At the turn of the millennium, sociologist Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, which observed that a successful community relies on successful community organizations and civic participation. “Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities,” Putnam wrote.

It’s hard to argue with that. But Putnam also took the view that, because Americans in general were becoming less and less active in organizations like the Rotary and bowling leagues (hence the title), our nation’s civic life was on the wane — making our communities more vulnerable to social and economic ills.

I don’t really share Putnam’s pessimism — even if bowling leagues and Rotary clubs aren’t as popular anymore, I’m confident that Americans are finding new ways to engage with their communities. Then again, I say that from my privileged position as a resident of Portland, which is a community of remarkably accessible civic institutions.

Almost immediately after I moved here, nearly six years ago now, I joined the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and started a blog dedicated to improving the city’s built environment. That, in turn, introduced me to people who helped me land my first full-time job here, and it put me on (usually) friendly terms with people from City Hall and various environmental organizations.

It’s not unusual for me to see our congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, out on the First Friday Art Walk, or to have a quick chat with one of my state legislators at the farmers’ market or the coffee shop. But easy access to local elected officials is only a small part of Portland’s civic life. The city has an abundance of volunteer committees and organizations that are dedicated to improving the city’s economy, environment, and the quality of life for its residents, from trade-oriented networking organizations to advocacy groups to social clubs.

Here’s a (very) incomplete bullet list of ready-made networks that are ready to make a newcomer feel at home, by empowering them to improve our community:

• The League of Young Voters – whose “Portland 101” series introduces people (of any age) to the workings of municipal government.
• The Telling Room – the volunteers at this nonprofit include many of Portland’s writers and journalists.
• SPACE Gallery – sign up as a volunteer to meet new buddies in Portland’s music and visual arts scenes (and get free admission to shows).
• AIGA Maine – this is a good network of Maine-based graphic designers and freelancers. They also put on periodic events, from cocktail hours to business seminars.
• Portland Society of Architects – for anyone in the building or design trades. Don’t miss their next Drink ‘n Crit.
• The City of Portland Boards and Committees – which offers up unpaid but influential positions in municipal Boards of Commissioners and Task Forces (including the Historic Preservation Board, the Public Art Committee, the Land Bank Commission, and many others). Check for vacancies here around the beginning of each month.
• League Night at Bayside Bowl – it may sound frivolous, but (like most of these groups) Bayside Bowl mixes good times with good citizenship: the owners are a state senator and a former ACLU attorney, and they host a nonprofit benefit night every Monday. Robert Putnam would feel right at home.

Photo: City Hall, by Corey Templeton. You can find many more photos of Portland on Corey’s Portland Daily Photo blog.

Once again, Portland is hosting Blue Wrap Project Runway, perhaps the world’s only fashion show combining surgical supplies and designer gowns. Considering the correlation of doctors and designers in this town, it’s no wonder this fundraiser has taken hold here.

At this annual event, local designers use blue wrap to create elegant and/or silly dresses, hats, scarves, bags, parkas, all of it inspired by, and a dead ringer for, couturier fashions. And what is blue wrap? It’s the colored plastic material that every hospital in the world uses a ton of, primarily for sterilizing and wrapping surgical instruments.

Along comes Partners for World Health. Based in suburban Scarborough, Maine, this nonprofit takes useful medical supplies that U.S. hospitals have to discard because of government regulations, and they distribute them to organizations and people around the world. That means bandages, syringes, tape, gauze, catheter supplies, soap, alcohol swabs—and, yes, blue wrap. And it was Partners for World Health who came up with the idea of a benefit evening in which blue wrap is used to create designer clothing…all for a good cause. (Last year, the fashions also landed at the Portland Public Library for a public show. You can see photos of last year’s event here.)

The event kicks off at 6:00 pm on Thursday, April 26^th, at the University of Southern Maine’s Hannaford Hall, with proceeds benefitting Partners for World Health. So ask yourself:  how often can I attend an haute couture show where everything is made from blue wrap, and where the cost of my ticket helps to send medical supplies around the world? Odds are, the answer is “not very often.” There is a reception for supporters of Partners for World Health at 6pm followed by a video presentation and fashion show at 7:15pm. Tickets are $50 per person in advance, $60 at the door; Student Ticket $25 and $35 at the door. You can reserve tickets by calling 885-1011.

