Tag

economics

Art and the Share Economy

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

In a recent post I explored the “share economy.” The ease of sharing information is important in this “new” model but the sharing of experiences is at the heart of its power and future success. And so art is ripe with opportunity to reap value from the share economy.

Art, after all, is about experience. The performance at the theater, the show at the bar, and the installation in the gallery are about emotion, connection and our gut and brain being stimulated. We understand them as “experience”. They are not about owning. However, visual art work can also be more than something that matches our sofa. The value of art as an object is heightened when we see it as something to be experienced and an experience to share. It is a tangible asset that could be circulated with the emergence of the share economy. Within the life cycle of a work of art and the art itself there is opportunity for sharing!

Here are three of the assets I see available for sharing in the arts community!

The expected shared asset: Space

The Copy Cat building in Baltimore’s station north neighborhood is a classic re-purposed industrial building with fantastical spaces. The white walled gallery of Maryland Art Place can seem sterile but it is strikingly intimate. The Baltimore Museum of Art is a trove of architectural wonder. Art is created, displayed, sold and resides in beautiful spaces. These spaces are for a variety of reasons beyond the reach of some of the general population who could do amazing things in them. What would happen if information were made available about the space and others were given the opportunity to use the space for distinctive events. Dine by candle light next to the recent installation of an up and coming Baltimore artist. Stay at the Copy Cat bed n’ breakfast. Host a power lunch in the sculptor garden. Through the exchange, the “host” comes out a winner with greater exposure (and revenue), the guest comes out a winner with memorable experience. The challenge is finding the right price.

The expected asset (that requires a marketplace): Works

Most artist are holding onto a large supply of work in their studio. For a variety of reasons the work just resides in storage. What would happen if artists created a structure for people to experience their work without the risk of owning it? What would happen if artists shared their work, in a similar fashion to how someone shares their bedroom on AirBnb? I think new patrons would emerge and unrealized revenue sources might sustain more of our creative class.

Museums have expansive archives of work that collect dust more than capture the imagination of the population. Space constraints, expectations of supporters, and lack of “majority” interest in the work keeps the artifacts in mothballs. What if the works were digitized and made accessible? What if reproductions were prominently posted in public places? What if the work were physically shared with individuals/institutions that could assume the risk? What if a market place emerged to share works that has captured imagination for centuries? I think new information would emerge about the history of mankind. I also think “ownership” of the institution would expand in size and financial value. Much of this is already happening with large art institutions; I think it needs to happen on a broader scale.

The under utilized and unexpected assets: Minds

A very important transition for me from engineer to art promoter was relationships with artists. What sparked my keen interest in the class of people was intelligent conversation. Artists, curators, historians and theorists know information about humanity in the same way scientists, mathematicians, and engineers know information about the physical world. What would happen if we sought to share these minds? What could we experience if we paid for these unexpected relationships to enter into conversations about commerce, social change and the future? There are a number of time banks emerging, but artist time seems to be missing. If artists, curators, art historians and art theorists could share their knowledge more frequently I think unexpected outcomes that exceed expectations would be more common.

The assets of our artists and art institutions are ripe with potential to add value to the people who currently posses them AND the people who could share them. As marketplaces emerge for these creative assets to be shared, I think society might experience some new and powerful outcomes.

The Secret Garden and The Share Economy

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

Last night my wife Jenn and I had dinner with complete strangers in our home.

The dinner was organized with the help of Peers. Late in the summer of 2013, Peers emerged to promote the share economy. This “new” economy seeks to explore the bounds beyond zero sum and suggests that win-win can be achieved in many of life’s pursuits, particularly when information is shared and is readily accessible. I think the share economy can be applied with amazing success to art, but some context would be helpful for understanding how.

From my own experience:

In the last 18 months the spare bedroom in our home has provided a night’s rest or a month-long home for over 70 guests. Jenn and I have hosted people from across the globe traveling to Baltimore for everything from an O’s game and weddings to workshops on the latest surgical procedures and health food conferences. In the process, AirBnb, a website market-place of private bedrooms, apartments, beds and spare sofa space has generated substantial revenue for us. Just as important, AirBnb has introduced us to a spectrum of new friends.

