There's a book called Once There Was A Village about the East Village in the 1860's, but it covers stuff besides the arts scene as well. (caveat: not a fan of Florida's ideas. I think he's confusing indie-yuppiness with creativity)

oooooh. No idea where you start, but this is something that I've wondered about too.

My best guess is that you need an initial seed that consists of a bunch of people that ...
- Stand by the group at the expense of individual success.
- Consists of 50% creative people who are talented
- Consists of 50% publicity seeking whores who say they are talented.
- Have a wealthy benefactor.

That way you get the stuff you need to start a movement, the cohesion to keep it together in those difficult days and the talent to keep people coming to it / trying to emulate it.

Anyway - That's just a guess. I look forward to hearing an answer to this one.

- Stand by the group at the expense of individual success.
- Consists of 50% creative people who are talented
- Consists of 50% publicity seeking whores who say they are talented.
- Have a wealthy benefactor.

and easily available drugs.

I want something more historical/society/components of what makes the chemical stew favorable to creatives.

That's easy. Your keyword is "chemical stew". Look for the following: Cheap rents, squalor, a wide variety of easily affordable inebrients and loose women, men, or barnyard animals.

Mix all ingredients liberally in large bowl, garnish and spice lightly with genuine insanity extract. Intellectual art weirdos will come running like plague rats.

No, seriously. It's really just about that easy. It's all about the freedom to get out of your own head/skin and look around a bit. Or a lot.

As something of a life-long starving artist and having lived in a number of protean/upstart art villages, those ingredients were always plentiful. Cheap rent. Cheap bars. Floozy women/men. Crazy people. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. In copious amounts. Artists are the only non-racial demographic I've met that can outdrink an Irish expat in Moscow.

And, well, then I actually met an Irish-Russian-Artist hybrid, yes - from Moscow, who could literally outdrink a whole bunch of us put together. No, really, we did an emprical scientific experiment. We had him drink one beer for each beer any one of about 12 of us drank.

He won. If I recall correctly he put down about three and a half suitcases of Natty Light before we were suitably chastised and/or stopped counting. And ridiculously drunk. (It's this incident that made me swear off cheap beer, forever. Oh, god, my head. Vodka's more portable and efficient, anyway.)

On preview:

Have a wealthy benefactor.

That's a lot less common than I've ever seen or heard of - as in never. All of the "artists" I've ever met were just used to being really, really poor and spending what little money they had on booze. Or god forbid, art supplies. The artists I've known were more likely to have fair-to-middling part time jobs, like barista, for example.

Keep in mind that these folks think nothing of finding some bathroomless single room about 8x8' in a converted/retro office building or other derilict building and literally making it their home. If they're lucky they have access to public bathrooms in the building, and a sink in which to wash. If they're really lucky they have access to a shower.

Also keep in mind that I've actually seen artists survive on nothing more than coffee and cigs for days, and nothing but ramen and condiment packets for weeks and months. (At that point, even the cheapest beer has all kinds of useful calories, sugars and nutrients.)

Hell, I've done it, but I prefer to put my money into whole oats, rice and beans.

Those guys in the huge lofts with the nice kitchens, converted bathrooms and the nice, organic food in the fridge? Those aren't artists. Those are yuppies.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

My contact information is in my profile, if any wealthy benefactors are reading. I have a very attractive subscription program where one can choose from an array of genuine art-weirdo experiences, including "Vomiting profusely in a dangerous alley", "Experimenting with illicit drugs in your ass" and the ever-popular Lou Reed special "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" in which we track, identify and approach transsexual sex workers in the field and negotiate from a bewildering menu of services.

No, I'm not really kidding. Though I'm not currently living in any sort of an "arts village", I'm quite certain I would know where to go.

Actually, a lot of writers and artists settled in Paris in the 1920s because it was cheap, as in inexpensive to live (you wouldn't know it now); Hemingway talks about it in A Moveable Feast. I think a similar thing was true for the Village back in the day, and for, say, Prague now. In other words, it's not so much that the location fosters the creativity, but that creative types tend to be broke (I have first-hand knowledge of this, I'm afraid) and look for cheap, and perhaps stimulating, places to live, and word spreads, and more come, and so on.