This is one of those occasions where Portland’s diverse creative talents collide in a shower of creative energy. Blue wrap + fashion show + you = An unforgettable evening.

Happy is the city with great architecture. In Portland, that happy list includes the brick edifices along Commercial Street, the varied homes of the West End, the Wishcamper and Abromson buildings at USM, the Observatory, the Victorian houses perched in Deering Highlands, the Art Museum – an embarrassment of riches.

Happy, too, is the city, with great architects. In Portland, we have long supported significant architects, going back to the 19^th Century, with Francis Fassett and John Calvin Stephens and Frederick Law Olmsted (what, you didn’t know? After New York’s Central Park, Olmsted designed Deering Oaks).

Today, the hundreds of members of the Portland Society of Architects (PSA) encourage “…innovation and vision in design and planning” throughout the city. The PSA offers a wealth of programs, from the “Unbuilt Design Awards” to “10 Minute Architect” (a free clinic for anyone thinking about whether they need an architect) to last year’s Symposium on Sea Level Rise and the biannual “Drink’n Crit.”

What is “Drink’n Crit”?  Twice a year, the PSA recreates the student experience of an architectural studio. Only this time around, the students are local professionals who, with some trepidation, present their current projects to the public, as well as a critical review by fellow architects. Unlike an actual charette in architecture school, this event does not involve pulling an all-nighter!

The most recent Drink’n Crit was on March 12^th, at the SPACE Gallery on Congress Street. As guests milled about, talked, and had a beer, four architectural teams were taping drawings and photos of their projects on the walls. The team of jurors was introduced and then, one by one, each team presented its project and listened to the critiques.

The crowd may have been most energized by the team working with the City of Portland to re-imagine the several blocks of Spring Street that bisect much of downtown, past the Holiday Inn and the Civic Center.  Should Spring Street be two lanes wide, instead of four? Become a “bicycle boulevard”? Foster new garden spaces and stairways leading off to other streets?

The suggestions flew fast and furious, and the give-and-take was emblematic of the best of Portland. Some of us worked for the city, some of us worked in the city, some of us lived in the city – but all of us cared deeply about the city, wanting it always to be a better place.

If you, too, want to weigh in on Portland’s built landscape, Greater Portland Landmarks and Maine Historical Society are co-hosting a series of panel discussions about specific streets and spaces demanding our attention (including Spring Street, and our bridges, and our waterfront). Step up to the microphone and state your opinion!

Commercial Street and Wishcamper Center, University of Sourthern Maine, photos by Corey Templeton

Erin Kiley and Nathaniel Baldwin went through two years’ worth of business planning, real estate hunting, and city permitting so that dozens of other entrepreneurs won’t have to. Their enterprise, the Portland Flea-for-All, is about to open its doors in 3 stories of a gorgeously wood-beamed former mattress factory in the heart of Bayside.

The Flea-for-All is a flea market for Portland’s craftspeople, yard sale recyclers, and other creators. When it opens for business on the weekend of April 14-15, it will offer a brick-and-mortar presence for dozens of small entrepreneurs for as low as $30 a day for a 6 foot square booth. The market will also sell crafts on consignment, and wall space will be available for artists to show and sell their work outside of a gallery setting.

“We won’t be a typical junk market,” says Erin. “We’re cultivating quality sellers, and a variety of goods — we’ll have furniture, housewares, crafters…”

“The more diverse our vendors, the more people we can bring in as customers,” Nathaniel adds.

“We want it to be a market for every age, style, and budget,” says Erin.

Erin and Nathaniel moved to Portland two years ago from Santa Monica, California. They came here, they say, because they were attracted to Portland’s affordability, its potential to grow, and its entrepreneurial culture.

Finding a space large enough and inexpensive enough for their vision was a big challenge, as was the long slog through permitting and financing the new enterprise. “For a new entrepreneur, it was often hard to find the right path through the process,” says Erin. Still, after nearly two years’ worth of groundwork, “at least we know now that we’re really ready. The fun stuff lies ahead.”

