Monday, April 25, 2011

Australia's Creative Meccas

Calling Sydney and Melbourne "fashionable, innovative, diverse, and prosperous" (The Flight of the Creative Class, 175), Richard Florida says that if these were U.S. cities, they would rank 4th in the creative class, 5th on his Bohemian Index, and 4th on his Creativity Index. More than that, he points out that "Creative occupations make up a whopping half of the workforce in central Sydney (51 percent) and central Melbourne (50 percent)---well ahead of most U.S. regions. Both cities are also hotbeds of high art, fashion, music, and street-level culture" (175).

As a creative person myself, it sounds like these are the places to be. If I could get a job in Australia, would I move there? In a minute. Surely Sydney would welcome a poet/playwright who writes formalist poetry and verse plays.

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