Citiwire.net

For Release Sunday, December 21, 2008
Citiwire.net

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Our city, the “capital of Silicon Valley,” is known chiefly as America’s continuing birthplace of high technology ideas and products. But we also care passionately about the arts and their creative power for our people and future. Our goal is nothing less than a continuing, growing tide of “artist-engineers” in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci.

This is why San Jose–and my job title is “chief strategist”–has integrated its office of cultural affairs into its office of economic development.

It’s why we hosted a “Global Leadership Forum on Economic and Cultural Development” that drew attendees from 17 global cities, from Helsinki to Yokohama, Guadalajara to Wellington.

It’s why San Jose, for more than two decades, has invested in cultural arts organizations, festivals and leaders.

The same goal explains why, deep in this land of the technologists, we’ve launched our “Creative Entrepreneur” project to help nurture artists’ careers.

And it’s why San Jose’s Tech Museum is featuring the world premier of a far-reaching exhibit of innovative art, science, and the engineering work of Leonardo and his contemporaries.

Behind all these initiatives is our strong belief that a unique, vibrant arts scene will help us develop, attract, and nurture talented people. We’ve witnessed the sheer joy of self-expression and the power of the arts to connect people across diverse backgrounds. (And we know something of diversity– with our nearly perfectly balanced mosaic of Asians, Latinos and whites, San Jose is California’s most ethnically diverse big city). We’ve seen how cultural expression helps to sustain native country customs and reinforce bonds between parents and children.

We believe that the creative arts and artists are increasingly integral to where our entire community is headed. We’re convinced that the companies and communities that will thrive in the coming years are those that can generate and apply new ideas–the model that Stanford economist Paul Romer has shown is the primary catalyst for growth in advanced economies.

It’s the “mix and match,” the reorganizing of resources (natural, human and financial) that generates growth. Think about it: what’s valuable in a semiconductor or your favorite specialty coffee drink is not merely the ingredients (which are, after all, basic), but the way the ingredients are combined and presented to the customer. The ability to generate new ideas, to link ideas in novel, unanticipated ways, has become the critical path to staying ahead in today’s global competition.

We’re convinced that Silicon Valley’s high-end creative capacities—originality, divergent thinking, conceptualization, synthesis, tolerance of ambiguity, remote association, intellectual curiosity—have long been essential for local companies’ competitive success. And we think that’s true whether they’re creating an innovative new chip architecture, a new software application, or a new search functionality.

Consider the payoffs, including the commercial creative sector such as film/video, music, interactive media, advertising, publishing. That sector already represents 6 to 7 percent of the world economy. And it’s poised for long-term growth with interesting spin offs.

And note how people trained in art and design are being given a place in high-tech workforces. The winning formula for firms often includes ‘right brain’ types working on teams with ‘left-brain’ engineers and technologists.

Today artistic skills are cropping up in unexpected fields, such as bioscience. As San Jose-based “serial entrepreneur” Glenda Anderson explains, “I’ve hired graphic designers to create visually compelling displays for complex biomedical data, with great success. Their work really distinguished those products.”

As technology becomes more prevalent, the creative element in a product or service may be one way to sustain advantage. To bring back the “artist-engineer” concept of Leonardo’s time, we hold a biennial festival of “art on the edge” called 01SJ (www.01SJ.org).

And we’re strong on the idea of arts education and participation because they develop the very skills and qualities that are required of the 21st century workforce: analysis, synthesis, imagination, teamwork, problem-solving, critical assessment.

So schools like San Jose State and Cogswell College promote the fusion of art and engineering and help students launch careers working on special effects, animation, scripts, music and sound in the film, video, gaming, and high-tech industries. Our city’s latest public artworks were created by artists whose modern paintbrush is out-of-the-box software programming skills. And our downtown is is emerging as a creative nexus where art and culture, technology and entrepreneurship come together.

Leonardo and his compatriots lived the unity of art, science, and technology and left behind a renaissance of human creativity. In the centuries since, we’ve evolved a more fractured view: artists and engineers, cultural affairs and economic affairs, artistic creativity and industry innovation–they’re all typically viewed as separate.

But communities that cultivate this emerging connection between the creative arts and economic success should have brighter prospects, even in tough economic times.

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