Ever heard of the Department of Safety in Anacortes, Washington?
In short it is a group of creative types who have re-purposed a rental property into an experimental gallery space, music venue, recording studio and festival destination. To sustain these activities they operate an artists residency program that captures and develops the talent and energy of participants. It is essentially a modern day creative class commune.
There are several things about “DoS” to which agents of culture change in Spokane should take note.
First is their unabashed approach towards program promotion. Right on the front page is a big red button reading:
This takes you to a “sell page” where they clearly make their case for joining the cause. Notice these people are asking themselves STRATEGIC QUESTIONS about how to accomplish their goals in an unlikely environment:
We are wondering how to make it easier for someone to drop their life and come here to help us with this thing. We could use a few more. I have been thinking about how effortlessly magnetic Portland is these days. Everyone everywhere lives there … That’s fine, I suppose … People want an easier time, naturally, so they do the easier thing. We are thinking about how to make it easier for more people like us to just move here (at least for a little while).
Conclusion : Anacortes is an incredible place. It’s so awesome … Come here. Do your thing. Talk to the people around you. Don’t have a TV. Do real work. Walk around. Get good ideas and do them.
Second, the Department of Safety people understand the power of social capital and know how to generate it:
We all live in various communities in which we create and decipher meaning. Our immediate live/work/art community, the Department of Safety, provides a place where communities can come together, interact, discuss ideas, formulate manifestos, and generally enjoy the company of others.
Finally, they invoke a strong sense of place that enriches the overall narrative in which they describe themselves. Even their web page subtitle gives a prominent shout out to the cute little city they proudly call home:
The Spovangelist believes if these lessons were paired with an intimate knowledge of the local landscape the Department of Safety model could be successfully adapted in Spokane. This program would significantly improve the way creative entrepreneurs view opportunities available in our area.
Just imagine how ridiculously cool it would be to do something like this in the old Hostess Cake factory building…
Tags: Community · Creative Culture · Local Art · Local Music · Non-Profits · Sustainable Development8 Comments
8 responses so far ↓
What a great find. I have a sister in Friday Harbor so I’ll have to check this out the next time I’m not late for the ferry.
The concept of building community and social capital around a common shared core interest applies to the University District. We can do this with a focus on biomedical start-ups and creative research in health care, to build on what we’re doing at Riverpoint to create an academic health center. (Full disclosure: I work for WSU Spokane)
Not as cool-sounding to some as an artist workshop, perhaps. But just look at Signature Genomics growing from two people to nearly 80, and being named to the Forbes list of fastest-growing companies and CEO Lisa Shaffer on the top-10 women CEO list (a WSU grad, and one of our research faculty).
That’s evidence that there’s a lot of energy to be generated from recruiting and retaining bright scientists. They create, too, and will appreciate a high-energy culture, our four-season recreation, the Spokane River, and the rest of what makes Spokane a great place. This will help support artists along with the other elements of a vibrant economy that’s based on creating new knowledge and new ideas in a collaborative culture.
–barb
Right on Barb.
The Spovangelist is thus a huge advocate of the Phoenix Project for the University District:
http://phoenix.efgn.org/
That brick building is gorgeous. Someone do this!
There are a lot of good ideas looking for a home around here, including a full-fledged, Pike Place-style public market, a center for the arts, low-cost performance and rehearsal space, and a center for startup businesses, where people can move out of their basement or garage to be around others at different stages of development, with whom they can share ideas, as well as organizations that can help them out. That’s the concept behind the Phoenix Project, which the Spovangelist mentioned.
There’s room for everything in the Jensen-Byrd complex, just east of Division on Main. WSU has an offer on the table from the original landlords of Google and PayPal, who not only want to build a startup center, but will also make room for arts-related activities and a public market. They’ve offered $1.3 million over the first five years of a ground lease, almost three times as much as the next-best offer, and are committed to investing millions more to fix up the buildings. They also bring with them a large-scale seed fund and ties to a dozen of the top Silicon Valley venture capital firms with over $26 billion under management. That’s a lot of firepower to bring to Spokane.
In just two years, their similar project in Sunnyvale, CA, called the Plug and Play Tech Center, became home to 150 startups, which raised $450 million in venture funding. Imagine what even a fraction of that success would mean for Spokane! Check out what the New York Times had to say about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/technology/14landlord.html
And with that indispensable infrastructure in place, the Amidi Group, creators of Plug and Play, would then build new construction for high-end tenants attracted by this crucible of creativity on the edge of campus. It’s a good bet that, with that infrastructure in place, the Institute for Systems Medicine would be positioned to return to its original plan of building a true research institute with over a hundred scientists on staff, instead of the truncated version that’s now proposed. And a full-fledged ISM would be a true catalyst for building the health-sciences mission of WSU Spokane.
One of WSU Spokane’s current research projects is promoting healthy diets among low-income families. What a perfect fit with a public market! (Here’s my full disclosure: I’m on the Spokane Public Market board, and have worked closely with the Plug and Play people to develop the proposal presented to WSU.)
As Steve Salvatori, of the Spokane Entrepreneurial Center, put it: “I don’t understand why WSU isn’t all over this idea.”
[...] The Department of Safety – Anacortes, WA [...]
[...] It is no coincidence Ground Zero has held a planning charrette in Pittsburgh’s famous Mattress Factory Museum. Stay tuned for more on a local charrette concept. And what exactly is so magical about these old brick factory buildings we’d love to see transformed!?! [...]
Hostess property is a beauty. No historical money to rehab the infrastructure. I hope those red bricks can be saved.
I’d like some input from the community as to how we might best use the “Wonder” building. Or the new one that’ll be going on there. Speak up people!
[...] supply residents and restaurants. Imagine an urban farm on top of the Jensen-Byrd building, the Wonderbread building on Lincoln and Broadway, or even on top of the Spokane Transit Authority storage and maintenance [...]