Why is the development of a vibrant arts and culture sector such an important element in the progress of the Eastside? It’s a fair question. After all, if you’re willing to sit in traffic, pay a toll and spring for a $20 parking tab, there’s plenty to do in Seattle. But there are 600,000 people who live and work on the sunrise side of the lake and they can’t borrow their cultural life from Seattle forever.
About 10 years ago, I came across a book titled “The Rise of the Creative Class” by Dr. Richard Florida, the Heinz Professor of Regional Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focused on “identifying the factors that make certain cities and regions grow and prosper and others lag behind.”
He began by examining the conventional wisdom that the key to economic growth lies in attracting and retaining companies, because companies create jobs and people will “go where the jobs are.” But his research showed that the creative sector now accounts for 50 percent of all U.S. economic activity and that innovative companies are being formed almost exclusively in regions that are themselves attractive to creative workers.
There are more than 40 million people today who are paid to be creative — designers, engineers, artists, writers, programmers and so on. The emergence of creative workers as an economic force has been so powerful that they now constitute an entirely new economic class. These people don’t work 9 to 5; they think 24/7. Access to this critical mass of creative thinkers is what drives economic growth. They can best be characterized as a “mosaic society” — open minded, mobile, tolerant and diverse, with non-negotiable arts, entertainment, food and cultural needs. These factors work to enhance a community’s ability to mobilize the resources necessary to support innovative enterprises, including everything from venture capital to nightlife.
As executive director of a large performing arts center project, I spend much of my time fundraising for its $160 million construction budget. Frequently a prospective donor — someone with financial capacity and a community leadership profile — will tell me that they’re “just not into the arts.” This response is usually accompanied by the explanation that their interest and passion are bound up in sports, education, health care or other worthy agendas. I have come to realize that what they mean by “the arts” is very different than what I mean. They may not care for ballet or opera, but I’ll bet that they make playlists, go to movies and decorate their homes. “The arts” is shorthand for creative human expression in all its forms. The arts feed our minds and our hearts … and they help create the kind of community that our prosperity and the futures of our kids depends on. If we care about these things, we’d better care about the arts and nurture the Eastside organizations that provide them.
John Haynes is executive director and CEO of Performing Arts Center Eastside/Tateuchi Center, a 2,000-seat, regional project being developed in downtown Bellevue. He served previously as president of the California Center for the Arts, director of Performing Arts at the University of Notre Dame and president of the Western Alliance of Arts Administrators.
