Creative Cities: The Warhol Economy

Elizabeth CurridUniversity of Southern California

Some basic questions

• Is there a role for art and culture in the policy

and development of contemporary urban

economies? (Pratt 1997, Kloosterman 2004,

Markusen and Schrock 2007)

• Are there general principles and processes

through which cultural industries “work”?

First, art and culture matter…. • 4th Largest Employer in NYC and LA

(2000 Census)

• 3rd Largest Employer in London (Arts Council of England)

• Most represented of all industries in NYC and LA

• £10.4 billion impact on New York City’s economy.

• £25 billion - £29 billion annually in revenues for London’s economy.

• Cultural industries were responsible for 1 in 4 jobs in London from 1995-2000

• In the 1990s, cultural industries in the Netherlands grew 41% (compared to 27% increase of growth of other industries)

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Alliance from the Arts, NYC, Arts Council of England and GLA, Robert Kloosterman, University of Amsterdam

But it’s not that easy: Uneven distribution• Cultural industries (like other industries)

distribute themselves unevenly • Not just uneven distribution, cultural industries tend to

“pick” particular cities

• Produce “agglomeration effects” which result in cumulative advantage over other places.

– The co-location of similar firms, people (labor pools), and resources produces important positive spillover effects

The creative industries:

Art, culture and media (Location Quotient)

Occupation NYC Boston SF LA Chicago

Fashion Designers 15.98 0.00 2.01 4.78 0.43

Fine Artists 4.98 3.39 2.01 1.47 1.59

Musicians and Singers 6.79 0.97 3.19 3.41 1.18

Art Directors 4.90 1.98 2.96 1.83 1.70

Writers and Authors 2.89 1.48 2.10 2.98 0.00

Film and Video Editors 6.09 1.44 1.75 8.79 0.57

Producers and Directors 4.15 0.00 2.46 6.21 0.69

Overall Creative LQ 4.48 1.30 2.09 3.26 1.12

Concentrations are high in Amsterdam too…• Movie and TV production 4.0 LQ

• Performing arts 2.9 LQ

• Overall, Amsterdam exhibits the greatest concentration of cultural industries of all cities in the Netherlands.

Research questions

• Why does cultural production appear so prominent in some places and not others?  

• Inherent suitability of place vs. place as an outcome of social or economic processes

• Nature vs. nurture (cumulative advantage, Polya’s urn)

• What might be driving New York or London’s advantage in cultural industries? (which may teach us something about how to sustain it).

The process of cultural clustering and advantage

Micro-Social Mechanisms

Agglomeration

Social MilieuCumulative Advantage

Data and methods• Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data collection

• Participant observation

• 80 + semi-structured, open-ended qualitative interviews with New York City-based “cultural producers” and those who work in cultural industries:

– Cultural producers: fashion designers, artists, musicians, graphic designers, graffiti artists

– Gatekeepers: Curators, gallery owners, fashion/art critics, editors, nightclub and entertainment venue owners

The social milieu

“One night these dudes invited me out for drinks. I didn’t want to go, then I said [to myself] ‘go, so you’re in their

sites’, that’s business for me but it’s fun” – Ricky Powell, photographer

• Three types of “social milieu” that facilitate the cultural economy

– Nightlife– Industry Events– In situ interactions; Spatial Proximity

(Neighborhoods)

The importance of the “scene”

Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Tim Buckley, at Max's

Kansas City, NYC, 1968.

 

Geographic Dimensions of “the Scene”: Getty Images mapping

The Fashion Scene in NYC

The social milieu

• Cultural producers use their social lives for career mobilization (sometimes consciously, sometimes not)

• The social milieu offers the perpetual possibility to advance their careers

• In this respect, cultural producers expressed ambivalence towards their social lives.

Social mechanisms

– Networking and “weak ties” (Granovetter 1972)

– Crossover between interlocking “art worlds” (Becker 1982)

– Transaction costs

The clustering of cultural industries and their accompanying workers indirectly facilitates (via the milieu) three types of micro-social mechanisms:

I. Networking

– Getting a job; use of “weak ties” – Access to gatekeepers– Assessing taste in a “highly uncertain

environment” (Hirsch 1972)

The concentration of labor pools, firms, gatekeepers allows for an efficient and instantaneous means of mobilizing people around projects (Scott 2000, Kloosterman 2004, 2008)

Networking: Getting a job

“I was out on a date three weeks ago, I was really bored. I went to get another drink and ran into someone from Creative Time [a public art organization] and he put me in touch with a music house, a place I was going to contact. I got in touch with them and now I am going to send a demo….Where you socialize, your social life completely determines your worklife and vice versa…[We] all go to the same places after a gallery opening, [we] go to the artist’s dinner [etc.].” – a DJ

Networking: Access to gatekeepers

“Artists go to shows to meet people who write about art, meet them again and again [at gallery openings and shows], pretty soon call them up and invite them to their show.” – artist

“I was really hoping Jeffery Deitch would be here tonight so that I could talk to him about my upcoming show.” - artist

Networking:“What are the kids wearing these days?”

