Art As Economic Engine
by: Matthew Hundley
The Art as an Economic Engine conference brought together people from all sectors of our community—political, education, business and of course art and culture—to discuss positive economic change through growth of the arts and culture. What comes next?
Friday, February 6th was a packed day of events at the Waterloo Arts Center. A conference called “Art as an Economic Engine” was the centerpiece for the day which also featured the opening of “Uncommon Threads” featuring beaded and sequined art of Haiti; and, the Hip Hop and Social Action conference.
One of the big draws to the “Art as..” conference was guest speaker Kirk Watson, former mayor of Austin, Texas, who now tours the country working with cities on revitalization programs.
Watson spoke in the morning about putting the “creative class” work for a community. Later in the afternoon he was joined by research and communications specialist Lou Musante to engage attendees in discussion and problem solving activities.
Before kicking into discussion, Kirk Watson presented his ten step process for making things work:
1. throw away labels
2. create the opportunity to hear one another (listen)
3. you will never meet everyone’s concept of perfection
4. be biased toward action (“Gotta break eggs to make an omelet.”)
5. there is value in failure (“Learn from it, be flexible, make it better.”)
6. short term focus with long term goals (what can you do right now)
7. know your core assets and values (admit weaknesses)
8. avoid knit-pickers, nay-sayers and know-it-alls (people who suck the flow out of a project)
9. create new and different constituencies
10. don’t believe your own bull (other people have good ideas)
Lou Musante then joined Kirk to open up the discussion on exploring the “Five P’s”: passion, priorities, product, plan and people. Here we broke off into groups to discuss each of these items and then present back to the whole that was in attendance.
PASSION
Here we broke out strengths and weaknesses of our community. Things like low cost of living, reasonable real estate, educated population, wide range of ethnic groups we saw as strengths (however, it was brought up how little representation we had from our African-American, Hispanic and Bosnian populations at this conference). Weaknesses then included some of the homogeneity amongst those in positions of power, parochialism, artificial boundaries, and so on.
Out of the discussion on “passion” we also discussed “brain drain” the catch phrase used to describe the exodus of college students out of Iowa once they graduate. We discussed the importance of our area colleges getting involved in the community, and our community taking an interest in what’s going on at our area colleges. The key here is finding ways to compel our college students to stay here. To create an environment such that they will want to stay. Kirk and Lou both pointed out that it’s not just good jobs that will keep someone here, but a good environment, a good place to be, a good quality of life.
PRIORITIES
Our table discussion about priorities focused on empowering youth to have a say in city planning. Greater ethnic representation in city planning was also an issue. Really, looking at a power structure that is representative of our community. Downtown Waterloo was also a topic for discussion—creating a better night life, pedestrian life. We discussed encouraging entrepreneurship and the creation of an arts district downtown.
When the discussion opened up, downtown was on the minds of many. Kirk spoke first hand of his experiences in downtown revitalization of Austin, “the key is young residential. You need to set some measurable goals and a timeline to get things done. In Austin we set our goal at developing 3,000 residential units downtown over 5 years.”
PRODUCT
Downtown is “the product” and the discussion touched things like re-evaluating city holdings in your downtown and using some of these buildings for housing projects or places where young entrepreneurs can get a project up and running.
PLAN
The discussion came back to setting measurable goals, having a plan of action and setting a reasonable timeline to get things done.
Then you’ve got to do move…and to do this you need...
PEOPLE
Who’s going to be responsible? Who are you going to recruit to help? You want to get more people involved. You’ve got to be strategic in your selection. You need to put your ideas out there – on a Web site for example – and let people vote.
It is important the four (4) key sectors are behind this type of development:
1. Business Community
2. Government
3. Unelected Leaders
4. Media
The great thing was that in attendance at this event we had attendees from all these sectors.
I have no doubt that this conference provided fuel for thoughts about how ART can contribute to our ECONOMY.
My hope is that some of the sparks that were happening yesterday at the Waterloo Center for the Arts will turn into flames to fuel the fires of positive change in downtown Waterloo and in our community at large.
Posted: February 09, 2004  
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