For next Tuesday, June 30th, please read:
- Sections: “The Power of Place” and “Building the Creative Community” from Florida, Richard (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: and How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.
- “Stripping for the Movement” (BB)
Thursday, July 2nd: NO CLASS!!
Blog response for week still due by Friday p.m.
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June 25, 2009
Comment on The Power of Place
Slambam17 = Mindy Brooks-Smith
With the area that we live in I would have to agree that people in general, which include the creative class, are moving away from the traditional corporate communities. D.C.’s sprawl has reached Northern Virginia some time ago and is continuing to spread. People that have lived in theses areas for a while are now moving outward to get away from the corporate communities and constant traffic, noise, and overflow of people. I am one that plan to move away from all this hustle as soon as I can. I feel that I can not truly enjoy where I live because there is constant noise and people around. Like discussed in previous chapters of one of the books; creative people need surroundings that are stimulating, but not over stimulating. Corporate communities offer great places to visit but they also come with over population of people, traffic, and decrease from the stimulating resource of pure nature.
I feel that place is a very powerful tool to stimulate ones mind and inspiration. Look at the ancient art of Feng Shui. Feng Sui is about the power of placing things in a certain spots so that your chi (inner self spirit) can have easier flow in your home, office, or whatever space you use.
Our discussion about how creative children will be when they grow up was very interesting for me. I think what’s happening in the world is that many parents get so worried that they don’t want their kids doing anything different or even doing something differently. Constantly being told not to do something, or to do it “their way” will inevitably lead to creativity being held back in children. I think that this is something that is very worrisome for the future. Especially when the baby boomer generation decides not to retire and to continue within the workforce, it will be very difficult for these children to obtain jobs as the creative class and need for creativity in the workforce continues to grow. Stories like the one we saw in the video about the school children being encouraged to raise money to help save the forest is inspiring. It would have been very easy for the teacher to laugh and tell the kids that they can’t do that, but instead she furthered their imagination and showed them how to go after their dreams. That’s an important lesson to learn.
As time passes, I think that society will continue to understand how having a “creative” or no-collar workplace like we have discussed throughout many classes helps employees become more efficient, corporate communities will not continue to prosper.
During this week’s discussions, the most interesting topic was risk taking within my generation. I have noticed my lack of risk taking within the past four years of my life. Ironically, the last four have been spent in college. Before my college days, I considered myself a huge risk taker. A good example of my risk taking was how I viewed my grades and overall education. In high school and previous school years, I could care less about my grades on my report card or even a grade on a test. Studying never was a pressure that occurred to me. Nowadays, I will study and constantly worry over the test for days, which sometimes makes my life very stressful. I believe this educational dilemma is due to our concept of who we are within society. In other words, when I was in high school, I would always live for the moment and not imagine a definite future. This led to a nonconformist ideology which in my opinion becomes a product of higher risk taking. When entering college, sometimes the gap from child to grown up closes quickly. In college, we live for a definite future through jobs, salaries, and lifestyles and in turn lower our risk taking. When thinking about my younger years, I had no choice to be relaxed and carefree due to the happy-go-lucky environment. Then, my future ideas of who I am and what I will become were endless. It is when facing real life decisions that we become cautious of what we do. Though, this is usually the case with any generation, I believe our generation is pushed into the fire earlier than ever before. On many different occasions, I have heard and discussed this issue with older folks that believe the exact same thing. In the past, it was more acceptable to not attend college. Today, one must go to a university to survive in an overgrowing workforce. One risk that fails could be detrimental and not many who live in our society could handle the consequences that go with a single risk.
A funny example of risk taking that could never happen in my world is a story that a crazy family member who lived during the eras of peace and love once told me. He or she who shall not be named would have LSD contests with his or hers friends to see who could trip the longest. Crazily, some of these contests would last for days; wow! Let alone the physical risks that go into doing such an insane act, wasting away days doing drugs such as LSD would set me back in financial and educational matters. People who do similar acts like these usually tend to be in jail or behind the curve when it comes to living in today’s society. Society has made it so through technology and overall aggressive expansion which speeds up our daily lives. I hope I can take a year off after college and explore a couple of countries, but that year could be used for making money that I need to live in high creative communities such as D.C..
