Creative Places / Creative Spaces

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About Creative Places / Creative Spaces

There are certain places and certain spaces that exude creative and inviting energy, that inspire ideas. They're the sort of spaces you might want to put up your feet, and pull out your powerbook, sketch book, or any old book and read, write or work. They're inviting of ideas and inspiration.

This is a concept somewhat inspired by Richard Florida's Creative class, and in fact there is a group that already exists, but I think it improperly named and hard to find, so I'm starting my own.

The focus of this group will be to collect photos of such spaces, so they can be examined and patterns can be explored and discussed. Do all people have similar ideas of creative spaces? Are there similar elements to creative spaces?

Many of us have as many spaces as we do talents and these different spaces inspire different thoughts and different activities. These spaces can be public or private. They can be urban or out in the middle of nowhere. They can be indoor or outdoors. They can be commercial like a coffee shop or bistro or non-commercial like a pubic square or park.

Sometimes creative spaces are creative because they don't have outside disturbances, sometimes they're creative because they do have all sorts of interesting sensory information. Interesting people, interesting art.

Coffee shops, home studios, a bench in a museum, a park bench, a dojo. Creative spaces could be anything or anywhere, but we know them when we find them because they call out to us to immerse ourselves in them and inspire us to work, write or think.


What creative spaces are not...

I don't think there are places that can be blanket excluded because all people find different spaces inviting. Perhaps it would be best to say they should be social spaces, places that can be enjoyed by others, places with actual people in them being social or creative would be best, and perhaps we should stick to those or will narrow it to those in the future if necessary, but I realize many of the best creative spaces are private like home studios and I would not want to exclude those unless they come to dominate this channel.

If we can just keep it very personal to places where YOU personally would actually sit and think or work I think we'll be OK. If you would actually sit on a dock and work in a dark alley, under a street lamp, with cool graffiti on a brick wall next to a dumpster, then that's fine, it's a creative space, certainly the graffiti artist who decorated the space thought so. But let's just keep from posting pictures just because have creative works in them. This is not simply about works of art or a sculpture or architecture. It's about the spaces we socialize and work in, and yes art many times is a part of this, but it's not about the art alone. It's about the spaces such things help create and how we feel about them and how we use them.