Geniocity.com gets expansive

Like most humans, I rarely look forward to Mondays. But today is different: I’m happy to announce that Geniocity.com will soon get bigger and better.

A week from now, we’ll launch three new blogs that I think you’ll find fascinating as much for who writes them as for what they’re about. And who are they?

Terrence Spivey, the artistic director of Cleveland’s Karamu House, who will blog about the creative frontiers of live theater. Terrence joined Karamu, which is the oldest African-American theater in the nation, in 2003 after nearly two decades of mastering his craft in New York City. He’ll connect you with what’s developing in the real and increasingly diverse laboratories of American stage art. 

Leonard Steinbach,  technology consultant to American and international museums and the former CIO of  the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Len’s work in devising digital solutions for the artistic and administrative needs of  cultural organizations gives him a unique view of innovations that make art a science and vice versa. Currently principal of Cultural Technology Strategies and a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, he’ll blog about the intersections of these disciplines and others.

Seth Rosenberg, marketing consultant and writer.  Rosenberg, who studied political science and economics at Tufts University and wrote op-ed pieces for the Tufts Daily, now lives and works in Manhattan. In his blog, readers will find our newest generation of adults represented by his fresh, witty and well-informed point of view on politics’ creative side.

With these exciting additions, including the recent launch of Charlie Eby’s “Media Man: Electronic and Mainstream Arts,” Geniocity.com will double its content, offering you not only a widening range of topics and perspectives, but also a glimpse of the developing links between fields you might never suspect were connected.  

Please join us Monday to meet our new writers, read their blogs and enter the world of creativity, where people are doing things to change the world, not just talking about it. That’s the world Geniocity.com opens up for you.

Journalists need Creativity 101

Peter Friedman’s blog post yesterday on this site  about how well law school prepares people to be lawyers got me thinking about how well journalism school  - and journalism itself – prepares and encourages people to be good reporters, opinion-writers and editors. 

My own experience of journalism school was perhaps unusual – the curriculum was designed to cover the basics of news-gathering and -writing, media law and analyzing statistical surveys, along with photography and layout for those interested, but because I was preparing to be a theater critic, I found I had to essentially construct my own course of study. There were no classes that really delved into the evaluation of creative work or that examined the purpose, ethics and goals of  criticism, much less any that offered regular opportunities to practice the craft of reviewing.

Perhaps because I took an unusual path within  my profession, it seemed to me that the standard curriculum did little more than indoctrinate students in a rote style of newswriting and narrow categories of  news coverage that the business had adopted generations ago and that had slowly hardened into a kind of industry-wide arteriosclerosis that kept journalism from significantly changing and adapting along with the times. There were, to quote a Paul Simon song, “no times at all – just the New York Times.”    

Like law schools, apparently, J-schools also seem to attract people as professors who have very little real experience of the trade. Many of my own teachers were either theorists who examined the media’s effects on society rather than how to put out a great newspaper or nuts-and-bolts newscraft instructors who had left the profession years earlier because, apparently, they weren’t much good at it.  

And like the law, the journalism industry itself has been run largely by people rewarded for sticking with business as usual, rather than being notable innovators or even just good managers.

Journalism doesn’t prepare its practitioners to be managers; it simply moves reporters or ad salesmen or production folks into higher positions, to deal with people and administrative tasks when their skills lie in digging up information, scribbling, hustling ad space or designing pages. Lacking any real training in their new power jobs, they often resort to copying the older editors or managers around them, perpetuating bad leadership habits and old, entrenched ideas of what a news publication should be. That some good managers emerge is evidence of natural individual talent rather than an astutely planned and run system.

I suppose the status quo becomes gospel in any industry, but it’s particularly inexcusable in a business that’s supposed to be all about what’s new. In medicine, they say “Physician, heal thyself.”  In journalism, it ought to be, “Editor, broaden your own darned mind – or you’ll never get your readers to broaden theirs.”

Imagination and creativity have to be encouraged in both the newsroom and the  J-school classroom. Students must be shown how to think differently, to try new approaches with every story and every photograph or video; editors must stop copying other publications’ tiny steps forward and boldly experiment, not just with the individual elements of news publishing ,but with the concept of news itself, and let their staffs come up with fresh ways of communicating information.

My guess is that, right now, the J-schools are actually ahead of the industry on this.  With young, electronics-savvy students  flowing into their programs, many schools have embraced the Internet as the primary medium of the news and are investing in the state-of-the-art equipment and spirit of re-invention with which they need to explore this new frontier, while the economically ravaged professional news industry struggles to overcome its own ossification and get up to speed before it truly and finally dies of shortsightedness, cowardice and a dangerously low idea count.  

