this 'Creative City-Building' session has now begun. The first speaker is Rita Davies, the Director of Culture for the city of Toronto.

Rita Davies: Piloting the Creative Iceberg

Rita begins by noting that the key ingredient in any strategy is the creative talent pool. Toronto, she says, has it 'in spades', but how do you work with that talent pool in support of a city-building agenda? The problem is somewhat like piloting an iceberg, but you never known when you're going to run into the Titanic and go seriously off course. Also, what most see and focus on is the relatively small tip of the agenda, but the bulk and power of it lie deep down beneath the surface. The process is key, and stumbling around in the dark sometimes is inevitable; a dogged perseverance sometimes is required.

We're now starting the second day of the Creative Places + Spaces conference, with another conference plenary. This is facilitated by Mary Rowe, a community artist from Toronto, who begins by congratulating the Artscape organisers for the conference so far (yay!), and now introduces the first speaker, Glen Murray from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto; he is also the former mayor of Winnipeg.

Glen Murray: Avoiding Irritable Bilbao Syndrome

Glen notes that there are a number of issues of concern at the moment. We are living in a very risk-adverse culture - in Canada, for example, people like their politicians to do what is predictable, not to be creative and original. Breaking with past practice escalates into an experience of higher rate risks of failure. The more original you are, the more people you will upset, and this raises the risk of failure. But why build political capital and popularity if you're not prepared to invest it in supporting and driving new projects and ideas? The media have a lot to answer here, too, as they reinforce sameness and the mainstream.

Alan Webber, Irshad Manji, Roberta Bondar and Joe Berridge make up the first panel of the morning, and Joe begins by setting the tone.

Joe Berridge: Four Principles

So, what is a creative city - would we recognise it if we were in it? Is it simply determined by creative festivals - in which case becoming a creative city is a universal ambition. How can creative cities distinguish themselves in 'the post-Richard Florida world'? Joe suggests that the creative city of the future is a Creative City - where the entire organisation of the city is creatively designed. About 25% of employment in a city is in the public service, which usually is anything bit creative in its operation - so how can creative principles be introduced into the local government environment? The effective achievement of its ambitions combined with creative approaches will set apart the creative city from others, and local government has the greatest potential for creative chance. This is the case in Toronto itself as well, where local government still remains an unreconstructed area of the city, even amidst so many creative projects.