“A lot of designers were coming to our neighborhood [Williamsburg, Brooklyn]. Hedi Slimane at Dior, Dolce and Gabanna, John Galliano would come to look at the crowd and dance…catch the vibe, because that’s their job, to see what’s going on in the air” – Larry T, DJ

II. Interlocking art worlds

Three approaches:– Flexible career paths– Symbiotic peer review– New forms of cultural goods (Hebdige 1979)

Agglomeration allows cultural industries to constantly engage each other across separate fields resulting in new combinations of jobs, products and evaluation.

Art worlds:Flexible career paths

Cultural producers establish career trajectories outside of their primary industry. Three approaches:• “Add art” to nonartistic industries• Use artistic skills to contribute to other cultural

industries• Credibility in one industry transferred to another:

– “I make a living just being the Claw” – Claw, graffiti artist– (e.g. Graffiti artists design sneakers for Nike, hip-hop

artists establish clothing lines)

“Just did a billboard on the LES. Not graffiti but since I’ve mastered graffiti, I can do commercial jobs…It was a $5000 job so that will hold me down for a couple of months” – Meres, graffiti artist

Flexible career path:Andre the Giant has a posse

Shepard Fairey’s graffiti art has turned into a major clothing, design and music conglomerate

…To painting the portrait of Barak Obama for the National Portrait Gallery

Art worlds:Symbiotic peer review

“It used to be the real fashion press that makes or breaks your career. Now it’s if Lindsey Lohan wears your dress”

– Cynthia Rowley, fashion designer

• Established and successful cultural producers often act as gatekeepers in defining what “good art” is

– Occurs across industries (e.g. Marc Jacobs as fashion designer and purveyor of cool music)

Art worlds:Cultural referencing

• Cultural “borrowing” and referencing of various different industries to generate new products

• Subculture transformed into mainstream commodities

III. Transaction costs

“When I lived in San Diego and I would bring my stuff to New York, no one would ever call. It’s so much by chance, by running into people….It’s quick when people need things they pick up the phone and call but so much is just instantaneous and [they] need it now and it’s just too much work to contact that guy in San Diego….They may have the sincerest effort to call me but why would they when they can just find someone on the street?” –graphic designer

Transaction costs: Less trouble is less trouble

• While it is only a small amount of trouble to “call that guy in San Diego” they’re not going to do it

• It’s not even necessarily an active choice to pick someone in New York, but by virtue of being there, “in situ”, these exchanges occur and are by extension easier than making an effort – even a small one

Transaction costs“The chances of a SPIN [a music-oriented] magazine writer being at a

show in Kansas City is unlikely but here he could be out with his friends, not even working, and you can be heard by him. The

chances of being seen by the right people is much higher.” – musician

• Cultural industries rely on spontaneous ad hoc project networks that involve a dense and diverse network of firms and labor pools that can constantly combine, recombine, connect and disconnect

• Being in the same place optimizes these dynamics. It’s just that much easier if the labor pool is instantly available

Why place (and thus policy) matters

• These mechanisms are unique to the clustering of firms and labor pools in the same place.

• Exactly the same person with exactly the same skills would have dramatically different (and limited) opportunities if located somewhere else

• The mechanisms reinforce themselves: More people, more firms more potential for networking, cross-fertilization; less transaction costs

• These are the dynamics that build place-based cultural reputation (New York fashion, London artists, Hollywood films, Dutch art)

Policy through practice: Creating the places that produce social dynamics

1. Cultural industries matter to urban economies

• Should be supported as much as other industries

• Place is branded by the cultural production that occurs there and benefits from this association (e.g. tourism, attracting more of the same firms, talent etc.)

2. Reconsidering how the arts are funded and subsidized

• To support the arts, let’s start with supporting the artists themselves.

• While the formal art world is important,

many of the important interactions within the cultural economy occur in the informal milieu and across various sub-sectors.

3. Place is the crucial node where it all happens

• Through zoning and housing subsidies, policymakers can encourage the agglomeration that encourages the dynamics associated with successful cultural centers.

4. Too much of a good thing:Economic developers as “anti-gentrifiers”

• Preventing certain types of growth that push out cultural producers.

• Proactive responses to the “Soho effect”.