posted in The Nation

"Every moment of major social change requires a collective leap of imagination. Political transformation must be accompanied not just by spontaneous and organized expressions of unrest and risk but by an explosion of mass creativity. 

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During the transition, arts advocates floated some big ideas--including the creation of an arts corps to bring young artists into underfunded schools, the expansion of unemployment support and job retraining to people working in creative industries and the appointment of a senior-level "arts czar" in the administration. 

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For decades, the de facto policy has been to confuse the culture industry with the source of creativity and largely to abandon the production, promotion, distribution and enjoyment of arts and culture to the dictates of the boom/bust marketplace. The result has been the spread of "lifestyle economies" that are merely new forms of monoculturalism and the rise of an environment increasingly antithetical to creativity. A wave of deregulation in the culture industry has consolidated distribution channels and destroyed local scenes, locked away sources of inspiration behind fences of "rights management" and copyright and favored a "blockbuster or die" approach that raises barriers to entry and creates diseconomies of scale. Call it the privatization of the imagination.

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What we might call "the creativity stimulus" goes far beyond job creation and even economic development. Culture is not just something conservatives wage war on. The arts are not just something liberals dress up for on weekends. Creativity can be a powerful form of organizing communities from the bottom up. The economic crisis gives us a chance to rethink the role of creativity in making a vibrant economy and civil society. Artists as well as community organizers cultivate new forms of knowledge and consciousness. One of the unsung stories of the past twenty-five years is how both have used creativity to inspire community development and renewal. Creativity has become the glue of social cohesion in times of turmoil.

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Deeply rooted in the communities that made Obama's victory possible, these centers understand their work as transformational. Their communities are the most vulnerable to assaults on creativity, but they are also incubators of the most innovative ideas and movements of our time. This "creative communities" approach has created a vigorous and vital alternative to neoliberal and neoconservative versions of change.

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In 2003, in his first speech as culture minister, Gil stated that he wanted to forge "the opening of territory for creativity and new popular languages," ensure "the availability of space for adventure and daring" and secure "the space of memory and invention." Our urgent task is not just to repair the present but to recover the past and sow the future. When we are committed to advancing creativity, we will free these trailblazers to write the new narratives of America".