The Flea-for-All finally found a home in a former mattress factory between Preble and Elm Streets in Bayside, a former industrial neighborhood that has been the target of City Hall’s economic development initiatives for the past decade. They give their landlord, Tod Dana, a lot of credit for supporting their idea and sharing their entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

The market’s front entrance is just steps away from the western terminus of the new Bayside Trail (Kiley and Baldwin want to offer special incentives to shoppers who arrive by foot or by bike) and the new-ish Trader Joe’s. Bayside Bowl is a block away in the opposite direction. A string of empty lots alongside the trail, where a railroad yard used to be, may soon start sprouting high-rise apartment buildings. And their next-door neighbor is Portland Architectural Salvage, a business that seems to share the recycled-value aesthetic that the Flea-for-All aspires to.

“There’s good growth around here, a lot of potential,” says Erin. “I think we got here at the right time.”

Portland Flea-for-All will be accepting applications from potential vendors on a rolling basis, but if you’re interested in getting in in time for the grand opening weekend in April, you should fill out their handy online application by this Friday, March 16th.

Photo: Erin Kiley and Nathaniel Baldwin, founders of Portland Flea-for-All, on the top floor of the future market space. Photo by Christian MilNeil.

A recent report from the National Trust for Historic Preservation makes the case that renovating our existing buildings usually offers greater environmental savings and benefits than building new structures from scratch, no matter how much eco-bling they might feature. The virtues of recycling apply to buildings as much as they apply to our newspapers and food packaging.

One of Portland’s greatest characteristics is the richness of its  architecture. Since 1866 (the year of the Great Fire), the city has been transforming its buildings for new uses, while also making room for well-designed contemporary renovations and infill buildings.

This hasn’t necessarily been an easy thing to do: until quite recently, Portland seemed intent on throwing away its architectural assets. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Portland, like many other cities, was tearing itself apart, bulldozing tightly-knit neighborhoods to make way for expressways and white-elephant civic buildings that turned out to be as sterile and unimaginative as the pencil-necked bureaucrats who commissioned them.

Luckily, the destruction was limited. And like the phoenix that rises on the city’s seal, an important new civic organization rose from the rubble of urban renewal: Greater Portland Landmarks, an organization of historic preservationists, architects, enlightened planners, and civic leaders that has been advocating for better architecture in the City of Portland since 1964.

As an organization, Greater Portland Landmarks spearheaded tactical restoration projects (like the 1978 rescue of the Hay Building in Congress Square) and lobbied for the city’s strong historic preservation ordinance that mandates high-quality architecture in the city’s historic districts.

Preserving historic architecture doesn’t merely make the city look better. It also keeps our city authentic, by reminding us who we are and where we come from. Brick warehouses in the Old Port district that once stored the seafaring cargo of Portland’s ships today house highly-educated workers trading in the new commodities of the 21st-century global economy. The Abyssinian Meetinghouse, a major base of operations for the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad, is currently being restored after decades of abandonment to help promote the amazing but little-known history of Portland’s early African Americans.

All over the city, buildings that had been denigrated as “slums” by clueless engineers of the 1970s are worth millions of dollars today. By encouraging us to value the city’s rich architectural history, preservationists have literally added billions of dollars’ worth of economic value to the city’s buildings and neighborhoods. And not coincidentally, the city’s revived sense of historic preservation and architectural design have paralleled its revival as a cultural center and business hub.

In 2008, the Maine state legislature passed a new tax credit to jump-start more historic preservation building projects throughout the state. So, in spite of the recession, Maine’s downtowns have gained beautiful new spaces like the lofts and offices at the Hathaway Creative Center in Waterville (formerly the shuttered shirt factory that inspired Richard Russo’s Empire Falls), new affordable apartments for seniors in the North Berwick Woolen Mill, and the new VIA Agency headquarters in downtown Portland (pictured at right).

It turns out that reusing buildings is “green” in the economic sense as well as in the ecological sense.

Top photo: Munjoy Hill and Portland Harbor seen from the Portland Observatory, by Christian MilNeil.