(I'm considering Bangladesh myself.)

((on preview: what loq says...))

Truth be told, I'm glad I don't live in a 'creative hub.' places like that are fun to hang out in, but when you come in contact with noting but other artists, what the hell do you have to create about that's of any use. It all becomes very incestuous and loses any engagement with the outside world.

Besides, who cares about creative hubs. I care about creative hubcaps.

There are a lot of books on Black Mountain College in the 50s - that scene has had huge, far reaching effect in the arts ever since. I know a lot of the people involved with the museum & arts center if you want some names & phone numbers.

Black Mountain is interesting because it seems to have been an exception to the rule that those scenes must spring up organically; it really was focused around the college & Josef & Anni Albers and people (Rauschenberg, Johns, Merce Cunningham, John Cage among others) didn't just come down here out of the blue.

Chewie, this is a great question to ask for and search for on the Cyburbia message boards. Cyburbia is a pretty nifty urban-planning website. Creative communities been discussed there before, so I'm sure you'll find something.

Some general search strategies to try:

Subject strings (of the Library of Congress variety) to search: Creative thinking, Creative ability, Creative ability--social aspects, Creative ability--economic aspects, [insert geographic location]--Intellectual life--History--[insert number]th/st century.

You can also throw these into a keyword search as well, with phrases in quotes, and without the double dashes.

Library of Congress call numbers that may be relevant: HD53 (this is where two of the Florida books are classed), HT201 (another Florida book is classed here), BF408 (for psychological aspects/theories of creativity).

Several titles from the latter class number that I found while browsing:
--Creativity and culture / Daniel Dervin. Rutherford, N.J. : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.
--Monk and the warrior in the garden of renewal / Richard Brower. Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, 2001.
--Understanding creativity / John S. Dacey and Kathleen H. Lennon. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 1998.

But what Loq says is true, from another long term starving artist hanging out in utter poverty with many other starving drunken artists. ;-) Although in some senses (and unfortunately, I think) that's become very much the fringes of the art world, which are bigger and livelier than ever, while the established art world sits cozily in New York. Still, at the same time, there's less need for a hub than there ever was before; we can all starve in noble poverty (/joni) & drink together from our distant corners through the intertubes.

Thanks very much, all. I picked Paris as an example because it is large and enduring in other ways (economic included). Artists alone can't be that chemistry I'm looking into. I suspect there are multiple (and unpredictable, in some cases) factors involved. Florida has some points, but some murkyness as well. So Prague is the cool place to be now, huh?

One clarification: I'm not necessarily interested in starting a community per se, but more interested in how they have hostorically come to be, whether they last, how word spreads, etc.

Not sure where / if Burning Man fits in the mix.

Either Prague or Massapequa, I can't remember which.

By "creative hub" I think I was concentrating more on a non-geographical & also successful definition of the hub. Like a movement (or something).

So geographically, yes, cheap housing will do it, but you need more than that. The nearest geographical artistic hub to me is probably Hebden Bridge. The following contributed to it becoming an artistic hub...

- cheap housing (check)
- It conformed to a romantic ideal.
- Remote location allowed for creation of communes.
- Mavens, Mavens, Mavens.

The history seems to be as follows:
1) a bunch of hippies moved over to Hebden because it was remote and untouched and beautiful.
2) The communes they created were succesful and they attracted further hippies, greens, lesbians and artists.
3) News spread amongst a dropped out liberal intelligensia.
4) Creative Hub
5) The world caught on.
6) Pricing Boom. Yuppies. ARGHHHH!

I'm going against the grain here, but I hope that helps.