AirBnb claims to be a part of the share economy. The value of my home is “shared” through a novel website that allows me to post information about my spare bedroom. This system may just be a reinvention of economics 101 but with the help of the internet. We have a product (supply), our bedroom. You have a desire (demand) for a bedroom. We have a dollar amount (price) for which we are willing to let a complete stranger stay in our bedroom. You have a dollar amount (price) you are willing to pay to use a bedroom in this location in a complete stranger’s house. We believe our price point is sufficient to cover our time to keep our house tidy, prepare the room for your stay and make arrangements for your arrival. You feel that the price point is fair and MUCH less than what you would pay to stay in the hotel three blocks away. We both come away feeling like winners, and we have experienced how economics “should” work. Besides the ease with which information can be shared with the internet, what is difference between the share economy and the “regular” economy?

Last night’s dinner is a big part of what is different. The share economy is about reaping value beyond dollars and cents. It is about seeing the value in human relationships, new perspectives, and new ideas. It is about experience. Hence Peers’ notion of share a meal, share an idea; don’t just satiate yourself. The share economy is about sharing life as opposed to just doing life.

Our home is not a commodity to us. It is not something we are selling or leasing and expecting just a transaction to be created. Certainly our house is an object that serves a function, but it is more than that. It is an intimate personal space that provides respite and joy for us. In the share economy we have the opportunity to provide to others those same values (intimacy, peace and enjoyment), but only if we see the relationship as more than a transaction. In other words, the party on the other side is not just dollars and cents, or even worse our nemesis to be screwed for our advantage. They are a human being. They are a guest. They are potential friends. To my understanding, AirBnb is really only for people who understand it as such.

I think art has amazing potential in the share economy. Art is an object with financial value, but as I have stated in many places in this blog, art is much more. Art is an experience. It is therefore ripe with opportunity to be shared. But what might that look like?

Stay tuned for the next installment…

IMAGE CREDIT. [Scott Burkholder].

Sunscreen and Spending Power

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

On more than one occasion, I’ve heard visitors remark on Baltimore having a beach-town mentality, perhaps supported by much of the waterfront population wearing flip flops on the promenade and those few precious days when the bay smells like a bay should smell.

The constant presence of the water conjures up that willingness to be carefree, and do whatever we can to seek out the refuge of saltwater and sand. The Department of Transportation predicted over 350,000 vehicles would cross the Bay Bridge between Friday and Monday this Memorial Day Weekend, with an additional half a million using other ways to get into the beach areas of Maryland. The Bay Bridge boasted an 18-mile backup at the beginning of the weekend, and as Baltimoreans descend onto the boardwalks the beach towns stood hopeful and ready for their previously quiet landscape to be transformed by the seasonal crowds, providing economic respite from the quiet winter months.

The economy is possibly the most challenging realm for a beach town. Retail and food service industries are difficult to sustain, as significant fluctuation of population challenges these industries to reach economic stability in the off-season. Decreased visitation influences many beach town businesses to board themselves up for the winter, minimizing operational cost, and marooning wage workers for many months. While Baltimore isn’t quite a beach town, we need to plan for seasonal attraction too. The decline of blue-collar industries has made the low-income population of our city more dependent on tourism and related service industries for employment. If we don’t find ways to make those attractions more sustainable, low-income workers suffer and Baltimore as a whole becomes less vital, and less sustainable.

Beach towns are constantly brainstorming and investing in the ability to become year-round attraction for both businesses and tourists. This investment is increasingly more important as tourist season is dependent on external factors like weather, gas prices, and unemployment. If people don’t have money, fewer can head to the beach in the first place. A common approach to creating year-round attraction is through an office of promotion or events. Rehoboth Beach has supported The Rehoboth Beach Main Street organization as the ringleader for community promotion and year-round event planning. The organization doesn’t just seek to lengthen the season by one or two months on either end, but to plan events in February and March, where non-residents would need to make special trips to the beach for reasons other than sun worship.