Ballet dancers and machine automation? A reference, perhaps, to the famous Dada film Ballet Mécanique? Nope, just the next networking mashup that is 2 Degrees Portland.

Calling all artists, professionals, entrepreneurs, and locals of all kinds invested in Portland’s creative economy. The place to be this coming Thursday, February 16, is Kepware, 400 Congress Street in Portland. That night, from 5:30-7:30 pm, the Maine Technology Institute (MTI) is sponsoring the first 2 Degrees Portland event of 2012. And dancers from the Portland Ballet will be there previewing excerpts from their upcoming production of Giselle.

If you’re not familiar with MTI, you should be. Since 1999 they’ve been promoting and supporting Maine’s technology sectors with grants and assistance. From start-ups to established innovators, companies throughout Maine—many right here in Portland—have grown and flourished because of MTI. (One of those local companies, by the way, is Kepware itself, a leader in automation software, helping sophisticated machines talk to one another.)

And just what is “2 Degrees Portland”? It’s a year-old program that connects people already living here with those who want to live here, or are newly arrived. As Creative Portland’s Jen Hutchins notes, “One reason people love this community is because it’s two degrees of separation, not six.”

On the 16^th, Portland newcomers will have the opportunity to connect with the creative community, and those who are established here can network with each other.  So, if you’re an engineer or a designer or a chef or an actor or a programmer or a photographer or a scientist or a…  you get the point.  The way to cross-pollinate is 2 Degrees Portland, and the place to do it is at Kepware on February16.

Part of what makes Portland’s First Friday Art Walks so much fun is that they have no epicenter. As the crowd surges along Congress Street, with smaller group investigating eddies in the Old Port, the Place To Be shifts from one locale to the next. One sure thing: if you stroll enough, and walk through enough doors, wonderful things will happen.

Last night, the December Art Walk that leads up to the holidays, there was an extra energy in the air. You could sense it at Congress Square: on one side, the line snaked into the State Theater for The Fogcutters present Big Band Syndrome (Lauren Wayne posted a video of the finale of the show); the other side of the square featured the Portland Museum of Art (free on Friday nights) and their hypnotic show on classic Shaker artifacts. Meanwhile, in-between, Art Walkers trundled up the stairs of the Flat Iron Gallery, in the pie-slice-shaped Hay Building, to sip and chew and ruminate on Art, Life, and Living in Portland.

Another wonderful thing, as always, took place at Otto Pizza, a few steps down Congress Street. Your correspondent was among the many who stood happily on the sidewalk, waiting in line to purchase a slice of what many consider to be the finest pizza north of Boston (and now Otto is in Harvard Square, too!). When it comes in as ideal and manifold a presentation as Otto offers, pizza can crystallize the creative economy.

Outside Otto, the sidewalk mambo was wending its way down Congress Street to Space Gallery, with many a stop along the way. Inside Space, one of First Friday’s mainstays, there was music, there was art, there was laughter, there was drinking, there were jostling crowds and a buoyant sense of pleasure in the air. There was also an Alternative Gift Market where you could buy donations to a wide range of curated non-profits and deliver them in a selection of limited edition, hand printed cards designed by artists Beth Taylor, Erin Flett and Jacqueline Dubois.

If you prefer your art au plein air, you could step outside of Space onto the sidewalk, where an open-air truck had pulled up to the curb. Just climb the ramp into the truck’s back to observe the paintings hanging within.

The crowd kept surging, now on to the Maine College of Art. Every year, MECA combines their First Friday participation with a huge holiday sale of items by college students and alums. This year, three floors were given over to a cavalcade of holidazzles, and so the crowds were especially strong here. Among the (hundreds of?) tables and booths, there seemed to be a particular emphasis on recycled treasures: playing cards converted into wallets, umbrellas converted into aprons, stamps converted into earrings.

For those who needed to retreat from the gleeful cacophony of MECA, there was quieter contemplation at galleries where one could, for instance, admire scale models, photos, and blueprints celebrating the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Or, upstairs at Cross Jewelers, you could sample “tastings” of various hot cocoas. Then back out into the street and more galleries, more stores, more music.