Someone – I think it was a character in the Steve Carell movie, Dan in Real Life - once said, “Love isn’t a feeling – it’s an ability.” I would say the same thing about creativity - and journalism needs to develop it.

Europe gets out the vote – for creativity

The European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 may be drawing to a close pretty soon, but the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, which has been implementing the program and its many multinational collaborations, keeps coming up with engaging ideas.

One of the latest is a photography contest that anyone in the world who has access to a computer can vote on. Just click here to register and vote for the pic of your choice. 

It’s mindblowing that we’ve reached a point where nearly everyone can contribute to a single creative activity with the click of a button. Maybe someday, we’ll all be able to compose together what would literally be a piece of world music.

Aback in black

Even creative people suffer from the herd mentality.

I got stampeded by it Sunday night when I took part in a gathering of the Cleveland-area literati - not a charity-ball kind of thing, but a series of readings by authors, journalists and other wordy types that was held as a benefit for a local library system.  

I wasn’t sure what I should wear. Even though I’m something of a creative writer, I don’t frequent literary circles much – I tend to hang more with the theater and newspaper crowds. I know how those people dress. Or don’t. They actually dress somewhat alike, which is very informally, but stage folks manage to make jeans and sweaters look somehow dramatic, while the press just make theirs look … unpressed. I am at home with that.

But a bunch of authors – what was I supposed to go as to that costume party?

I guessed I’d be safe with black, the protective coloring of all culture vultures. And, quel surprise! I was. But it struck me that safe is an odd thing for creative people to want to be. It makes us oxymorons.

I looked around the room and, though the variations on the dress code were several – from motorcycle chic and Beat Generation boho to the tweedy colorlessness of academics whose brown was their own kind of black - it was clear there was one. And the message it sent was: Looking arty and individual means looking like pretty much everybody else in your group.

Black leather, an earring and a ponytail - or  a shaved head - have become the uniform of self-conscious male counterculturalism as surely as a blue suit bespeaks a banker. Ditto black stiletto boots for the young woman or a black dress, handwoven Third World shawl and free-form silver jewelry for the over-60. And professors aren’t professors without an earth-toned jacket and jeans.

I guess this proves that no matter how boldly imaginative people think they are, they’re still terrified of looking different from their peers. Even after they leave middle school.

And yeah, me too. I regularly put on as much black as the next self-deluding art poseur. But with Geniocity.com, I’ve tried to resist the visual and content conventions of news websites for whom the grid is a box their creators can’t see beyond. Over the next weeks and months, you’ll see gradual changes in Geniocity that will start bringing the site closer to what I’m really aiming for: not just a  source of a different kind of news and opinion, but a medium that makes finding out about creativity an innovative aesthetic experience in itself.   I hope it will be an adventure for all of us.

So don’t wear your uniform, ok?

‘Media Man’ debuts today

Today, Geniocity.com is proud to welcome Charlie Eby and his new blog, Media Man: Electronic and Mainstream Arts, to this site. I hope you’ll visit Charlie’s page regularly for his irreverent and tech-savvy perspectives on the latest innovations in electronic arts and entertainment.

Find Media Man by clicking on Charlie’s blog link on our Geniocity.com home page, by clicking on his name under the blogger list on this page or by going to http://blogs.geniocity.com/eby.

Theaters’ creative collaborations are signs of real change

When I had my first job as a theater critic, in the 1980s at a daily newspaper in South Florida, I found myself continually surprised at how competitive and suspicious of each other the local theater companies were. 

In spite of being a small and necessarily interconnected community, they did not want to collaborate. I don’t remember them ever sharing resources, especially not mailing lists. The bigger ones did belong to a group called the Florida Professional Theatres Association, which held mass statewide auditions every year and sponsored workshops on administrative and artistic topics, but the members tended to snipe about each other’s shows behind their backs and operate as if each company was a sort of walled city-state with a completely unique audience.

The best (worst?) example I can think of is the summer about 25 years ago when three companies within my paper’s main circulation area all produced Jean Kerr”s “Lunch Hour” during the same summer.  Clearly, they thought no one coming to their own theater would be going to anyone else’s  – and made sure of it, too. You’d think at the very least they would have realized that a bored and exasperated critic is an unhappy and vocal critic.