By organizing events in the off-season, Rehoboth Main Street hopes to draw residents out of their homes in addition to expanding tourism opportunity. Rehoboth attracts approximately 3.5 million tourists each year, translating to $630 million in annual economic impact. Main Street has helped some of these tourists become residents while sustaining their residential population: from 1996-2008, the town vacancy rate decreased from 10 percent to 3 percent, 95 jobs were gained, 16 new businesses were created, and eight new buildings were constructed. In addition to off-season event revenue, off-season advertising opportunities support operating revenues, as greater visibility commands higher advertising prices from area businesses.

The collective push of local businesses has inspired other towns like Hampton Beach, New Hampshire to strive for widespread support, believing that if all restaurants stay open longer, and services keep themselves fully functioning in the off season, tourists will see the town as a destination for reasons other than the beach. Other towns like Portsmouth, Maine remain sustainable through Citywide incentive projects like the Green Card — offering discounts for nearly 100 local businesses. Petoskey, Michigan capitalizes on its historic architecture and miles of waterfront to retain year-round visitors.

Seasonal planning is extremely important in city sustainability. Maybe the creation of an urban beach in Baltimore wouldn’t be enough to discourage the Memorial Day exodus and spending power into local beach towns, but perhaps thinking creatively, and learning a few lessons from true beach towns would make staying local a bit more palatable, keeping some of that $630 million here, instead of invested elsewhere.

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Commons

Vision Driven Change

By | Health, The Global Is Local | 2 Comments

A few nights ago my wife and I had a conversation with our friend Peter. In contrast to our method of deciding our fate (last minute panic combined with procrastination and our desire to live in the moment), Peter was describing himself as vision-driven in his decision making process. By coincidence, the following morning I sat among a large group, including my fellow ChangeEngine blogger Scott Burkholder, loosely organized around the concepts of social entrepreneurship and a vague but optimistic vision of a better city.

These conversations have given me pause for thought, and to consider the role of this social innovation/social change blog platform. Our group of authors approaches the challenge of promoting positive social change from a variety of perspectives, and most of us have personal investment in the projects and programs that we write about.

I’ve occasionally thought that the quote attributed to Ghandi on a million self-satisfied bumper stickers — “Be the change you want to see in the world” — might be an appropriate mission statement for ChangeEngine. I looked up the phrase and found that he has been misquoted for the purposes of bumperstickerability. As corrected by the New York Times:

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

Not surprisingly, Ghandi is a smidge more complex and a tad more profound than the sentiment captured on a bumper sticker.

My conversation with Peter and the breakfast group the following morning centered around the potential for individuals and small groups to generate substantial change. Both interactions emphasized the importance of envisioning a better place, even if the precise vision of a better future is vague. In a way, it doesn’t really matter. The effort counts.

Making an effort toward positive change almost certainly shifts the expectations, changes the conversation, and re-frames the possibilities for a community in need of transformative positive change. If Ghandi were a statistician, he might have talked about shifting or weighting the mean, if he were a talk show host, he might have talked about seeding the audience, but since he was an agent of transformative change, he talked about changing ourselves in order to change the world.

Hasdai Westbrook, our editor extraordinaire and Change-Monger-in-Chief, regularly reminds me to consider the social innovation components of the various issues that I address in my columns, and often this is a challenge for me when writing about burgeoning pandemics in Saudi Arabia. Today, however, I am struck how the health of the city is affected by all of its residents and their activities. Planting community gardens and socially responsible investment are both contributers to the same vision, and are relevant to the health of the greater community.

Barton, H.; Grant, M., 2006. A health map for the local human habitat. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health

My beat is Public Health, with local and global implications. At its core, Public Health is concerned with trends and interventions at the population level. While those in the research and analysis end of the field must be driven by process and procedure, those engaging in interventions must be driven by vision.

No public health intervention is undertaken without a vision of a better future for the population, but I believe that the definition of health intervention should be broadened considerably. From urban farms to the Mayor’s public safety initiatives to public art projects, there are a great number of activities taking place in Baltimore (and around the world) that directly and substantially impact population health. These activities impact the education, nutrition, economics, safety, and appearance of our neighborhoods, which can have a profound impact by shifting the mean toward a healthier city and and a healthier world.

Next time, The Gluten Wars, A Health-Conscious Society Loses Its Mind