{"id":375,"date":"2003-09-25T11:32:03","date_gmt":"2003-09-25T18:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2003\/09\/from_the_mouths_of_mayors\/"},"modified":"2003-09-25T11:32:03","modified_gmt":"2003-09-25T18:32:03","slug":"from_the_mouths_of_mayors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/from_the_mouths_of_mayors.php","title":{"rendered":"From the Mouths of Mayors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned, I was off early this week at Madison, Wisconsin&#8217;s ArtGrowth Summit, one of many such meetings of arts, business, and civic leaders taking place around the country. And yet, preparing myself for the Richard Florida-speak of luring creative workers with creative amenities, I was pleasantly surprised by a more balanced reaction to the <i>Creative Class<\/i> frenzy that has gripped us all for the past year.<\/p>\n<p>\nSpecifically, our new Madison mayor offered some thoughts you rarely hear from public officials, covered in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison.com\/archives\/read.php?ref=tct:2003:09:23:281961:METRO\">this local news story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"blogquote\">\n&#8220;The arts should not be about economic development fundamentally,&#8221; Mayor Dave Cieslewicz told 300 activists today at a one-day &#8220;Artgrowth Summit&#8221; at Monona Terrace&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>\nCieslewicz allowed that attracting educated, creative people to a city is good policy. But he disparaged the &#8220;class&#8221; concept as condescending, saying it seems to &#8220;relegate the street people with purple hair to bit players in a play performed by the creative class.&#8217; &#8220;<\/p>\n<p>\nArt is about three things, said Cieslewicz: creativity, honesty and taking risks, he said.<\/p>\n<p>A fundamental role of the arts is to &#8220;shape our ideas of who we are and to help us govern ourselves,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Politics without art is dull and uninformed. Arts without politics is without a point.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s my mayor. Pretty cool (pending the proof of his commitment in his upcoming city budget).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned, I was off early this week at Madison, Wisconsin&#8217;s ArtGrowth Summit, one of many such meetings of arts, business, and civic leaders taking place around the country. And yet, preparing myself for the Richard Florida-speak of luring creative workers with creative amenities, I was pleasantly surprised by a more balanced reaction to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}