Until, in the words of Samuel Pepys, one has turned First Friday into First Saturday, “and so to bed.”

Photos by John Spritz

Portland is as dense with ad agencies as it is replete with restaurants and arts venues. So if you’re new to town how do you get a sense of who is doing what in Portland’s creative AdLand? One easy answer is to look at the list of winners of the biennial Broderson Awards—or better yet, to have been at the awards ceremony last Thursday (October 27) at the State Theatre.

That might have helped Pete Shelly, a young copy writer now based on the outskirts of NYC who is hoping to move to Portland, but he visited portland a week too soon. Pete is so gung ho about moving here that he built a very cool little website announcing his trip here and inviting ad creatives to have a cup of coffee (on him) to talk about Portland.

What kind of welcome did Pete receive in Portland? “I had 5 ad agencies in mind, and I had meetings with principles at 4 of them, all based on the premise of ‘hey, let’s grab a cup of coffee.’” Pete says. “They were all pretty open about lending a hand and giving their perspective. I was kind of blown away by the response. Nobody had to let me come into their office, but they did, and they took the time to sit down and listen to my story. I was anxiously awaiting the list of Broderson winners. I had the opportunity to stop by the gallery they had set up next to the State Theatre, and, having talked to creative directors and writers at each of the agencies, I was curious to see how everyone fared. I think that taking a look at the work produced in Maine just this year is a pretty good way to see how much talent is in this city, and that’s pretty attractive to me. I want to be a part of it as well.”

So here, Pete, is a whirlwind tour of Portland’s advertising creatives, courtesy of the Ad Club of Maine:

First off, the Best of Show award went to creative director Don Fibich of Kemp Goldberg Partners for their “Continue the Journey” print campaign for Sea Bags (great Portland agency building a great Portland brand—this is our kind of story). KGP also scored with their Camden National Bank Annual Report and their logo for the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine.

Virtually owning the big budget TV categories, the VIA agency‘s Teddy Stoecklein, Amos Goss, Ron Clayton, Ken Matsubara walked (half a block) home with medals for Samsung, Fairpoint and Klondike. VIA also won for it’s integrated marketing campaign for Samsung’s tablets, digital work for Samsung and Pediacare, environmental design for DuPont and a “Pitched but Ditched” whiskey bottle design for Pendleton.

Garrand‘s chief creative officer Larry Vine chalked up an impressive 12 (mainly print category) wins for national clients like Dunkin’ Donuts, Hood  and United Way and Maine brands like Gorham Savings Bank, Gorgeous Gelato and Maine Jewish Film Festival.

Several strong in-house departments scored as well: Angela Adams, IDEXX Laboratories, CIEE, Maine College of Art, White Rock Distilleries, Inc. and Coastal Enterprises Inc.

Dearest to LiveWork Portland’s heart, perhaps, were wins by independent creatives and small design studios for authentic local brands, like Leslie Evans‘ logo and brochures for Calendar islands Maine Lobster, Taja Dockendorf of Pulp + Wire’s identity and packaging work for Pleasant River Soap Co. and Erica Hebold of E+M Marketing’s design for the Grace Restaurant website.

Will the winners influence where Pete applies for a job? Or will he just move here, find some buddies and set up his own shop? As Zhou Enlai said about the French Revolution, “It’s too soon to tell.”

From the VIA Agency (left to right): Teddy Stoecklein, Jessica Fidalgo, John Coleman, Greg Smith, Dan O’Donnell

In a world of uncertainty, why celebrate risk? Why put everything you have into a crazy idea with only the barest beginnings of a plan? Ask that to Corey, Tyler and Seth, above, when they leave Love, The Bus in LA and fly back to Camden to be among the keynote speakers at the Juice 3.0 Conference in Camden on November 4 and 5th. In the case of Tyler Dunham, Seth Brown, and Corey McLean, these three “lifelong friends, filmmakers, and adventurers from the coastal town of Lincolnville, Maine (pop. 2,042). …[are] brimming with optimistic energy and a desire to accomplish something epic.” So they converted an old schoolbus into a grease-powered, web video road trip mobile and have been travelling around the country raising money to fund projects for community organizations and uploading the results in real time. If they can do all that, what else can they do?

