The Memphis Music Magnet concept originated in the Graduate Program in City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis among a group of students and faculty exploring the relationship between creativity, culture, and community development.

The Importance of Creativity

In terms of economic geography, the advantages of cities have significantly shifted in recent decades.

Historically, cities emerged as firms clustered together to take advantage of economies of scale in production and transportation. And as firms clustered, so did people. A side effect of increasing population was that a wider range of cultural amenities became feasible, making cities centers of creativity.

But as we have shifted from an economy centered on producing goods to one driven by exercising knowledge, the old advantages in production and transportation have diminished in value – and the importance of cultural amenities has increased. Knowledge-based firms and workers, who can essentially locate anywhere, seek out locations that foster creativity and support creative collaboration through networks of knowledge and social capital.

Access to unique forms of culture and experience has become the cake and not just the icing, as culture, or more broadly, quality of life, has come to be recognized as the key element of the competitive advantage of cities. ¹

The Challenge: Doing Something about It

Cities across the US are increasingly acknowledging the importance of culture and creativity, and many have begun to incorporate references to the “creative class” in their economic development lexicon (in large part due to the success of Richard Florida’s seminal work, The Rise of the Creative Class).

But the connection between theory (recognizing the importance of supporting creativity) and practice (doing something about it) has remained largely elusive.

How can cities operationalize this quest to tap into the creative class? What are the tangible policies?

We have taken these questions as our challenge – and have sought to develop a tangible policy approach that explicitly links creativity to neighborhood revitalization and broader community development.

Inspiration

With this challenge in mind, a group of graduate city planning students began exploring a variety of tools and concepts related to creating community development through promoting creativity, arts, and culture. They made their way through the theory, looking for practical applications that might inform our efforts, and zeroed in on two tangible approaches to arts-based neighborhood revitalization that would provide lasting inspiration:

• The Artist Relocation Program|| Paducah, KY
• ArtsMove [CreateHere] || Chattanooga, TN

Both programs use homeownership incentives to attract visual artists and other creative individuals to targeted geographic areas, with the goal of turning abandoned buildings into neighborhood assets and fostering neighborhood rebirth.

While similar in objectives, the programs offer a lot to learn as a pair because they vary in implementation approaches, relying on different financing mechanisms and marketing techniques, and appealing to different audiences. (We also found inspiration in the varying approaches of the Musicians’ Village project in New Orleans, and Cleveland’s Arts Collinwood.)

We arranged site visits to Paducah and Chattanooga to learn more about the workings of these programs, view their impacts, and engage in dialogue with sponsoring organizations, participating artists, and neighborhood residents. We came away from these visits convinced of two things:

• That creativity could affect neighborhood-level change
• That we could link creativity to neighborhood-level change in Memphis – but only if we made the concept our own by building it around our assets, rather than simply adopting one of these models wholesale.

The Memphis Music Magnet

The Memphis Music Magnet derives from ideas like ArtsMove and the Artist Relocation Program, but puts a local spin on arts-based neighborhood revitalization by tying in to our creative heritage.

The purpose of the Memphis Music Magnet is to create neighborhood level change by attracting and supporting musicians and related creatives, and by using  music as a tool for community engagement. The concept relies on homeownership and housing programs, and the development of original neighborhood-based amenities.

We hope to achieve the following three overlapping objectives:

1. Promoting neighborhood revitalization through physical and cultural renovation

by:

• creating vested stakeholders through homeownership and housing programs
• restoring neighborhood properties and promoting infill development, with specific measures to ensure that new investments do not displace members of the target community
• reclaiming music heritage properties and reprogramming them with active uses so that they are accessible to neighborhood residents, not just tourists
• fostering community engagement among musicians and artists and facilitating meaningful interaction with other neighborhood residents

2. Supporting an economic development target industry

by:

• retaining local talent and strengthening a commitment to Memphis
• attracting new talent looking for a supportive environment
• building a critical mass of music talent necessary to support a broader music business infrastructure
• fostering creative networks and facilitating artistic collaboration through geographic proximity

3. Infusing and sustaining creativity in Memphis

by:

• creating a sense of community and an environment in which musicians and creative people feel valued
• nurturing the creative talents of neighborhood residents
• creating momentum to position Memphis as a place that appeals to a wide variety of creative people

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1 Flew, T. (2003). Music, cities and cultural policy: a Brisbane experience. Conference paper.