The Time for Talk has Passed

I’ve completed my goals and resolutions for 2012, and looking over them, it appears that the theme for this year is “actions speak louder than words.”  I’m not alone, it seems. As loyal readers know, my work is about building arts and entertainment models that fit into the next phase of town planning, which is a movement away from suburban sprawl and a return to mixed-use, walkable communities. It used to be called New Urbanism, but now it’s just “The Way It Is.”

So as I’m catching up on my blog reading this morning, I ran across two separate posts by two respected bloggers from both the Town Planning and Theatre sectors, and they were both saying the essentially the same thing.

First, Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas is fed up with all the talk of the need for an industry-wide change, and he’s out to actually do something to change it by building a new model for small town arts sustainability. I am looking forward to tracking his progress and hopefully stealing some great ideas.

Next, I headed over to the Placeshakers blog, a town planning blog, and I read an insightful post from Ben Brown  commenting on Time magazine’s decision to make “The Protester” the 2011 person of the year. Brown echoes Walters by saying that it simply isn’t enough to complain about the way of the world.

That’s been my main problem with the Occupy movements. Sure, I fall within the 99% and I agree that something is broken, but I don’t hear solutions, or actual steps to be taken to achieve measurable results.

I have resolved to actually create change this year, and not just wish for it. I’ve set goals that are clear and measurable, and I’m finally in a position to get them done.  I’m going to implement a new model for Downtown Associations (Local Arts Agency, Business Improvement Districts, whatever you want to call them) that actually produce and present properly scaled community arts, entertainment, and rituals that are accessible, sustainable, and repeatable. This model will be able to transplanted into any mixed-use community environment. Over the course of the year, I will be blogging about the process and progress, and publish it all in 2013. Lemme at ‘em.

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