"It is this process of creative experience that interests me here. I call it idea translation. To translate ideas is to move them from some conceptual stage to some later stage in the general process of realization. Realization may be any combination of economic value (new technologies, say), cultural value (new forms of art), educational value (new scientific theories), and social value (new medicines or political policies). In the process of realization our ideas often cross disciplinary boundaries" (8).
-David Edwards, Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation
In some ways, it seems the economic crisis has created a kind of global idea accelerator, as Edwards terms it. There is a reignited desire and opportunity for change and this change is being driven by a desire to integrate ideas that have been excluded or othered in different times. Given that possibility, there is still a somewhat schizophrenic push and pull between the recognition of a need for different models, new ways of thinking and problem solving, creative responses to our environmental stimuli (our world), and a return to what is known, or familiar, or comfortable. How else can we explain the Chrysler union managing to gain majority ownership of the company, but not have a voting member on the board?
Edwards' idea accelerator connects social, educational, and industrial sectors with cultural sectors of thinking and idea making. And then there is a purposeful motion of exchange between the "lab" (17) and the public. For the accelerator to achieve its function of breaking down barriers to interdisciplinary exchange, a fluid acceptance of experimentation is necessary.
"We value creators in business, culture, education, and society, but somehow we struggle to create institutional environments to welcome them. That is because we made our institutions to resist change that did not reflect where we wished our culture to go--while the world changed in spite of us. Cultures mixed, people and information moved rapidly around the world, new ideas emerged and old ideas were swept away. This change--the hand that molds our children's future--is precisely the kind we engineered our institutions to resist. The consequence is that we're not expressing what we are actually thinking and we're not teaching what we need to learn" (13)!
How do we know what we are really thinking? As I work in the region and see a creative economy marketing plan for our county developing, how do we differentiate or individualize our uniqueness? What is easiest and most manageable, is to emulate sameness, exploit efficiencies. But, we seem to be creating something that has a potential to be soulless in a time when what people need most of all is to retain that core sense of place and authenticity.
At a recent meeting at the college, a researcher asserted, the thing that would differentiate her plan from any other off the shelf policy/plan, is the data that has been collected about our catchment area and our students. The data for this particular policy is compelling, and I believe similar data needs to be drawn for the region around the creative economy, but I also have a rooted desire to move beyond demographics and employment figures, and dig deeper into the more core needs of the community.
If there are basic life/survival needs that we have as people for basic sustenance, our communities also share basic elements, that are sometimes out of balance, but reach a kind a equilibrium (hopefully) with the assistance of neighboring resources. And they beyond basic survival are the aspects that impact the quality of life and how that quality of life is perceived and experienced. How comforting and fraternal is it to be caught up in a movement? How desolate and demoralizing it can be to feel as if you are the only one of your kind. How invigorating and emboldening it can be to find yourself as the first, a pioneer. How does the translation of idea into action occur within one's life? Is there a capacity, an opportunity? Is there the choice? And if there is not, or there does not appear to be, how can you build that capacity?
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