The Power of Place made me realize I have been forming my future job interest around locations I would like to live. I am going to be a teacher very soon and a huge benefit to being a teacher is that teacher is needed all over the world. This chapter talks about how today people don’t go away for the weekend to relaxes they move to a place that will allow them to not have to go out of town to do the things they enjoy. I have noticed that when I look into the future my first line of thought is where I am going to live. Looking ahead to the next five years I know that I want to live some place that is young, has a night life, beach, and slower pace. In this chapter there is a whole section talking about the lifestyle of living. People move place now for the life style they want not for the job so much any more. When I think about raising a family I know that I want to move back closer to my family. I want to raise I children in an area that is full of culture and lots of outdoor activities. So being a teacher I know that I can move all over the country and find a job so my focuses when moving will always be the location of things and the environment that I want to live in.
This Tuesday’s class discussion on the readings made me reflect on what I find important in a prospective workplace. When asked if I would choose salary over location, I would lean towards the salary. If I was in a more stable circumstance, I could have the leisure to choose, but coming straight out of college I have loans and expenses to pay off. Also, because of the recession, I have crossed out the majority of my bullet points for what I want in a career. It is unfortunate that I have to settle for a job that is looking for new hires.
Although the location of the job may be an important factor to consider, it does not promise stability in the workplace. Realistically speaking, salary is a definite factor that should be considered, more so than the location. Like we discussed in class, it is important to consider the cost of living as well.
The article “Stripping for the movement” illustrated people who thought of a creative way to get people’s attention by baring everything. Many would say it was alarming, distasteful or “revolting”, but their method certainly did catch the media’s attention. Because it was something most people probably would not do, or go to such extreme, their voice was successfully heard and remembered.
The discussion about how my generation is more unlikely to take these kinds of risks is true. I can not imagine going to that extreme for any cause I strongly believed in. I would not even be hesitant to think otherwise. I think risky decisions are strongly dependant on the age group. Young teens are more likely to look for a thrill and thinking
in the moment” whereas my age group are careful of our actions as we have to consider how our actions reflect on the company we may be working for or our reputation.
I agree with the reading on the fact that people do move to certain places based on what surrounds them. There are so many things to take into account when moving to another place such as cost of living, the quality of the school systems if you have children, entertainment, crime rate… all of these things are and should be huge determinants if someone will move to a specific place. Unless a certain job is offering a drastically higher salary than somewhere else, I do not think I would move for a job. Since the job market is horrible right now the reliability of the job is also something to take into account…
I really was thinking about how my generation is not considered to be risk takers according to NCC professors…like it is something that tehy expect from us, yet all along, we have been told do do things a certain way, to look very similar to the rest of our peers. There is the rare occasion when we are ‘allowed’ to be creative such as the Thinking Outside the Box part of senior graduation portfolios, which I found to be difficult to come up with an idea for because I am not used to thinking that way. I ended up coming up with an idea which I thought was good and hopefully my reader will as well.
As I mentioned in class, a discussion in a social movements class that I toook this past spring, we had a very similar discussion about how passionate we all felt about social movements and specific causes which could potentially develop into a social movement. I was not surprised to find that only one or two class members still had their hands raised when the professor asked if anyone would give their life for a certain cause. I think it has something to do with our era though. Drastic risks in social movements just do not happen very much anymore because I think the consequences are so much higher. No one really cares if you go to jail because you are so passionate about certain issues. In the past you would seve as an icon for the movement, it would really show you care, but I do not think it is that way anymore. Instead you are just sending yourself to jail.
