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The Creative Economy
Council's Art and Technology Initiative Committee held a convocation on
Friday, May 2 at the Boston Foundation during the Boston Cyberarts
Festival.
Numerous leaders from New England's high-tech
corporations, art and technology educational and cultural non-profits as
well as leading individual artists working in new media attended. In
addition, a number of artists and business leaders who are not in new
media came. Their 'outsider' input was very helpful to the discussion. The
goal of the meeting was to define strategic actions to improve the
regional climate for art and technology. Bill Nigreen of Facilitation for
Social Change led the discussion.
A request was sent, along with the invitation to attend, for a list of
strategic actions that would improve the regional climate for art and
technology in New England. They could be existing programs that need
support or new ideas. Ten people sent in thirty-two actions and before the
meeting these were organized into common themes. Four themes emerged: Networking
and Advocacy, Building
Businesses in Art & Technology, Creating
Access to Tools & Technology and Building
Institutions. These themes and the actions comprising them became the
basis for discussion.
The meeting started with an introduction to the ideas and history of the
Creative Economy Council by Beate Becker from the Boston Redevelopment
Authority. Then the group responded to the submitted list of themes and
strategic actions by proposing others that belonged in the same categories
and in addition, proposing one other theme that was felt to be missing;
Art & Technology Youth Education. This is a topic that a
number of organizations are actively advancing and an entire convocation
could be devoted to this. The original
list of strategic actions is also online.
At this point, attendees broke off into four groups to discuss the
original four themes. They were charged with coming up with no more than
three "great big ideas" that would improve the art and
technology climate and then a number of "practical ideas", which
would either advance the big ideas or implement other aspects of the
themes.
The fifth theme, Art & Technology Youth Education,
was not discussed and the committee is asking specific groups, for
instance, the Boston Cyberarts youth committee, to respond to and expand
its strategic actions by email.
After the breakout sessions, the groups reconvened and reported to the
others. The entire group had a chance to respond and add more focus to the
presented ideas. In a number of cases, certain organizations explained how
they were already implementing some of the suggested actions. Boston
Cyberarts has already submitted an NEA grant to create an artist in
residency program in various high technology companies. Jo-Anne Green of Turbulence.org
explained how a non-profit art and technology consortium, ATBoston
had recently formed to network and share resources. A couple of the
actions were advanced when different groups agreed to work together toward
their realization. Emanuel Lewin of Art
Interactive and Celeste Wilson of The
Greater Boston Arts and Business Council agreed to discuss realizing
Lewin's ideas for a 'volunteer engineers for the arts program'. Bill
Seaman of RISD and Noah Wardrip-Fruin from Brown University proposed
helping to form an AT New England, a regional consortium. Finally
individuals and organizations embraced some of these new ideas. George
Fifield and Carmin Karasic from Boston Cyberarts agreed to lead the effort
to start a regional on-line database of New Media in New England. Boston
Cyberarts is starting by hosting this document.
These web pages are meant to be a living document. As actions are taken on
the various themes and ideas that came out of the convocation, they will
be added to this document. The energy and focus that was evidenced at this
first meeting of the Creative Economy Council's Art and Technology
Initiative reflects a New England-wide commitment to improve the regional
climate for art and technology.
Special thanks for the convocation to Erin Gay, Bill Nigreen and the
Boston Foundation. This report was compiled by George Fifield and Erin
Gay.
CEC Technology Initiative Action Group
George Fifield, Boston
Cyberarts, Inc., Boston MA (Chair)
Marina Hatsopoulos, Z Corporation,
Burlington MA
Joyce Plotkin, Massachusetts Software
Council, Boston MA
Diana Walczak, Kleiser-Walczak, North
Adams, MA |
