Spacing contributor Laura Boudreau is blogging the Creative Places + Spaces Regional Forum at the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Follow her posts on Tuesday and Wednesday to learn more about innovative city-building at the Barns and beyond.
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Creative convergence — what is it, why is it important, and what can creative space developers from different sectors learn from one another? Big questions for an 8am morning and a negative-8-degree commute, which might explain the rather desperate clutch of delegates at the coffee stations this morning on day two of CP+S at the Artscape Wychwood Barns.
Aggregation, collaboration, cooperation, innovation — these watchwords serve as a good unofficial motto for the Barns. Tim Jones, President and CEO of Artscape, says, “Here we have a marriage of art and environment and urban agriculture, and it came out of the aspirations and collaborations of this local community, and that’s why it’s authentic and successful.†Without the creative convergence of imagination and willpower from many different stakeholders, the transformation of the Barns simply wouldn’t have happened.
From a policy and administrative standpoint, however, convergence can be hard to handle. “Because we don’t fit into the box, we’re so much easier to ignore,†says Tonya Surman, the Executive Director of the Centre for Social Innovation (Spacing Media’s HQ). “Everybody wants convergence, or says they want it, but the funding mechanisms we have in place don’t know how to recognize it when they see it.â€
How can out-of-the-box thinking be realized when it’s boxed in by government policy, “silo-thinking,” and inadequate or overly complicated funding structures? That’s the focus of our break-out sessions today, and it’ll be exciting to see what kind of answers we generate.