The Creative Compact

For all you pessimists out there who believe our country has lost its edge and its position as a global leader, Richard Florida, author of “Rise of the Creative Class”, has a proposal that outlines our nation’s path back to the role of respected world leader.

Florida is calling for a new Creative Compact – a Creative Economy analog to the great social compact of the 1930’s, 40s & 50s, which expanded and accelerated the Industrial Economy and led to the great golden age of prosperity.

During that time, the Industrial Society was spurred into existence by a new social compact known as the New Deal which brought capital and labor closer together, by encouraging the development of mass production unions, linking wage increases to productivity gains, by improving health and safety in the workplace, and by creating social security for older people and basic social welfare service for the truly needy.

Florida’s paper suggests that we need a new social pact, attuned to the demands of the Creative Economy. He offers 10 principles as the starting point for a much needed national and global conversation.

#1. Every Human Being is Creative
#2. Encourage Entrepreneurship across the Board
#3. Expand Innovation
#4. A Social Agenda for Creativity
#5. Restructure Education for Creativity
#6. The University as Creative Hub
#7. Make Every Community a Creative Community
#8. Leverage the Local
#9. Recommit to Openness and Diversity
#10. A Global Agenda

By devoting its energy to this kind of effort to spread the benefits of the creative economy across the globe, the United States can reclaim its status as a truly open and free society and lead the world and its people in becoming a more prosperous and less divided place. More importantly, it can reassert itself as a risk-taking society, one which encourages entrepreneurship and experimentation by caring for its people and providing for their basic security – physical, social, political, and economic.

If you’d like to read the full paper go to:
http://www.creativeclass.com/article_library/search.php?searchKeywords=creative+compact

Carpe diem baby!!!

Richard Florida, in his book, “Rise of the Creative Class” identifies creativity as the distinguishing marker for the next wave of leaders and producers in our society.

Society is changing & the driving force of this change is the rise of human creativity as the key factor in our economy and society. The creative individual is no longer viewed as an iconoclast. I have great news for you. We, as creatively minded people, are the new mainstream. Creativity is becoming highly valued. Systems are evolving to encourage and harness new ideas, new technologies, new industries, new wealth. All other economic things flow from creativity. Creativity is essential to the way we live and work today. Human creativity is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. It involves distinct kinds of thinking & habits that must be cultivated both in the individual and the surrounding society. Creatively minded people are indeed the chief currency of the emerging economic age. And our economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content. We engage in complex problem solving. We can never be forced to work but are never truly not at work.

Paul Romer claims the “the most important ideas of all are ‘meta ideas’ – ideas that support the production and transmission of other ideas”. Thriving Artist Alliance is a meta idea! We are committed to supporting the creative.

Einstein said, “Every act of creation is at first an act of destruction.” Thriving Artist Alliance is engaging in what economist Joseph Schumpeter called, “the perennial gale of creative destruction”. What TAA is destroying is the Starving Artist Archetype - an outdated archetype that must be laid to rest. If what Richard Florida is saying in his book is true, then our time, the time for artists and creatives has finally come. Couple this with our current real estate market and you’ve got an unprecedented moment in history that we may truly never see again. Carpe diem baby!!!