Richard Florida, guru of all things creative, has come out in his latest Globe and Mail article to tell us that a thriving music scene has a lot to do with a city's economic growth.Richard, tell us more!
Music combines with technology and business trends to put these places on the map. It reflects their openness to new ideas, new people and new sounds. If you really want to see entrepreneurs in action, go talk to local musicians. They have to put their band together, get gigs, market their songs, promote themselves, set up tours, manage budgets and meet payroll. The places where these music scenes flourish have the underlying commercial ecosystem that is open to new ideas and can mobilize real resources around the market opportunities they signal. And as one of my former students once put it, music is the best way to market a region. Creative people don't like marketing slogans. But they do identify with a city's sound - what he called its "audio identity."
So, if a thriving music scene is an indicator of economic growth, what does a retreating music scene tell about it's host community?
Do the recent losses of primo indie music venues Sky Lounge and the Avalon Front tell us more about the fate of our local economy than Dennis DesRosiers dire automotive predictions? Well, that's sort of comparing apples to oranges (sorry folks, but the automotive industry is probably not going to be defining Windsor's phoenix-like economic rise from the ashes) but you get the point.
"It signals the rise of regional ecosystems that are not only open to new sounds and new ideas, but have the size, scale and commercial oomph to retain key talent and turn their ideas into global commercial successes. Once music scenes of this scale get going, they produce a logic and momentum of their own and signal that more entrepreneurship is on the way."
Windsor's attitude towards our artistic side shows that we really do not understand what we need to do to safeguard our local economic future. The Capitol Theatre is probably on borrowed time, and there are other popular venues to take in a great local band, but our choices are dropping instead of rising.
This should concern more people in city hall than it does.
