WHY ACT ONE-DC?

One of our Act One alumns, Erik Lokkesmoe, works in Washington and wrote a thoughtful piece for our Act One community letter which deserves a wider audience.

Why A Creative Renaissance Is Needed In Our Nation’s Capital, and How Act One Can Help

By Erik Lokkesmoe

It was more of a statement than a question. “Why Washington?” the senior

government official responded, words heavy with skepticism, when I

shared the news of Act One’s month-long session in the nation’s capital.

His query conveyed a doubt of both place and purpose: what utility does

a group of screenwriters provide in a political city – a city anxious

about elections and budget hearings – an administrative city that is

impatient with ambiguity, nuance, and imagination?

The question could just have easily been: “why art?”

Politics may be the art of the possible, but is art possible in

politics? In a city of architectural grandeur, National Galleries, the

Kennedy Center, and marbled monuments engraved with poetry and prose,

discussions (or debates) about the arts rarely stray from stale,

predictable exchanges about NEA funding and FCC fines. Art is a

second-thought, a first cut of a bloated budget, a weekend dalliance

with lobbyists. Drawing congressional district maps is often the closest

thing some Members of Congress come to artistic activity.

So, it’s an appropriate question for Act One, and for all “creatives”

that live and work in the shadows of federal buildings, “Why

Washington?”

Last year I stumbled across a new book, now a best-seller, by Carnegie

Mellon professor Richard Florida who claimed that economically vibrant

cities have two common factors: a thriving artist community and a large

gay population. The Rise of the Creative Class became the instruction

manual for mayors across the country, as economically-stagnant cities

sought to attract a hip, young workforce by offering bohemian and

business-friendly climates. What caught my attention, however, was

Washington’s rank as one of the top “creative cities” in America, as

determined by the proportion of creative workers per total workforce

population. Although Florida uses defines the “creative class” liberally

– including scientists, journalists, and entrepreneurs in the category –

it confirmed a growing suspicion: DC was more than starched shirts and

above-the-ear haircuts; it was, as the professor wrote, that “ultimate

creative center.”

Certainly, such a claim will cause New York and Hollywood to shudder.

Many don’t even consider Washington a city, let alone a creative center.

Yet the evidence is clear: from bureau reporters to think tanks,

legislators to art galleries, dot com survivors to event planners, the

capital city is not only America’s backyard, it is the home of

culture-creators.

A handful of us who work in government are quick to proclaim that the

creatives in the city – and across the country – often hold more power

than the senior politicians seated on the most prestigious committees.

Certainly, these lawmakers affect millions with decisions to raise

taxes, declare war, and fund Social Security. Artists and creatives,

however, are shaping the hearts and minds of the culture, informing the

moral imagination and instructing its beliefs and behaviors.

It is no wonder, then, why so many distrust or fear artists. Through the

subtle brushstrokes in a painting, the complex melodies in a song, the

layered meanings in a film, creatives can exercise a power politicians

could only dream of possessing: to shape the imagination through words

and images and sounds that cascade to the depths of the soul. Only art

has that ability, something Plato realized early on when he declared,

“Let me write the songs [or stories] of a nation and I care not who

writes its laws.”

Artists are more than well-trained decorators, adorning culture with

nice and pretty things. Artists create space for dialogue, for circles

of conversations in galleries and theaters, book clubs and concert

halls. They invite us to gaze upon mystery and beauty and to “see with

other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other

hearts, as well as with our own,” as C.S. Lewis wrote.

Last September, a group of us at The Voice Behind – a 501c3 non-profit

organization dedicated to creating, commissioning, and celebrating

transcendent works of art and media – started Brewing Culture, a

community of “creatives” that meets monthly at a bar just across the

Potomac. Our hope was to do just that: brew culture by creating space

for creativity and conversation.

It’s a speak-easy, really. A haven amidst stiff political life for

ozone-scraping creativity and gritty-as-a-country road conversation. We

invite everyone – left and right, churched and unchurched — into an

intoxicating exploration of the good, the truth, and the beautiful as

revealed through the works and words of artists. From Damah films to

Johnny Cash tributes, we enter life’s big themes – wonder, sacrifice,

discontentment – and wait expectantly on the other side to see what

happens.

As painter Makota Fujimura said over a recent dinner, echoing our

passion for Brewing Culture, “We need secular places for the Church, and

sacred places for the culture.” In other words, we need common ground

where we forget to be tame, timid, and temporal in our artistic

endeavors and expressions; we need places that capture the imaginations

of a weary and watching world.

Responding to the launching of Brewing Culture, many have had the same

reaction as that government leader, “Why Washington?” And we respond,

“Above all, here.” This is a place where creativity that “flies beyond

the stars,” as Francis Schaeffer said, can teach us about common grace,

the Imago Dei, and our innate human need to participate in recreation

and re-creation.

This need is evident in the hollow eyes of passengers on commuter

trains, the rush hour pressing their bodies together in a rhythmic,

synchronized dance as the train halts and jerks away from the city.

Imprisoned in cubicles without windows, passing the time with

predictable days of the same old work, the creative muscle atrophies. It

is no surprise that Washington’s suburbs have beautiful homes and

gardens, where workers – free from the confines of gray file-cabinets

and top-down management – can design and create and decorate their own

space.

Artists are oxygen for a city, and people are gasping from asphyxiation.

What Washington – the whole Washington, from the pinstripe suits of

Capitol Hill to the perilous slums of Capitol Heights – needs more than

anything else is an encounter with beauty, that astonishing handiwork of

the Master Artisan and his co-creators. Beauty manifested in eloquent

and honest oratory. Beauty evidenced in grace to political adversaries.

Beauty extended in neighborhoods ravaged by boarded-up homes and lottery

advertising. Act One’s presence in this city, if only for a month, can

remind us of our desperate need for beauty, for stories that awaken the

moral imagination and allow glimpses of a world, as Os Guinness says,

“that should have been otherwise.”

It is the right time and the right place for Act One, and our prayer is

that these DC screenwriters, like dropping a large stone in a still

pond, will reach the boundaries of our city, soften its dry and cracked

edges, and bring new life to the surface.