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Creative Class: Rural Massachusetts style
July 30th, 2010 by Mike Knutson
The Boston Globe reports that the arts have saved the rural town of Pittsfield in western Massachusetts. After losing a GM plant, the community of 45,000 residents invested in attracting the Barrington Stage Company and building a strong arts community as a central part of its economic development strategy.
As the Boston Globe article states:
“Once-vacant buildings in downtown Pittsfield are filling with galleries, theaters, residences, and restaurants. North Street, the city’s long-depressed main drag, now hosts regular street festivals, open houses, and art shows that draw thousands of residents and visitors. People are starting to believe that Pittsfield is an attraction, rather than a moribund pit stop on the way from Tanglewood to Mass MoCA.” (source: “The Art of Saving a City,“ David Filopov, Boston Globe, July 24, 2010.)
Sounds like the creative class theories of Richard Florida have worked in this rural community.
Not everyone is buying this talk
Some community leaders, however, oppose the strategy and don’t think it’s been successful. Dan Bianchi who recently lost a close election to become the community’s next mayor is quoted in the article saying:
“It’s great that we attract the arts and support it,” he said. “But you can’t point to one significant business that relocated as a result of arts.”
Business relocation. If that’s the only measurement for the strategy, this strategy is bound to be viewed as a failure. After all, the major emphasis of the strategy is attracting people who will create their own business ventures.
I like what Pittsfield has done. It sounds like it makes a lot of sense for the community. But I’m not sure it plays out the same in small, rural communities in the Midwest. After all, a town of 40,000 in Massachusetts is very different from the small towns that make up Midwestern landscape.
It has to be authentic
Here I turn to advice offered by Dr. David Ivan of Michigan State University’s Land Policy Institute, and a presentation he made at the 2009 Small Town & Rural Development Conference titled “Can Small Towns be Cool?” While lifting up cultural and artistic sectors as a part of economic development strategies, Dr. Ivan acknowledged that successful cultural efforts “are genuine, often organically-driven by creative individuals within the community.”
Dr. Ivan goes on in the presentation to highlight how efforts to build the arts must be “authentic” in order for them to be successful.
“Authentic” is very popular word in the marketing community today. It suggests you can’t try to promote yourself as something you are not.
Answering “what’s authentic?” is not easy. But I think it’s something communities should be thinking about if they chose to consider the development of the arts as a part of their economic development strategy.
Photo Credit: bvcphoto – Flickr, Sculture, Pittsfield, MA
Note: Thanks to the Daily Yonder for bringing the Pittsfield story to my attention.
Tags: coolest small towns, creative economy, Massachusettes, people attraction strategy, Pittsfield MA
Posted in Community Development, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (
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July 31st, 2010 at 8:16 am
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