Creative people in search of access

A bunch of us Clevelanders had an interesting discussion last night down by the Cuyahoga River. 

A crowd of artists and other creative-community members gathered at SPACES, a nonprofit gallery, to hear a panel of local arts journalists talk about how they do their jobs, how the processes and constraints of those jobs have changed in the digital age and the current economy, and what arts people can and should do to get their news and work before the reading/watching/listening public. Sponsored by the COSE Arts Network, the panel included Ideastream (WCPN/90.3 FM  NPR)  “Around Noon” producer Dave DeOreo; Scene magazine arts editor Michael Gill;  Plain Dealer art and architecture critic Steven Litt; and me.

Eventually, the podcast will be available and I’ll provide a link so you can experience the whole wide-ranging discussion. But what interested me the most about it was this sort of collective epiphany the group seemed to have – the realization that, even with the Internet putting public access in reach of anyone with a website, an e-mail account or a social network, it’s clear that gatekeepers still control whose creative work gets widely seen or heard. And that there will always be gatekeepers of some kind, as long as humans have mass communication.  And that that, believe it or not, is a good thing.  

 These days, many of those choosing the information to disseminate are self-appointed. Individuals with little or no training in communications, they blog, they tweet, they post stuff on their personal sites and Facebook pages in a breathtaking and clamorous display of free speech. It’s a heady feeling for all of us to sense that we can reach the entire human race with a few clicks and keystrokes.

But even if every one of us on the planet ends up with a blog someday, most of us likely still won’t have real access to the public. That’s  because access comes through influence, and influence comes from the ability to reach a consistently large number  of people. And what consistently draws a large number of people?

Expertise and useful, reliable, entertaining content. 

What came out during the discussion was that artists and others still want and need the validation of their work that comes from being covered by a reporter, host or critic who really knows something about a field and commands wide public respect because of it.  Which means, in most cases, that media professionals, not citizens journalists, are going to continue to be the  people who decide what gets written or talked about in the media, no matter what form the media take in future.

This is not to imply in any way that there aren’t a lot of knowledgeable, talented  individuals out there whose blogs and tweets are informative and worth reading.  But unless they can build and keep a sizable amount of public  influence, theirs will still be single voices among billions of others on the planet, all vying for attention and each drawing only a handful of followers.

Getting reviewed or featured by one of these communicators won’t get anybody much traction with the general population. Who among the general population has time to search through a billion different amateur or near-amateur news outlets?    

The fact remains that, just as people want trained teachers in their classrooms rather than random  residents of the community, so humanity needs and wants professional critics and news people to separate the worthwhile from the endless amount of mediocrity we have no time to sift through for ourselves. Creative people and those interested in creative work will, as always, often disagree with what gets chosen. They will also always have the right – and, increasingly, the means - to seek out for themselves what they consider excellent.  But to reach the largest number of news consumers who understand and care about  their work, artists and arts communities can’t do better than to work with successful professional media.

Let’s hope some of those media survive.

A taste of CPSI and creative problem-solving

As mentioned in April here, the Creative Education Foundation will hold its annual Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) in Boston June 21-24.

CPSI teaches people how to be deliberately creative, to find more than one good solution to problems by exploring options and ideas through a particular process. If you’re curious about that process, you can get a sense of what it’s about and what the institute has in store by listening to a webinar CPSI leaders and teachers held Tuesday, June 2. You’ll get to hear them talk about how the foundation and the institute developed, who shows up at these annual  events and what good it all is.

To play the webinar, click here.

Renewable energy on the red carpet

The renewable-energy community has its own awards show. 

Unlike the Tonys this Sunday, the 2nd annual IREO Renewable Energy Awards Gala on Thursday, June 11, isn’t likely to feature a lot of singing and dancing – although they could get a few laughs by presenting the windmill scene from “Man of La Mancha.” But it’s still a big deal: The Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization, which is associated with the United Nations, will honor people from around the world who help advance alternative energy solutions by challenging conventional wisdom and encouraging critical thinking that leads to positive reform.

Creative people, in other words.       

The event, which will be held following the IREO Renewable Energy Conference at New York City’s UN Headquarters, has a slew of honors to present and an impressive roster of stars to hand them out.  Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr., musician Wyclef Jean and actor Chazz Palminteri are among those on the host committee; Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion will emcee; and actors Tony Goldwyn, Matthew Modine, Carla Ortiz and Billy Zane will hand out the prizes.

And who’s getting them? They range from a prince to an 11-year-old kid. Here’s the list:

 Luiz Marinho, Mayor of Sao Bernardo do Campo, Government Award, dedicated to developing Environmental laws that benefit the health of the people of Sao Paolo

 HRH Prince Malik ado Ibrahim of Nigeria, Best Practices Award, investor in Solar technology for the developing world

 Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, NGO Award, promoter of human rights, environmental sanitation, health and hygiene, non- conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education

Dynomotive Fuels, Private sector award, emerging leaders in converting both biomass residues and energy crops into fuels that are technologically viable and environmentally sound, as well as economically competitive to fossil fuels

 Dr. Arthur J. Nozik, Science and Technology Award, Senior Research Fellow Scientific Director, Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion.  National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and University of Colorado, Boulder – Winner of 2008 ENI Award

