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Jazz is Groovy!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Posts: 482
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Building Better Cities with Jazz
Found this floating around and thought it was interesting... {JJ}
The secret weapon to transform cities … jazz
Dundee festival to show why music scene breeds scientists
By Alan Crawford
IT'S not, perhaps, the first ingredient that springs to mind in a
formula for breathing new life into cities, but according to one of
Britain's leading think tanks, jazz is vital in transforming urban
sprawls into vibrant metropolises. Add free-form improvisation
into the urban stew and you will attract creative minds and free
thinkers, according to Demos, who will unveil their new strategy
at – where else? – Dundee Jazz Festival this week.
The think tank wants to add jazz to the jute, jam and journalism label
which has long been attached to the self-styled city of discovery. It
will advance the proposal that "good science and a good jazz scene
often go together", built on the premise that any city conducting
world-class science – such as the case is with Dundee and its biotech
sector – has to aspire to be somewhere that world-class scientists
want to live.
With its tongue only very slightly in its cheek, Demos poses the
question: "Does Dundee need to become more like San Francisco?"
The event, Boho Boffins: Why Cities Need Science And Jazz, is part of
a year-long Demos project called Scotland 2020, which aims to initiate
a "public conversation" to consider different approaches to Scotland's
future.
Melissa Mean, senior researcher with Demos, who runs the think tank's
cities programme and is on the panel for Thursday's debate, explained:
"If you think about jazz, it's improvised and brings in lots of
different people. It's a music adapted from its early roots and fused
with many scenes, from fusion to bebop to new jazz. That's a metaphor
for how we can think about cities. You can't control cities from the
top and regulate how they develop. If you had city planners thinking
like jazz players, it might help the way we think about urban
development."
Mean concedes that San Francisco may be tricky to recreate on the
banks of the Tay, but says the west coast city was only meant as a
reference.
"It's not the holy grail that all cities should be following,
otherwise you'd end up with everywhere the same."
Demos is focusing on Dundee as a prime example of a city at a
crossroads, as it moves from a past dominated by heavy industry to a
brave new future where high-tech industries and the knowledge economy
hold sway. Already references to Dundee as home to the "three Js"
[Jute, jam and journalism] are decades out of date, with the city's
two universities pioneering work in the biotechnology sector and in
computer games. The emergence of the Dundee Centre for Contemporary
Arts, the success of the Dundee Rep theatre company and the creation
of an award-winning contemporary dance centre, The Space, are all
transforming preconceptions of the Tayside city.
However, Mean said that ideas of what constitutes a successful city is
moving from the "hardware", or infrastructure, to the "software", such
as human relations and tolerance toward ethnic groups and gay people –
a crucial factor in attracting talent. These, she says, are the
"pillars that are going to support cities in the long haul".
Look at Helsinki, she said, which through its association with Nokia
has moved from being perceived as a "communist state" . Or take
Barcelona, which has gone from "almost a basket-case economy" to a
premium destination.
"The point is that with the right investment and creative thinking,
cities can go from nowhere to top of the league. It's more challenging
than building a bridge – but there's everything to play for," added
Mean.
Mean is talking the same language as Dr Tom Shepherd, chief executive
of Dundee-based biotech company CXR Biosciences. He has come to the
city of discovery from Glasgow's Barlanark, via San Francisco, Paris
and Boston, and now employs 35 people – a minority of whom are Scots –
in the high-end medical side of biotechnology.
"This idea that you have these high-tech and biotech clusters but you
also have an intellectual, musical and cultural scene along with it is
very important where you're bringing a lot of scientists in, quite
often from all over the world," he said. "That's what happens in San
Francisco. It seems to me quite a logical link, although not that many
people think about it.
"The kind of people who tend to go for these cultural things,
particularly jazz but also foreign films, theatre and the ballet, are
the kind of people who have jobs of that rather avant-garde variety as
well. They do tend to go hand in hand.
"The companies are where they are because they're trying to be
creative, they're not wanting to make a thousand widgets at 10p a
widget less than they made it last year. They're trying to do
something completely new, so it's very creative. So it stands to
reason that the people in those companies are probably going to be
creative in other ways as well. I wouldn't be surprised if you took a
poll of companies in Dundee and found there was a higher than normal
count of musicians or artists among the people."
Shona Cormack, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise Tayside, said
she welcomed the event since attraction and retention of employees is
important for Tayside and Scotland as a whole.
Cormack, who is to join the panel on Thursday, added: "There are real
opportunities in terms of looking at the coming together of the
technological and creative excellence that we have in Dundee.
"I absolutely buy the idea that a vibrant city needs a strong cultural
scene."
16 May 2004
Last edited by JazzJunkie; July-3rd-2004 at 11:14 AM.
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