If we do something now it could potentially ruin our chances of getting certain jobs throughout the rest of our future…
something else I just thought of which I think is worth mentioning is the fact that as you noted in class earlier, a lot more of us live with our parents for longer than people have before. I know a lot of friends who are working, going to school, and living with their parents. This is also something which hinders their risk taking because if tehy screw up they will need to find a place to live also…
Before the end of last class you mentioned the fact that you did not want the class to be too laid back or to become boring. I just want to say that class has been anything but. In previous classes that I have taken participation has counted as a part of our grade, just like in this course. However, it would become stressful to chime in on conversations that I was not particularly interested in. Because of the laid back atmosphere, I don’t feel that pressure to answer correctly or to say the “right” things. It is much more fun to join in collectively as we express our opinions and findings. Maybe this ties into the fact that this generation or group, are not risk takers. There is so much pressure associated with education to do things correctly in order to satisfy requirements and do well. Unfortunately, this does hinder my creativity and amount of risk taking. When one feels as though they must conform in order to get approval and the good grade, he or she is not going to add as much in-put to conversations during class. In a class I took last semesters participation was highly stressed and I would get anxiety just thinking about what to say. Also, when the teacher asked a question I would not want to reply unless I was confident that I had the correct answer. A lot of times I would not speak up because I was afraid of being wrong when I was right the whole time. But that’s beside the point. I think our generation could be considered non-risk takers because of the pressure placed on us to always do the “right” thing. I enjoy that I can simply enjoy class.
I thought the reading of “Power of Place” was fascinating because Florida mentioned that people are placing more emphasis on the area that they live in, not just in the job they take. It is refreshing to hear that people actually want to enjoy the simple pleasures of life such as nature and intimate places, instead of just making as much money as possible. I also though it was interesting that Washington D.C was the number one place people desired to live in because of the diversity. I feel fortunate to have grown up in an area where I have been widely exposed to much diversity. I feel like my grandparents would have been completely opposite. They would have desired a place where people were all the same. This just goes to show how much society has actually changed and how our overall values have been shifted.
This week we went over “The power of place” which expounds on why creative people seem to gather in certain areas and what attracts them. It seems that he states that companies follow creative people and not the other way around. Which seems to be true as areas where it is shown that great creativity takes place, companies flock to(i.e. silicon valley) and builds around it. The downside to this is that the companies that these areas attract seem to lessen the appeal to creative people through pollution, high traffic and land prices caused by them being their.
Things that attract creative people are generally innovative and inexpensive in general, creative people seem to enjoy doing a multitude of things without going very far or spending very much. They also enjoy being around other people who diversify their viewpoints and understandings.
“Stripping for the movement” shows people coming up with a creative solution to voicing their opinion and being heard. It shows that some people are passionate about and willing to go to jail to be heard. Many of us at this school would not as we feel the risk would not be worth the reward and this somewhat stifles our creativity as we do not risk much for fear of rejection or having our grade penalized which may or may not affect how much we achieve in life since we seem to choose safe but not necessarily brilliant over creative risk.
The two readings for this week were discussing the geography of a creative community and how to build one. As we read and discussed last week, creativity has a lot to do with experience, that’s why when we investigate the place where creativity is born it is one of mixed experience As Florida points out the creative class has been moving into areas that have more to offer then just work. The creative class is looking more for life around work then work itself. I think one of the reasons less people are willing to relocate for a job today has something to do with the enlightenment of the creative class beyond work. Today it is known, or expected, that in order to be creative one has to explore to other areas beyond the one where the creativity is to be expressed. Since the creative class is getting paid to be creative they seek all the tools they need to create. We have seen this in the films we saw in class, that some of the greatest ideas often come in the shower, or while driving, jogging and what not, away from the actual subject. The creative class is simply looking for something in return from the area around them. The creative class is looking for all sorts of activities to do and is not limited to one subject. Creativity can be found anywhere, thats why people should be open minded and explore whats around them that they didn’t know.
