The creative class

I can’t remember if I have vented about this in the past but over the weekend I heard another pomas git crap on about the ‘creative class’ with reference to performers and artists.

The first time I heard that phrase I was at a weekend stone carving workshop. I can clearly remember this older woman (one of the students) using the phrase while explaining her largess to the arts community to the instructor. I nearly drove my chisel through the piece I was working on. I mean yes artists are creative but referring to them as a The Creative Class is just wrong, stupid and arrogant.

I work as an engineer. I create a lot more and on a grander scale than most artists would even dream about. This is true for a large percentage of my colleges. Scientists computer geeks and mathematicians are immensely creative. We are the people who create the new. We who create wealth in all its myriad forms, not just dollars.

A carpenter or bricklayer is a creative persons. Yes they work from plans (sometimes they even do what is on the plan) but there is creativity. New and novel approaches are developed in all the manual trades all the time. Some artist will represent realty as a series of connected cubes and it is a world changing revolution – not.

If authors, artists and performers need a class to belong to it should be the entertainment class. This files them more correctly. Yes they are creative but their primary output is entertainment (in all its forms). Creativity is part of their stock and trade but it is not the defining aspect, entertainment is. Perhaps communication could be substituted for entertainment.

End of rant.