The specter of the “art-less city”: Locating artists in Philadelphia’s creative economy

Abstract

Artists and creativity are on the urban agenda. Scholars and policymakers have embraced the role of artists as key drivers of economic growth and urban vitality. Yet, accounts of artists’ agency often reduce artists to members of a creative class, rendering the arts an instrument for economic growth and erasing important class and racial differences in the field. This paper centers artists’ perspectives through four focus group discussions with artists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participatory mapping exercises produced narratives about artists’ experiences with two kinds of displacement: physical displacement from neighborhoods and places where artists live and work; and displacement from the creative cities narrative. Displacement raises the specter of what we call the “art-less” city, where a broad swath of art-making is evacuated from the city. We contrast this with the “artful” city, where artists are supported as workers with the means to produce their work and flourish in life.