The second chapter we read this week was about building a creative community, personally I don’t think there is such a thing. One can lay foundation and encourage moment of people to a cretin area, but I don’t think someone can build and populate a community under a guideline and expect the citizens to become creative. Creativity comes in many different forms, unique to every one of us, there is no such guideline of how to build a city that will harvest creativity, there is simply encouraging it. By encouraging creativity I mean support, the city, neighbors, the people of the community need to be encouraging each other instead of discouraging This can be seen in communities where advice from the people is often asked, or where local art is shown in the street and so on. There are today some communities where there are already creative class population living, under the encouragement of the local officials.
Although the geography and community from where creativity vary, one thing remains, there has to be that something in the people that wishes to explore, improve and change, if this doesn’t exist all the others won’t really matter. There is a time and place for everything, in creation the time and place must be perfectly synchronized to get the desired results.
I was really fascinated with our discussion on Tuesday, about how in today’s society people do their best to avoid “Risk”. Majority of us usually are compelled to never face anything relatively close to risk. Risk usually involves taking chances, and in today’s society majority of people just want to be under the radar. There is a small percentage that actually takes chances. I think it’s important to never get to comfortable, and never settle for less.
“The idea seemed to be that some places are for making money and others are for fun.” Many people are asked if they want to relocate or not in careers. I was astonished to find out that majority of people narrow down their list of potential location due to the status of it. In this world, it seems that everybody feels that status is the only way to classify yourself. It’s like we have been planted inside of us, to only worry about status, whether its work, school, house, cloths etc.
Also in this weeks reading, it made me think about my transaction from Somalia to America. Change is always something exciting and scary at the same time. I truly believe change helps you grow as an individual. It helps you explore your horizon.
I really enjoyed this week readings because it actually helped me look at different aspects of our everyday life. In order to be creative you have to be welling to take risk, and also welling to change locations.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s class discussion, it began to hit me that I really am tired of being so stunted in my creative expression throughout my classes. I’ve been sort of cloistering in that frustration and compartmentalizing it, but that is entirely unhealthy; also, it simply isn’t me. This is university. If a teacher downgrades me on an assignment that meets requirements a bit unconventionally, I have the right to explain the ways it fulfills the goals and convince him/her of its validity. If that fails, I’ll just need to fine tune my powers of persuasion.
In addition, I enjoyed reading about and discussing the importance of location in the creative class/community. After all, in the olden days we were expected to go to a specific location in order to snag a job. This is no longer the case. Instead the good jobs come looking for the creatives.
Most creativity is depending upon the place. Florida takes a closer look in “The Power of Place” on the importance of place. Where you live is the most important decision even before career and other choices. If I talk about me, right now I am staying in Virginia, but before I used to stay in NC. After coming from NC to VA I was feeling that if I want comfort and peace then North Carolina is the best place to live. Pays are not that high in NC but standard of living is very good. It is not like hard and fast life. Here every time we have to rush in our work. As it is said in the book of Florida that, economic and lifestyle considerations both matter. Creativity can also take place where you get more room to come up with your own new ideas, because creative people prefer places that are diverse, tolerant, and open to new ideas.
Even now-a-days people don’t want to stay in one company for long time. But some people don’t think that way. For example, one of my friend’s husband is working in one company from last five years. When I asked him that still you like to work in the same company then he answered that now I know everything in this company like how to work how to control all the things. Than he said that if I start working in the new company, then I have to start it from the scratch. So, not everyone has the same thoughts on creativity. If we talk about creative people, they don’t want to stay longer in one company. They try to change it in couple of years for example, my husband like to change the job in every two or three years. He always tells that I want to do something new which makes him more creative. Even creative people want to “identify” themselves by referring to the place where they live instead of where they work or what they work. Overall, creative people want to be some thing different then others. They don’t want to follow the stereotype routine and to crash that routine, the power of place play their role strongly in creative people’s life.