And that’s just the point. The creative economy, the innovation economy, the experience economy—these are all expressions of the fluidity required by this crazy world—call it the improvisation economy. The Juice Conference is dedicated to bringing together a wide range of creative, innovative thinkers who have figured out how to put their ideas into action. Speakers and panelists include Maine heavyweights like Governor Angus King, Eliot Cutler and Roxanne Quimby, art world luminaries like Louisa McCall, Donna McNeil, and Eric Fischl and technological innovators like Kerem Durdag, John Ferland and  Steve Page. Portland’s creative economy is well represented by Ben Sawyer, of Digital Mill, Josh Broder of Tilson Technologies, Paul Dobbins, of Ocean Approved, Stephanie Volo of Planet Dog and Jaime Parker of Portland Trails.

One of the highlights of the conference is the pitch contest with $150,000 in financing to the winning business plans. (The deadline has been extended to Friday, October 28, so there’s still time to apply). If you’re not up for facing the “shark tank” in the pitch contest, they also have a short film contest (the deadline to apply is also now this friday.) Putting business plans and people who think about making business plans in front of investors and experts about those businesses is exactly what Juice is trying to do. And if your plan sounds like a mystery bus ride, what start up these days doesn’t?

Maine is full of smart people doing interesting things, but we may all be a bit too independently minded for our own good. That’s why conferences like Juice (and TEDx Dirigo) and places like Portland are so important. As the innovation economy spreads out through Maine, Portland has a role to play as a place to bring people together, to develop stories, to share a great meals, to cross-pollenate and propagate. Josh Broder of Portland’s Tilson Technology was just named to MaineBiz’s Next List for 2011. In the article he predicts that certain parts of the economy are poised for significant growth, “especially in those industries with strong ties to the creative economy. ‘American centers of innovation are our capital—the companies coming from technology, software and social media,’ he says. ‘All of those new things require significant infrastructure, and we’re the infrastructure provider.’”

And the same could be said of Portland. If risk is the juice of the Maine’s creative economy, Portland is it’s glass.

Photo from Love, The Bus

Getting in and out of Portland by air has always been easy, but with the opening of the new terminal at the Jetport it’s become kind of thrilling. It’s still a short drive to get there with very little traffic and the parking flow and capacity has been improved, but beyond the convenience, the newly expanded airport now feels like a place. The main component of the new structure is a blue, glass-skinned box. The generic “modern-ness” of this form is actually a head fake for the soaring geo-thermally heated space within.

But let’s back up. Even the large, letter spaced sans serif signage on the blue box announce “there are designers here.”  And when you get out of the long hallway that leads from the curbside drop off area to the new terminal, the space opens up dramatically and your eyes naturally go to the ceiling. The ceiling is genius, both as architecture and branding. What you see is an engineered 21st century interpretation of the Maine camp vernacular with massive beams and cross-bracing mixed with some Maine shipbuilding steelwork. All at once it reads as wood and steel, as craftsmanship and design, as tradition and innovation, as technology in the service of comfort. All these things we associate with Maine and with Portland all artfully morticed together in the service of keeping the snow out. The press release from the architectural consultancy Gensler that managed the project provides a lot of detail on the materials used, the upcoming LEED certification and  Voluntary Airport Low Emissions (VALE) grant used to fund the geothermal system.

When you drive away from the airport now at night you see the glowing green light of a massive LED wall sculpture in the main terminal space—another surprise that belies the glass box. If there is any criticism to be leveled about the architecture as experience it would be that it is perhaps a more inspiring experience for departing passengers than for new arrivals who still find themselves exiting through the low-ceilinged older terminal.

So the Jetport has doubled it’s gates and improved its passenger flow, but equally if not more important, they have taken the often generic form of the airport and created a space that feels uniquely like you’re in Portland, like you’re in Maine, and it’s a little different here.

Bonus fact from wikipedia: A survey conducted in June 2011 by travel web site Cheapflights found PWM to be the most affordable airport in the region (beating Manchester and Logan), and the third most affordable in New England (behind Bradley and T. F. Green).