Talking Creative Cities in the DTES

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Mark Kuznicki‘s talk about Co-Creating the Creative City (slides at Slidehsare) at the Gallery Gachet in the downtown East Side in Vancouver. Thanks to Roland for taking “notes” through his Twitter liveblog-fu. The session was also being recorded by several people – maybe we’ll have some video emerge eventually?(Tech gripe: Richard’s liveblogging from the Google Transit announcement is a little easier to link to than Roland’s many event twitters, since there’s no way to group his liveblogs together into one URL.)

It was great to finally hear Mark explain the Open Creative City concept, which I’ve been able to get bits and pieces of, but which I haven’t delved into deeply by any means. I’ve been reading about and critiques of the Creative Class concept, which has been really interesting as someone who doesn’t have a background in cultural policy, geography or economics. He brought in Toronto Transit Camp as an example of what it looks like to combine open space and will to bring culture into a collaborative space for shaping our civic life.

I really must say something about the venue. I pass and sometimes even through the Downtown East Side a lot, but I don’t spend an awful lot of time there – and part of it, of course, is having a place to actually stay there where I actually have a reason to be there. There are other places I can think of that are such venues – the Army and Navy, the Potluck Cafe – but I was glad to have the opportunity. The Gachet was also having a party for the opening of the (Not) Made in China exhibit afterwards.

We didn’t have very much time for open space, but I still found the experience valuable for being able to speak to people that I otherwise would never spoken to, and to hear thoughts on culture in the Downtown East Side. It was great to see people speaking with passion about the things they wanted and were concerned about – not always to unanimous agreement, but still accepted respectfully.

It was also interesting to hear about Fearless, the Downtown East Side Arts and Culture magazine, from Irwin Oostindie, as well as his thoughts on how Mark’s ideas fit into the DTES context of gentrification, the Olympic games, and work by groups like the Anti-Poverty Committee.

Great food for thought as we start to get TransitCamp going.