Not sure if this is what you're thinking of, but what the hell...
How about the Weimar Republic? Post-WW1 Germany and people are alive and anything's possible, including WW2. Perhaps people realised that things were bad, and were just partying against the Red Death, as it were. Inflation, a huge poor class and Hitler's newly-formed Nazi Party ensured that it couldn't last, but while it did we got Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang, and Otto Dix, to name a few.
There were also such strange and beautiful creatures such as Anita Berber (bio. pics NSFW! Feral House book on her.) A quote: "She often haunted Weimar Berlin’s hotel lobbies, nightclubs, and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine." I picked her out of Berlin's history as she epitomises the power, potential and ultimate destruction of societies like these.
Weimar Republic: Historical overview. Culture. Cinema & Film Industry. It was also the subject of a CBC 3-part series called Legendary Sin Cities, and is worth a peek, as are the other 2, as they cover Paris and Shanghai.

Oh, the Feral House book has a picture of Ms. Berber semi-naked on it, for those at work! Careful!

That's a great one, seanyboy, thanks! No grain friction here. :) And Zack that's a really interesting one, too. Cool! I knew I loved you guys for a reason.

I suspect there are multiple (and unpredictable, in some cases) factors involved

I agree that cheapness alone will not give rise to a creative community. It is easy to disprove that idea; look at the abundance of communities with dirt-cheap housing that are anything but creative hubs.

I would suggest that physical environment has a lot to do with it. Places have meaning. There must be something in the geography or architecture that appeals to one or more creative cohorts of a generation. I think of the artists' colonies that cropped up in the early 20th century on Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and in Provincetown; the housing was cheap, but the surroundings wildly beautiful and inspiring. In recent times, creative classes have been drawn to the pedestrian-friendly, densely built but older downtowns of American cities. Not all cities, though, have enjoyed this type of rehab. Proximity to natural beauty really seems to help - I think of Northampton, MA, Burlington, VT, and New London, CT -- both were once defunct downtowns, emptying out, but were rediscovered and redeveloped by people attracted to the quality and attractiveness of the built environment, and by the nearness of mountains or sea, which influences the feel of daily life.

I think Miko's right. It would be interesting to see what the correlation is between geographic constraints (such as mountains, rivers or oceans) and creative activity. Like, are Europeans are better at designing space than US designers because there's not as much of it over there?

I think Miko's right.

You could think that, or you could also listen to the experiences of living artists who have lived in arts communities. I just moved out of one to come up here to the Pacific NW, and I kind of miss it, and I'm itching to see what PDX has to offer.

Personally what Miko describes sounds to me like the romanticized ideal of what an artist's community should be like, or perhaps what is left after an art community gentrifies the area and the artists are forced out by higher rents.

I say that because I've seen it happen in various stages, first hand. Poor artists move in, scare off the crackheads with street theater and/or overt threats of real violence, get manic, paint the joint and make it pretty, and then the next thing you know rent is tripled and your next door neighbor drives a BMW and works as an IP lawyer at some biotech firm.

Sure, cheap rent isn't everything, but for every startup art community I've ever read about or participated in it's been a crucial element, at least for modern art.

Beautiful scenery is nice, but cheap rents and enough economic fluxus to survive in the nooks and crannies take priority - hence derelict urban centers.

Another factor to consider is noise, and how it influences when and where artists choose to live. Artists tend to keep very odd hours, and serious or passionate art is often a very noisy pursuit. Easy examples would be sculpters, be they stone-cutter, metal-smith or other. Less obvious examples would be certain painters. I've watched some (really quite good) abstract/expressionist painters engage in very serious fisticuffs with their media in ways that would give Pollack a nervous tic and a complex.

Even less obvious would be pursuits like music, either live or recorded or both. A lot of artists use music and the studio, and it's often very loud. Passionate musicians are often drawn to arts communities.

I remember being able to hear this one semi-traditional latin-jazz-fusion band from almost a mile away, echoing through the canyon-like maze of old buildings in downtown Santa Ana - and they never even used any amps, it was all just live and raw. And it was awesome. It was comforting to hear at 3 or 4 AM on a weeknight and know I wasn't in surburbia at all, and that I could easily saunter over to share a beer or a spliff while they jammed just for the love of it and hang out for a bit, and I wouldn't even have to knock.