Dr. Daniel Nocera, Science and Technology Award, The Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Named one of The Time 100 in 2009

Vassilas Keramidas, Science and Technology Award, IEEE Fellow and retired researcher for AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore Research

Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima, IREO Renewable Energy Certificate of Recognition UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador dedicated to building a better world for our children

Richard Best, IREO Renewable Energy Certificate of Recognition, Founder of EcoDesign, an architecture and design firm focusing on sustainability

 John Paul DeJoria, Goodwill Ambassador, Owner of Paul Mitchell Systems, Patron, Sun King Solar

Josh Tickell, Goodwill Ambassador, Director of the Sundance award winning film, FUEL

Cafu (Marcos Evangelista de Moraes), Goodwill Ambassador, Captain of Brazilian National Soccer Team and World Cup Champion in 1994 and 2002 and Founder of the Carfu Foundation offering community Education, Health, the Arts and Sports programs for underprivileged children

Nikos Spiridakos Jr., Goodwill Ambassador, now-11-year-old director of Climate Change PSA Save It

What is it the child made? (With some help, of course …) Take a look:

 (If you want to attend the gala and think you can afford it, go to: http://ireoawards.com/ )

Only a movie? Not for me

Sometimes, the politics of change are purely personal.

For years, I’ve written creative works – poetry, plays, songs, novels – and had almost no luck in getting any of them published or produced. But I’ve kept going in hopes of reinventing myself as the author I’ve always wanted to be. And so today is exciting for me: I have a short film debuting at the gala opening of the Ohio Independent Film Festival.

Called “Wall of Fame,” it’s directed by Bernadette Gillota, who heads Independent Pictures, the parent organization of the OIFF. If you live in the Cleveland area, I hope you’ll go see it, either tonight at Mercury Lounge, 1392 W. 6th St. downtown (doors open at 8 p.m., admission $5), or at 6 p.m. Sunday (admission $10) at Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6405 Detroit Ave – especially those of you who thought I was too hard on the city in yesterday’s post.

I’d like to think that I can change my luck if I keep working hard at being creative.  I’m hoping Cleveland can do the same.

A refusal to succeed

Fittingly, it was an education story that got me thinking about this.  The piece by Sam Dillon in yesterday’s New York Times was about Arne Duncan,  the Obama administration’s education secretary, wanting to push the reset button on failing schools by closing them down and starting them over – a tactic he used as CEO of the Chicago municipal school system.

The story ends with a quote from Bryan Hassel, an education consultant:

“A lot of these school turnarounds are going to fail because the work is so difficult,” Mr. Hassel said. “But as a nation, we’ll never have the capacity to do this work successfully until we make the commitment.”

Hassel’s words struck me, because I had never chanced to think of change in these terms before – that commitment is the heart of deliberate change.

And that’s the reason why so many people fail to be creative, because creativity is the result of deliberate change and deliberate change means hard, determined, don’t-give-up work.

It’s so easy to be inert. And fatalistic. And hopeless. It doesn’t demand anything of you except to stay slumped at your desk or on your couch and do as you’re told. Being inert also gives you permission to crab about what’s wrong as much as you want without actually trying to solve any of the problems that bug you. And if you ever go so far as to attempt a little creative change, inertia allows you to give up easily and say you knew all along it wouldn’t work.

I live in a city and state where inertia is the perpetual Zeitgeist. There are plenty of creative and committed individuals here, trying in their one- or few-person ways to transform the place into the vital, prosperous, exciting region they see in their dreams, but the prevailing mood is one of defeat.  We are resigned, here, to our loserhood. In fact – heresy alert! – I think we enjoy it.

Because it means we don’t actually have to collectively get up off our large butts and do something. What would be the point? We’re losers and nothing we do will ever change that. Loserhood is our brand and we’re perversely proud of it. We don’t demand the best of our leaders or schools or communities because we don’t want to ask the best of ourselves – which is to make hard decisions, stick with them and labor ceaselessly until we get the right results.

I guess we’re too scared and lazy to do that. So, apparently, Duncan and Obama are going to have to reinvent America without us. Well, so what? Every sturdy, beautiful, redone house needs a basement drain. We’ll be happy to take that role so we never ever have to climb the stairs.

You might say we’re so convinced we’ll fail that we’re … committed to it.

Photo by Kat

Innovation in California: Backwards and forwards

I have mixed feelings about California today. It’s hard to imagine a state so progressive in other ways choosing to constitutionally ban marriage between adults of the same sex.

I believe that situation will change for the better, and quickly. But even though it has –  temporarily, I hope – messed up on the moral/legal front, California  is still in the vanguard on other kinds of policy. Specifically, a few weeks ago, Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger announced a plan to make open-source digital textbooks available for free to California’s high-school students.  

This is a great idea that should be expanded to the university level, where textbooks can cost students hundreds – or more – of dollars every year. On both the secondary and college level, students and their families often suffer these huge charges because publishers unnecessarily update or customize books, forcing students to buy new copies instead of lower-cost used ones. Some universities have already made the move to digital textbooks, helped by the likes of Amazon.com, but if states including California would make free digital resources available to their entire public-education systems, the playing field could get a little more level for families who can’t pay the price of the learning  their children deserve.