In searching for the keys to the phenomenon of rapid human evolution and progress, intellectuals have seized upon the idea of collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the rate of innovation, economic progress, and cultural enrichment of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals.1
In other words, it’s not individual intelligence that matters. What matters most is collective and cumulative intelligence — and that grows with the exchange of ideas and the interaction of people.1
This is why cities foster much more innovation than small towns, and why high-density cities tend to be more dynamic than low-density ones. Serendipitous connections happen more readily when there’s more chance for strangers to rub shoulders together.
When ideas from different people come together, innovation is more likely to occur. And the bigger the supply of existing ideas and the faster those ideas combine, the more new ideas are generated.2
The success of multi-cultural America (and highly-dense New York City) in the past century is the epitome of this relationship with its vast open society, through which goods, ideas and people flow freely. As a result of this rapid rate of exchange, America is known for and has greatly benefited from its bounty of innovation and discoveries as well as its cultural richness.
But if a population falls, becomes fragmented, or loses density, thereby resulting in less exchange and interaction, cultural evolution may actually regress. So developing and maintaining large, tight-knit, and vibrant social networks is paramount to ensuring a thriving culture.1
During its heyday, Memphis had a tightly-networked talent pool with a high rate of idea exchange and artistic cross-pollination. As a result, Memphis’ rich and innovative culture influenced and inspired America — and the world — with its blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and soul music.
That cultural genius is still in our blood and soil, but it seems less cultivated, innovative, and dynamic than before. Why? Because Memphis has suffered from a reduced rate of idea exchange.
Three reasons come to mind:
First off was the destruction in 1969 of Beale Street, the artistic and cultural hub of black Memphis (and arguably black America at one time). But Beale Street wasn’t just a black cultural hub that helped nurture and fulfill black creativity and artistic talent. White artists also frequented the street and absorbed ideas and inspiration from the rich culture bubbling out of Beale — think Elvis. Severing this vital artistic and cultural hub has had dire consequences on the interim innovation and integration of Memphis arts & culture. Unfortunately, today’s Beale Street — with its tourist-laden national chains and gimmicky bars — doesn’t nearly serve its pre-destruction role of local cultural enrichment.
Second, the concurrent and subsequent sprawl of Memphis away from the urban core of downtown has resulted in a severely low-density city, even by national standards.
Third, Memphis has been suffering a creative brain drain ever since the period of Beale Street’s destruction and Stax’s bankruptcy. Thousands of ambitious creatives have been leaving Memphis over the years as local opportunities have dried up.
What do the loss of our unique cultural hub; the decrease in our urban density; and the draining of our creative pool all have in common? All three of these occurrences greatly reduce the rate at which our population exchanges ideas. That has had quite the negative impact on the evolution of Memphis culture and the dynamism of our arts over the past four decades.
Reversing sprawl and increasing our city’s urban density would help Memphis regain its dynamism. To ensure a healthy talent pool, plugging and reversing the Memphis brain drain should be a priority, which the City of Choice initiative aims to do. But given our city’s historical arts & culture forte, nurturing, connecting, and integrating our artists with an arts hub and forum — akin to pre-destruction Beale Street — may be the most critical catalyst this city needs.
Memphis Art Park would help address all these issues. It would be a community arts center in the heart of downtown, our urban core. It would help retain and attract the creative class. It would incubate and cater to emerging artists of all kinds, thereby enriching our talent pool. It would serve as an integrative arts & culture hub and forum where filmmakers, musicians, performing artists, dancers, and visual artists of all stripes would congregate, communicate, cross-pollinate, and inspire each other. And it would help tighten and strengthen our creative social network.
Most importantly, Memphis Art Park would help increase the rate at which our city’s artists and creatives exchange ideas, which would help reinvigorate the dynamism, richness, and innovation of Memphis culture…and help Memphis get its mojo back.
1 Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. Harper, 2010.
2 Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Riverhead Hardcover, 2010.
I like the analysis John provided about why Memphis hasn’t seen the kind of dynamic growth those of us who live and work here would like to see. There are some very exciting things happening in Memphis not the least of which has been the relocation of the law school to downtown bringing with it a daily influx of nearly 400 young smart and dynamic people.
The Memphis Art Park is just the right type of forum to bring additional dynamic folks back to the downtown area. And, it’s close to the law school. A great combination, lawyers and artists.
I agree, Linda. Downtown needs to be dense in order to be more dynamic. Having the Law School students and Memphis Art Park artists side by side would go a long way to achieving this. What’s more, artists are entrepreneurs and the arts can lead to entrepreneurial businesses, which could certainly benefit from the law school next door.
Well, it reads like an argument for an art park, but, you don’t bneed an argument, you need a reason and a support matrix in place to make all those things you posit it would serve as actually happen.
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“That cultural genius is still in our blood and soil, but it seems less cultivated, innovative, and dynamic than before. Why? Because Memphis has suffered from a reduced rate of idea exchange.”
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Oh it’s cultivated, cultivated to keep it’s mouth shut and leave. You reap exactly what you sew, every single time.
Places are not the reason any place ever has a creative community, it’s SUPPORT and a building, a street, that’s only so much support.
PEOPLE are the support.
