I think most of us want to live in a interesting city. I've given this some thought, and, at first I wanted to live in a fun city. But in order to make a city fun, all you have to do is make a cheesy amusement park and that's not really my thing. So "interesting" city it is....
We can all name some interesting cities. Toronto, NY, San Francisco, Montreal and Vancouver come to my mind. If you live in one if these cities, then kudos, you live in an interesting city, and you should be proud. As for everyone else, we also live in interesting cities - but secretly. And I think we also have something to be proud of.
I thought I would bring to your attention a great documentary film series I came across recently. The series is called Don't Move Here - inside Portland's music scene.
The video series is created by the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy - the guys that brought you Nike's "Just do it" and, more recently, Old Spice's "The man your man could smell like". W+K use their own creative resources and money to create WKE (Wieden+Kennedy Entertainment) which documents all the rad things the agency and people of Portland are doing.
In order for an ad agency to produce the best creative ideas, they have to employ a lot of creative people - like artists, writers, and other people that hate waking up before 9 am. W+K has to attract the talent from all over the world. Portland was hardly a top destination for creative and interesting people to move to in the 1980s, when W+K launched their business there.
So the company began documenting all the creative things that they, and the people of Portland were doing. They were proud to be Portlanders. Portland is now an interesting city.
So, if you, like me, live in a city that doesn't rate high on the interesting scale, how do you attract great talent and make your city an interesting place to live?
The answer, I think, is to be proud of what you already have. Just like W+K's doing. Document the rad stuff happening now in your city. Right here in London, ON, we have some neat things happening that no one outside a 80 km radius knows about. But I bet they would care if they knew.
LondonFuse already has a sweet podcast doing just that - which is encouraging.
I love podcasts, but I like video even more. So, as soon as I can get a good video camera, I'm going to interview some of this town's musicians, artists, writers, thinkers, and politicians. I'm totally going to rip off WKE. But, if you are in London, and already have a good camera and a great idea, then go ahead and do it before I do - there's no competition. Or if you're outside of London, then document what's happening in your city, because I don't know about it, and I bet it's cool.
Nice.
I think I follow more people from Portland on Twitter than any other city (after London and Toronto), and almost every week I think of visiting or even moving there. It's amazing how much attention can be drawn by people doing stuff that's already worthwhile and interesting -- and making the tiny extra effort to do it in a way the world can find it, opening up, breaking out of cliques, creating dissonance and tension, taking risks, letting our darlings die, etc...
I think most of the time people (at least living in London) turn and look to other cities for 'interesting' things, which is unfortunate due to the amount of great things which are happening in London. Bands or artists or I'm sure even companies need to 'make it' outside of the city before they are recognized (by the majority) in their own city. A project like this, turning attention on your own city, would be a great way to break that stigma. WKE seems to be a perfect example of this... and I'm sure doing similar things in our own cities could help build local pride as well as gain attention from other cities.
Good points... Maybe we can bring it up as one of the ChangeCamp discussions on Saturday... although in that context it would gravitate slightly more towards economic development... either way, maybe we can have a more arts-oriented workshop or whatever on its own time...
Thomas, I know FUSE is largely about developing more crossover & conversation among London's different creative communities. This seems to fit perfectly. I remember you weren't enthusiastic when I suggested encouraging people to contribute to FUSE in relation to particular events, but I'd like to bring that up again... e.g. rather than just having announcements and then one person reports on the event after the fact, do more nudging in advance, encouraging/enabling people to document and share their perspective: get more ecosystem effects going: recorded media people building off of performed media, which in turn builds off of the extra promotion and encouragement, which keeps drawing more people in, etc...
Look at LOLA as an example. It already kind of works like that (I got this idea from all of the coverage LOLA got on FUSE last year, as well as the photowalk organized by Kevin VL & James Wilk) but I'd love to see it done in a way that's even more explicitly and organically open to that kind of contribution (either planned or spontaneous) -- giving more real impetus to the audience/viewers to turn around and do/make/share something creative while they're there...
Regardless, as Matt suggested, anyone with a camera can just take it upon themselves -- and any performers are free to experiment with getting audiences involved more creatively.
Every little bit feeds the process...
Hey Frank, thanks for the input. I'm fairly certain that I've always wanted to encourage an ecosystem with Fuse. I might not have done a perfect job of creating the right mix of web features and promotional content though.
That said, Matt and I were talking about Fuse's future projects when he mentioned WKE. I definitely encouraged him to make a post about WKE since it does reflect what the new organizing group behind Fuse wants to do. If you read my post about Indie Game: The Movie, and reflect back upon this post, you might get a sense of what we might be up to. Keep in mind that on top of this we are also rebuilding the website so that we can better encourage participation and provide benefit to content creators.
If you'd like to provide any more feedback feel free to drop me a message or email.
Best,
Thomas
It's so important to know where you come from before you can go anywhere else. Of course I relate this to London in this particular case; meaning as a musician, artist or business you have to understand your surroundings to succeed. At least this is what I've experienced. Finding out what YOU think is interesting/cool and sharing it with others is part of the process. There is a phenomenal pool of talent in this city and they must be getting inspired from somewhere or something. Not being a native to London, just a student who decided to stay I must say in the past five years this city has come a long way. And the exciting part is there is so much more to come.