A bit of pushback on Bowling Alone. Running clubs (and swimming, cycling and triathlon) are booming. I just moved to a new city where I knew no-one and got an instant social life by joining a couple of clubs (for single folk, they are, apparently "the new dating app"). But unlike team sports in organised leagues, there's no expectation that I will turn up on any given day.
This actually was my area of research before I retired: I was the head (and sole member) of the Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education. I studied Appalshop, and Double Edge, and Robert Gard, and many others. And what I ended up concluding was that you couldn't just transplant the values and business models of urban arts institutions into rural areas; i.e., "Honey, I Shrunk the Guthrie" was not an option. To make it work, you had to think differently about virtuosity, professionalism, shrinking the aesthetic distance between artist and spectator, and so forth. I.e., all the things that are frowned on in school. It's a heavy lift, and requires a whole lot of unlearning.
I grew up in two small towns, one barely 1,000 and the other about 8,000 in population. Yet because of their location and industry, they had a traditional visual culture that still remains: waterfowl art, everything from paintings of waterfowl to decoy carvings. These were and are dull to me, but they’re part of me and I will always think of them fondly.
I now work in a much larger town/ small city that has no such enduring culture. The population doesn’t decline, nor does it grow. Stagnant. There have been some individual successes in both popular music and sports, and the community lauds these folks as mythical creatures. But no traditions. Nothing that has been created naturally from the essence of where we are. Our struggle is to try to define a visual culture and place individuals intentionally and meaningfully within that, while connecting the local with something bigger and broader. My community pines for things it does not have, but these things are the omnipresent, insidious franchised stores, restaurants, and entertainment options that tamp down any efforts of locals to be creative.
The town needs to define why on earth it exists or it will decline eventually. We want to be an important part of that, working to inspire, define, and promote homegrown culture. But this just isn’t possible without a unified effort.
A bit of pushback on Bowling Alone. Running clubs (and swimming, cycling and triathlon) are booming. I just moved to a new city where I knew no-one and got an instant social life by joining a couple of clubs (for single folk, they are, apparently "the new dating app"). But unlike team sports in organised leagues, there's no expectation that I will turn up on any given day.
This actually was my area of research before I retired: I was the head (and sole member) of the Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education. I studied Appalshop, and Double Edge, and Robert Gard, and many others. And what I ended up concluding was that you couldn't just transplant the values and business models of urban arts institutions into rural areas; i.e., "Honey, I Shrunk the Guthrie" was not an option. To make it work, you had to think differently about virtuosity, professionalism, shrinking the aesthetic distance between artist and spectator, and so forth. I.e., all the things that are frowned on in school. It's a heavy lift, and requires a whole lot of unlearning.
I grew up in two small towns, one barely 1,000 and the other about 8,000 in population. Yet because of their location and industry, they had a traditional visual culture that still remains: waterfowl art, everything from paintings of waterfowl to decoy carvings. These were and are dull to me, but they’re part of me and I will always think of them fondly.
I now work in a much larger town/ small city that has no such enduring culture. The population doesn’t decline, nor does it grow. Stagnant. There have been some individual successes in both popular music and sports, and the community lauds these folks as mythical creatures. But no traditions. Nothing that has been created naturally from the essence of where we are. Our struggle is to try to define a visual culture and place individuals intentionally and meaningfully within that, while connecting the local with something bigger and broader. My community pines for things it does not have, but these things are the omnipresent, insidious franchised stores, restaurants, and entertainment options that tamp down any efforts of locals to be creative.
The town needs to define why on earth it exists or it will decline eventually. We want to be an important part of that, working to inspire, define, and promote homegrown culture. But this just isn’t possible without a unified effort.