That’s why you have to have density. Having a place to go downtown is one thing, like an art park, skate park, park park, BUT, that isn’t support for living here. It won’t hurt, but, it’s not enough. There has to be service for a stable community, like a cleaners, technology center, library, food, office supplies, transportation, safe environment, clothing store, groceries, drug stores, etc. the stuff that is everywhere but downtown, except for the drug store. There’s still a drugstore.
Subsidize those businesses as startups (don’t fund a crony doing it, have some integrity for once) and you’ll have a start on this till it repopulates.
Baiting the fish to the empty part of the pond is a temporary move, start a fish food farm there and you’ll have all the fish there you’d ever want.
My post is lengthy (as usual) but let me start by saying I could not agree more! Our decline in density has performed and enormous disservice to the community. If we cannot stand to live near each other, how can we expect to collaborate? It goes toward the basic underlying concept of a city. That is to say a place where individuals live together in order to enjoy the mutual benefits that such proximity and relationships yield. At this point, one might really ask why so many live in a city shaped as Memphis is at all. We are building ourselves in a manner that magnifies the negative aspects of what it is to be urban while smothering the positives. By scattering and isolating ourselves as much as possible we in fact reduce or eliminate the good that is inherent in such a relationship. What we are left with are the detrimental aspects of such an organization- environmental degradation, entrenched poverty and wasted resources.
I love the idea of the Memphis Art Park- but please allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment.
Initiatives such as the Art Park in and of itself will not prove to be the cure for what ails us. The underlying issue is how it is programmed once it is built. A real issue in Memphis is the lack of embrace of the outside, the unknown and the unsupported (oh how far this city has fallen from the path! Elvis is truly turning in his grave). Building infrastructure such as Art Park will be hardly noticeable if it becomes a venue for the established and accepted artists and their media. This comes into play as it almost always does with similar initiatives. A thin line must be walked that somehow yields the funds necessary to keep the roof from leaking and the lights on year after year while also serving its intended purpose- allowing a student at the U of M to produce a truly experimental show without hindrance, allowing a student at Carver High to showcase their work despite their lack of financial support and allowing an empty nester wife in Germantown a place to hang her latest visual creation for the sheer joy of sharing and public critique.
On last question on the devil’s agenda- is downtown truly the place for such a park? Please hear me out. I support the notion of a vibrant urban core and I believe fortifying that core with outlets and institutions that play to the creative class is in the city’s best interest. However, an Art Park speaks of a place where emerging artists are given a rare chance in the spotlight. What then? In order to truly reap the rewards of such an investment the surrounding neighborhood must be able to cater and support the Park’s purpose and mission. This would include “off-Main” galleries (lower rents for that first small step), schools or class spaces at the least (art, dance, media which might then translate into all sorts of professional fields), and- of course- a healthy. I am not sure downtown degree of retail catering to supplies and a never ending river of coffee can be the place to support such activities to the degree they deserve. To be honest, the neighborhoods that come to mind first and foremost are Crosstown and Binghamton. Both locations are showing very basic signs of life driven by grassroots efforts. Both neighborhoods come with their own “urban” pedestrian scaled cores while being located near or within what we might define as the core of the city- within the Parkways. Both neighborhoods are home to schools that are either underutilized or have spaces that could be multi-purposed with the community. Both neighborhoods have the benefit of lower rents due to their history and their locations within the city.
Urbanaut,
You said it. Every word. One big fat BINGO.
Thanks and I appreciate anyone being able to read through that garbled mess in the middle of the post!
It should have read:
…” and- of course- a healthy degree of retail catering to supplies and a never ending river of coffee. I am not sure downtown can be the place to support such activities to the degree they deserve”. Proof reading has never been a personal strength.
Urbanut:
Yes, Art Park by itself is not the cure, but it’s certainly part of the cure and it hopes to set Memphis on the right path.
As for the programming, I would refer you to the business plan posted on Art Park’s website — http://www.memphisartpark.org/. Once you download the business plan, go to pages 16 and 17 — in particular page 17. Art Park would be outsourced to the University of Memphis, College of Communication and Fine Arts as well as the Memphis Music Foundation, and other similar orgs, all of whose mission is to incubate and provide resources to emerging artists. Art Park would also provide a home base for the Memphis City School arts program Echoes of Truth. Art Park is not structured for the established and accepted artists but indeed for the outside, the unknown and the unsupported. Art Park’s facilities would provide infrastructure for emerging artists, both to practice and realize their art as well as to showcase their art — a DIY art center and open-mic art park, if you will.
Re downtown versus midtown neighborhoods: downtown (and not just downtown but front and center on the bluff) is necessary because our emerging artists tend to be too underground in midtown and don’t have enough exposure to help them make a living from their art. Plus they need feedback not just from other artists and the same midtown crowd that tend to frequent their showcases, but from the public at large. Memphis has millions of tourists that flow mostly through downtown. That’s an un-leveraged resource for our artists to make a bigger splash. Local support alone isn’t enough and never has been. Not getting in front of that tourist/outsider crowd is a hugely wasted opportunity. And those tourists won’t go to binghampton nor crosstown in its present state. They’re in downtown. With Art Park having intimate showcase facilities for emerging artists and a great view of the river, it’d be a magnet for locals and tourists alike. Trolley tour, which is more for established artists, proves it. Emerging artists need their own space and Art Park is designed for exactly that purpose in mind.
John-
Thanks for the feedback.