Southern Cities for the Creative Class

This article isn't specifically about music, but cities that attract the creative class also tend to have great music scenes.

Ten Places in the South for the Creative Class: "These places are actively and prominently working to make their communities more attractive to knowledge workers by fostering environments for opportunity, expression and quality of life that creatives expect and demand."

The article lists Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Lafayette, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Savannah, and St. Petersburg.

Integrating art into a community

This article talks about a neighborhood in Houston which has become a inner city artists' residency program. What makes it noteworthy is the way it is able to change lives -- both artists and local residents.

Project Row Houses - Rick Lowe - - Art - Report - New York Times: "The campus, as Mr. Lowe calls it, now includes eight houses for visiting artists, local and international. 'We give them a key,' he said. 'They come for anywhere from a week to five months. They can do whatever they want. There are a lot of other places for artists to prepare exhibitions for museums or alternative spaces. We encourage them to figure out how to be creative within this community.'

"...Project Row Houses has created the Young Mothers Residential Program, the brainchild of Deborah Grotfeldt, who worked with Mr. Lowe at the beginning. Since 1996, it has provided a year’s housing and support for single women struggling to finish school and get their bearings. It has been as successful as the artist residency program.

"Assata Richards was one of the first mothers to move in. 'Back then, I was 23,' she told me when I called her up in Pittsburgh, where she is now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. 'My son was 6. I was financially struggling and having a hard time with housing. I was low on self-esteem. I had been a high achiever, but motherhood, working and going to school were taking a toll on me.'

"The program offered child care, classes in child rearing, workshops on spirituality and sexuality, and mutual support. 'We learned that we didn’t have to be single mothers, even if we weren’t married,' Ms. Richards said. “We didn’t have to do anything by ourselves.'”

Saving old movie theaters

This article talks about how to save several classic Houston movie theaters.

HoustonChronicle.com - Eight ways to save Alabama, River Oaks theaters

The Boulder Theater, which was referenced in the previous blog entry, books a diverse group of events, which may be one answer.

Boulder Theater calendar

And here is a website devoted to saving historic Michigan theaters.

MyCityRocks

Marketing to the MySpace Generation: "In October 2003, I created something called Houston Rocks! as an experiment in promoting the Houston art and music scene and in building a new kind of community on top of an Internet-based social network. The Houston Rocks! experiment became a huge success in the Houston area, but I realized that as a single-city endeavor it was limited in potential. So, in 2005, I expanded the concept into the development of the MyCityRocks testbed, with multiple objectives."

Houston's experience hosting a large music festival

The Essence Music Festival, previously held in New Orleans, was moved to Houston this year. There were some glitches, which points up the challenge of putting on a huge music festival (this one stretched over three days and had 200,000 attendees), particularly with relatively short notice (Houston had just seven months to prepare).

This from the 7/2/2006 Houston Chronicle:

"'It was a difficult city to navigate and that can't be ignored,' said Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications Inc. 'The end result was a general lack of systems to manage the sprawl. Houston underestimated the enormity and significance of this event.'

"Festival organizers said they heard numerous complaints from attendees related to the distance between hotels, shopping, downtown entertainment and Reliant Park, where the Essence Festival was held."

There were also complaints that there was not enough to do once the late night concerts ended.