http://www.iwanttolivehere.org.au/
The 2009 I Want to Live Here film competition is focusing in on the Gentrification Game - The War On Creativity.
The war on creativity asks young artists to respond to the effects of gentrification in their cities and neighbourhoods. Gentrification is a demographic shift in an urban area which sees affluent middle class people move into an area creating higher demand for housing and leading to an increase in property prices.
This has the adverse effect of pricing out current and long term residents who generally don’t have the capital to adapt to higher rents. Melbourne has seen many of its inner suburbs like North Fitzroy, Collingwood, Carlton and Northcote rise in popularity and price; making it difficult for students and artists to afford housing.
The irony of gentrification is that it cuts out the people who contributed to the rise in popularity of a suburb. It is widely acknowledged that artists, bohemians, or ‘hipsters’ have attributed to the allure of traditionally down market inner urban areas, transforming former slums into sub-cultural paradises of hip cafes, artist run spaces, music venues and retro shops.
Yet instead of getting credit for creating dynamic artistic communities; livelihoods are threatened as artists scramble to find extra cash for higher rents, forcing many to move out. This is a global phenomenon which affects creative communities everywhere, so if you’re in a place like Hackney (London), Wicker Park (Chicago) or Zizkov (Prague) then we want to hear your stories.
It’s time artists take back what they created. Make a 3 minute film addressing these issues and providing a solution so that in time artists get credit for the community they created instead of getting priced out!!
The Gentrification Game: The War on Creativity
Artists need to exist on the edge of the system. Wages are required to pay for basic living expenses such as rent and food. Time is required to be creative.
Cheap rent gives artists more time for their passion. This sees many creative communities develop on the periphery, often in rundown ghetto-like communities that are close to the city.
Unfortunately, land speculators know this.
How many times do we have to see an artistic community moved on from the community they create?
Chapel St central to Chapel Windsor, Brunswick St moved on to Gertrude St, then to High St, Northcote - now out of the city to Castlemaine?!!!
A few years after change agents set up the sort of community we should all aspire to, the fabric of the community is undone through it’s own success. Willingly. By our government’s policies.
Higher rents acts as a large paint brush, smothering a creative community with biege.
What are the economic forces behind this?
Attend a “Tax Minimisation for Lawyers” seminar and you will hear how land speculators are given a racial cultural profile of what a hipster looks like. “It’s your job to find them on a Saturday morning and figure out what vibe they look for. Then you have to try and find that look, that feel, in another suburb further out. Buy there and wait”.
Artists are pawns under the current system of property taxation. Artists give the ghetto a makeover with some tactile graffiti, a few cool cafes and bars emerge and then the wanna bees start to move in.
Aha! But the speculators are already there, rubbing their hands with glee.
Why should they take all the benefits of community creation?
Is it fair to blame the land speculator for a systemic failure?
Make a 3 minute film about this story and what creative people can do to find a balance between community, creation and ‘cleaning up’.
The judges will be looking for the following issues to be covered:
- To portray local issues in a manner that relates to any audience in an appealing manner.
- Gentrification outlined
- Higher rents as a weapon in the war on creativity
- How this effects creative communities
- How the tax system supports this behaviour
- What can be done about it?
