Creative Class Origins

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how you guys doing?

Doing well. Who’s this?

This is Otura Moon. I’m calling from Northern California, Humboldt State.

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I had a question about a word that I want to say I heard it on maybe like a news program recently dealing with the elections.

They were talking about, I guess, maybe why we didn’t get the straight shot from the media or why the media dropped the ball, etc.

And I heard somebody say a creative class. I just didn’t know who they were talking about.

So, yeah, I think they use it in the terms of trying to describe people inside of the media or something to deal with a group of people that were somehow this creative class.

I didn’t know if it worked in the way that the working class works. Is it upper class, lower class? Who is a creative class? I’ve never heard that term.

That’s a really good one. There’s a book called The Rise of the Creative Class, published in 2002 by Richard Florida, where he popularized this term and kind of came up with this description, which includes people who are creative and innovative in their work by necessity, let’s say engineers and people working in tech and even artists, of course, people who obviously think of as creative.

And also the group of people who work in knowledge-based industries, so people who maybe work in data mining or data analysis or even journalists, obviously, who would be included in knowledge-based industries.

And together, his premise is that where you see these clusters of people in the creative class, you tend to see thriving economies and you tend to see what the future is going to look like.

And he’s published a couple of other books since and drastically revised his first book to accommodate new information and criticisms and other things.

But in general, his theory has found to hold some water. You do tend to find that group of people, as he described them, in these places in the United States that look like what we’re all going to become.

Okay.

And so that means people, not people who work in the manufacturing, unfortunately, and not people who tend to work in these agrarian jobs, which are rapidly disappearing or becoming corporations and not family-run businesses.

Yeah, which do require creativity. But not the level he’s talking about where you create something not just for yourself, but you create concepts, ideas, systems that will spread like a meme to the rest of the world and become the new way of working.

Right. And I remember when Florida’s book came out and all of these city officials all over the country were reading it and trying to figure out how to attract the creative class to their cities with progressive legislation.

How can we pass laws that will draw these people to our urban centers?

And some places have done it. I was studying urban planning at the time, and the book was handed around like crazy, and people were talking about his ideas.

And again, there are obviously some criticism, but there’s no idea that goes unassailed, right?

But in general, it’s only been 15 years or so, but it’s kind of been very predictive of what has turned out to be true again and again and again.

The other thing that he said in the book, which is an important part of it, is that creative types, and again, remember, it’s more than just artists and musicians. They tend to cluster together. They want to be near each other.

So that’s part of what’s happening. We can see that in migration patterns.

Okay.

Well, cool.

Thank you so much for your call. Really appreciate it.

Hey, thank you guys so much. You guys are doing a Lord’s work. I really appreciate the show. It’s a lot of fun.

Take care, Al.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

I remember reading this story in The New Yorker years ago about the creative class in Detroit back when Motown was a huge thing.

And it was just this amazing critical mass of people in the same neighborhood. You know, Aretha Franklin, Billy Davis, all those people right there in one small place.

And just what a yeasty creative environment that can be. Just all kinds of things bubbling up. You are the catalyst for the person next to you.

Right. And they are your catalyst as well.

Exactly.

Right. We both would love to live in an environment like that. Let’s go find one, shall we?

Well, I think this studio works. One thing to say about creative class is Richard Florida may have popularized the term with his 2002 book, but he didn’t coin it.

It’s at least 100 years old, though its meaning has been changed over the years.

Yeah, it’s been around for a while.

Call us to talk about the terms that interest you, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.