However, I am damn serious about the inebrients thing. It may not have played a role (or as much of a role) in any of those fancy-pants blue-blooded art communities, but it sure has played a huge role in all the ones I've seen. Art and mota go so well together, and even the respectable, gruffly polished grand old men* and dames (think 60+ years old) of every art community I've ever experienced partook at least occasionally, if not hourly.

(Rest in peace, Sergio. You taught me a lot, even when you thought I wasn't listening. I was young and impatient. Some day I'll return your book on Buckminster Fuller, but I think at this point you'd rather it lived on in loving hands.)

I didn't read the thread, yet, but I thought I'd include this link. They mention all sorts of art colonies around the world, and how some got started. I hope this helps. Now I'll go back and read everyone else's stuff.

Peter Ackroyd wrote a great history of London that takes the approach I think you're looking for. He doesn't focus solely on artists, but takes an area and traces its history with the idea that certain areas, for whatever reason, attract the same sort of people (the poor, revolutionaries, artists, etc) over time, and discusses why this might be.

loquacious, everything you say makes sense to me but I think you need to add serendipity. I live just a couple of miles from the blasted heart of Detroit city and it has all the things you speak of and some stunningly beautiful urban architecture and truly lovely urban neighborhoods where you can get a loft for $99 a month or a three bedroom brick home for $4000 but no art (except music). There is The Heidelberg but sadly it has not really attracted a colony.

Your points are good, loquacious, but you're too dismissive of the communities I've mentioned, all of which were/are real artistic communities which were later discovered by the gentrifiers. That is what happens, invariably. When a cultured, creative class creates a lively, more attractive environment from a formerly neglected area, the money follows. Always.

But Rockport and Provincetown, MA, were not "blue blooded" arts colonies when they got rolling. They were extremely cheap areas, considered unattractive, uncultured outposts in the days when vacationers and retirees wanted to be elsewhere. New London still is cheap -- but man, since a few people have opened studios and galleries there, pop goes the rent. Realtors know that any excuse to label your town an 'arts community' translates into rent dollars.

Cheap rent is an absolute necessity for a creative class, I agree. But what I'm saying is that it's just not enough by itself. Not by a long shot. I'd be happy to take you through several Boston or Philly neighborhoods that distinctly lack a creative class, despite the insane cheapness of the rent and the appropriateness of the space. arse_hat's mention of Detroit neighborhoods that remain unattractive to artists despite the infrastructure being present is another example.

It gets tricky to lob charges of gentrification at communities when artists are really often the first wave of an educated, privileged elite to enter a community. The housing and space that they are attracted to usually begin as the province of low-income locals. As the community becomes attractive to arty types, rent starts going up even before the galleries and coffee shops move in. Wage-workers can co-exist with a small arts community, but the bigger it grows, the more the poor are driven out. Artists who move into an existing community, however poor, are homesteading.

Also, although I have day job, I'm part of a couple communities of artists and musicians in a few locations. I know a lot of working full-time artists, many quite successful. And to a person, the more drugs and drinking they do, the less together, creative, innovative, and successful they are. For the most part, they wake up in the morning, take care of their families, and work hard at producing their output. To develop complex projects, recordings, shows, what-have-you, they have to be mentally present and alert and capable of thinking in terms of subsistence income, at least. People who are still making genuinely good and interesting art in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are not likely to be coked-up, drunk, or high very often at all.

Art talent and skill may sometimes correlate with, but aren't caused by, intake of intoxicants. The more serious and good-quality artists I know don't overindulge in anything. The fact that some legendary arts, music, and literature scenes were drug-soaked has given us the false impression that arts are drug-dependent. They're not. Those scenes (20s Paris, the Factory, whatever), if you reflect, were largely populated by people in their 20s. Lots of people in their 20s push the intake pretty far, whether or not they're artists. They also attracted wealthy hangers-on who could do the purchasing. Not all art scenes are equally appealing to that contingent. That doesn't make them less valid as art scenes, though.