So I’ve been elated in more recent years to see theaters and other arts groups everywhere slowly discovering the value of working together. Though it’s taken the hardship of shrinking financial resources and the danger of collapse to get them to join hands, a great many groups are not only finding ways to help each other make ends meet, but have also realized that collaborating artistically can create fresh ideas and more exciting projects than one group can by producing stuff in perpetual isolation.  

The Cleveland, Ohio, area has some pioneers of this sort, most notably Cleveland Public Theatre. An alternative company started more than 20 years ago, CPT has always lived the mission of creating theater for and with people on the fringes of society and of art: the daring, the eccentric, and the at-risk, from urban teens to convicted criminals. The company was built to reach out to others and has, with educational and therapeutic programs and special production series featuring emerging, local, theater and dance artists and companies. 

Even so, CPT’s co-production of “Nickel and Dimed” with Great Lakes Theater Festival a few years ago was a shock and a milestone – a sign that CPT’s influence was growing, yes, but a more stunning indication that a change in the theater Zeitgeist was transforming even large, glittering, professional theaters such as Great Lakes from artistically exclusive enclaves into involved, accessible, artistic partners. 

That’s why, for me at least, it was bell-ringing news this week that the august Guthrie Theater - probably the U.S.’s most artistically revered regional company – is showcasing innovative productions by young, emerging Twin Cities troupes that are its neighbors. Instead of regarding upstart companies as insects to be disdainfully flicked from their brocade skirts, maybe America’s greatest arts institutions have finally realized that collaborations and nurturing next generations of organizations will help and not hurt them.

Incredibly, theaters seem to get it now. I can only hope that major orchestras get a clue soon, too.

What the Guthrie plans is a series called Singled Out: A Festival of Emerging Artists that will be presented in the Dowling Studio Jan. 14-24. The companies featured include the Four Humors Theater, Sandbox Theatre, Lamb Lays with Lion and the New Theatre Group. Benjamin McGovern, the Guthrie’s associate director of studio programming, curated the line-up – and his reasons for creating the showcase and for choosing these particular companies represent what I hope is a changed philosophy for American theater.

“When the new Guthrie Theater building was built [in 2006], the Studio (which I program) was meant, in part, to be a place where other local companies would present their work,” McGovern wrote in an e-mail to me Tuesday. “There is a kind of synergy that comes from having such a diverse group of artists under the same roof – emerging talent, new and innovative aesthetics, new approaches to making theater. Our staff inevitably interacts with and is inspired by the artists that perform in the Studio, and that ultimately permeates the entire organization and enriches the work that goes on our other stages.

“There is also a considerable value to nurturing younger theater groups and offering them a wider exposure. The Guthrie relies heavily on the strength of the local artistic community and the enthusiasm of the theater-going public. The more we bolster and inspire both of these, the more effective and relevant the Guthrie’s work will be.”

And what made him select these specific young companies?

“I chose these four companies based on a number of different factors. Essentially I was looking for companies that had some history of quality work and were exploring a new theatrical vocabulary. I also wanted a mix of aesthetic approaches,” he added. “My goal was to present some representative work of younger artists that are working outside the mainstream, but whose work would relate in some way to the work that we produce here at the Guthrie.”

A few days later, after I asked whether or not the young companies’ types of work had anything in common, McGovern sent this further comment: “I wouldn’t say that the styles and vocabularies of these companies amount to a trend. In fact, I was specifically looking for companies that were focused on developing different aesthetics and approaches. One company is working in an unusual narrative style and a highly visual form of storytelling, while another is working in a fairly traditional theatrical convention, but thematically pushing the envelope. My interest was not in pushing forward any particular trend or style, but in providing a platform for energetic and promising young companies to get their voices heard.”

Twenty years ago, most American theaters the size and reputation of the Guthrie probably wouldn’t have admitted that worthwhile local start-up companies even existed, much less have invited them to share their space and audience.  It looks like, though arts groups in this country may be in growing economic danger, they’re also growing up.

New blog coming Oct. 1

I’m happy to tell you that, starting this Thursday, Oct. 1, Geniocity.com will introduce a new blog about the cutting edge of electronic and traditional mass media including gaming, film, photography and more.

Called Media Man,  it’s written by Charlie Eby, an avid wielder of cameras and digital-game controls who is Geniocity.com’s 2009 intern. His  easy-going personality and fresh, funny take on the universe of screens and images are going to be great  additions to our blog roster and must-read fun for you.

I hope you’ll keep an eye out for Media Man starting Thursday and welcome Charlie into your view of the creative frontier.

Arts education gets – and begets – attention

The struggle to discover a causal relationship between arts-related learning and improvements in general cognition continues.

