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?

Additional Resources

You may find this useful:

• Gentrification defined via wiki
• More soon