This may seem an abstruse issue, but it has all sorts of real-world ramifications: For decades, and especially for the most recent one, evidence for and against the arts’ effect on children’s brains, behavior, test scores, career potential and general happiness and fulfillment has swayed school systems, national agencies, foundations, state and local governments and the entire national economic Zeitgeist.

Creativity is the buzzword of the era in economic-development circles, thanks largely to Richard Florida and his “creative class” theory about what’s making some cities grow and others shrink. And what moves the economy these days is what moves the politicians, from your local councilman on up to the White House administration. So it may matter a lot that Michael I. Posner, a Dana Foundation grantee and a psychology professor at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, finds that arts training – not just exposure to arts, but actual practice of them – increases children’s ability to pay attention to  other subjects and tasks.

Hopefully, that will include picking up their dirty socks.

For more recent findings on arts’ influence on the brain and education, check out the Dana Foundation’s related news roundup.

Vacant properties + artists = creative land use in Cleveland

I was working at the From Rust Belt to Artist Belt II summit in Cleveland, Ohio, on Friday when some exciting action broke through the flow of talk. 

Amid the two-day discussion among artists, community developers, arts agencies and funders from around the country about how to transform aging industrial cities to vibrant arts communities, a three-partner collaboration was announced: The Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corporation (or Land Bank) will work with the nonprofit Community Partnership for Arts and Culture  (CPAC) and Village Capital Corporation, a community-development loan organization,  to provide artists with low-cost properties for live-work spaces. 

The collaboration’s overall goal appears to be having the Land Bank, a new county venture headed by County Treasurer Jim Rokakis,  make a number of the foreclosed and/or abandoned properties it receives available to artists, who would be chosen through a process that CPAC would help develop. Village Capital would provide financing to the artists for house purchases. Tom Schorgl, who heads CPAC, said during the announcement that he estimates the purchase program will take six to nine months to create and be a national model. 

There aren’t many details yet and since I was at the summit as an independent contractor for CPAC (which organized the event) and was helping chronicle panel discussions for its archives, it wasn’t my place to ask journalistic questions. But you can find out more about the organizations involved by clicking on the links above. Also, learn about the successful and precedent-setting property-purchase program in Paducah, Ky., that will no doubt be one of the models for the Cuyahogy County program.

The creative dimension

Albert Einstein understood time and space.

No duh, you say. But I’m not talking about theoretical physics, at which Einstein was probably our most celebrated genius. I’m talking about another kind of genius he had: the twin gifts of understanding that time and space are valuable and of making sure he had plenty.

I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Einstein, who was (I think few would argue) one of the most creative humans the planet has ever produced. What impresses me the most so far is that Einstein instinctively knew how to get what he needed and what he needed was opportunities to think.

How many do you have? Likely not enough.

Me, either. Our culture isn’t conducive to it, which means our culture isn’t conducive to creativity. We’re all frantically sending and answering e-mails and texts, updating our statuses (stati?), cruising the Web, downloading stuff, watching stuff, reading stuff, working, driving, dealing with each other. We really don’t have time to absorb information, slowly process it, experiment with it and invent big ideas from it.  

Instead, most of us produce what feels like the mental equivalent of carbonation – a lot of little fizzy notions bubbling out of the turmoil in our heads, as if our skulls were constantly shaken cans of Coke. Those ideas seldom last long. 

Einstein’s, on the other hand, seem likely to last eons. They were the result of years of concentrated thought, thought that was remarkably impervious to distractions from daily work, children, spouses and the state of the world, but that also demanded a great deal of time alone. He eventually arranged his life so that thinking was what he was paid to do, and the privacy to do it in was insured by indulgent universities and his motherly second wife, who had a separate bedroom and took care of all the day-to-day household business so his thoughts didn’t have to include laundry.

Most of us will never have gigs like that and are maybe even glad of it. The truth is, Isaacson explains, that Einstein was a person who never allowed his emotions to get  too deeply embroiled in relationships or events; he cared, yes, but there was a kind of inner fence around his feelings, protecting him from investing too much psychic energy in things that didn’t ultimately matter to him as much as science. Probably most of us wouldn’t want to be like that, at least with our families and friends.

I wouldn’t. But I still envy him the long, uncluttered hours he had in which to create and I worry that my e-mail will become such a time pit that I’ll end up never getting to eat, shower or sleep, much less think.  Maybe the hardest part of being creative, in the end, isn’t pushing our intellects to the limit, but finding the willpower to shut out the din of a world too in love with its own noise.