Two weeks ago, environmental activist, author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, came to the Portland US District courthouse to join a midday demonstration “marking the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations unprecedented power to fund political campaigns,” according to a story in the Portland Phoenix. “City councilor Dave Marshall recently submitted a resolution that calls on Maine’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment abolishing the so-called ‘corporate personhood’ codified by the ruling. ‘We simply can’t win the battle against carbon if politics remains polluted by corporate money,’ McKibben says.” Dave Marshall’s resolution was indeed passed that Thursday night. The city council of Portland voted 6-2 to call on the state’s congressional delegation to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing “corporate personhood.” [Here's a good roundup of the issue from CommonDreams.org]

McKibben went on to give a lecture that Friday evening at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center hosted by the University of New England entitled, “Local and Global: Notes from the Frontlines of the Climate Fight.” [Here's the video of the talk.] That talk is being broadcast today on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine public affairs program.

Now Portland likes corporations just fine, but we like living and working to be in balance. We like our people to be people and our corporations to be corporations.

In fact, a lot of the companies that are attracted to Maine, and to the Portland area in particular, are trying to create solutions to the kinds of problems McKibben addresses in his most recent book, Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  ReVision Energy, Ocean Approved Kelp, Ocean Renewable Power, all presented at this year’s Juice 3.0 conference and are all based in Portland. Other Portland green businesses listed on the Maine Businesses for Sustainability include Blue Reserve Water, PDT Architects, Wright-Ryan Construction, and Coffee by Design. A great resource for local services with green practices is the new green business directory from The Sunrise Guide.

McKibben’s talk was Skyped live around the State to Belfast, Bangor, Houlton, and the Portland Public Library. Bill said he has been to all of these places, but this “is a very low carbon way to get around Maine!” He apologized, in advance for being, “a professional bummer-outer of people,” but then went on to tell what we can all do to make things better. He praised Maine’s initiatives in the local food movement and Portland’s permaculture efforts during the 10.10.10 day of action, but he also said we need to do more.

In particular, McKibben thinks that the injection of money into politics is crippling our government’s ability to make any substantive changes in our energy future. ”I gave a little talk at the Portland courthouse today,” he said, “because there was a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United thing that sort of opened up fully the money spigots for corporate America to interfere in our political life. And this is just cheating. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, and Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, is caught giving money to the referees beforehand, it’s a national scandal. Everybody would be outraged, but if Exxon does it, then it’s OK. That’s crazy and we’ve got to stop it, right now.”

McKibben speaks from the deep Yankee tradition (see my discussion with Colin Woodard in relation to this). In fact, in 2010 he wrote a series of articles for Yankee Magazine subtitled How New England Can Save the World. And he was clearly speaking to a receptive audience that night in Westbrook, “The thing that keeps us from fixing things is our cynicism. This is how it’s always going to be. We need to be aggressively naive about this. I think we need to say, ‘This is not right, it’s not fair, it makes no sense. We don’t know how it got started, but it’s time to stop it.’ And we won’t stop it perfectly and all at once, but hopefully we can at least throw a scare into them. So we’re going to have people all over the country and they’re going to be following around their congressman with big signs pointing out how much money they’ve taken. And we’re going to be making up suit coats for them that look like those uniforms that nascar drivers wear, with decals, logos, for each of their companies. It’s shameful what’s going on and there needs to be some shaming done.”

Bill is not a naturally outgoing person and he has taken the mantle of activist leader somewhat reluctantly. In many ways, like many creatives, he would rather sit in his room and write. But there’s clearly something about the momentum of social engagement, and 350.orgs surprising victories, that keeps him going. Returning at the end of his talk to the theme of local foods he concluded, ”The secret is to have more fun than other people have, and part of that involves eating delicious, good things close to home, and frankly i think we’ve reached the point that i’m going to stop so I can eat some of them!”

A couple of months ago, I had an idea for an art project: I could use the Google Search API to filter through the 27,400 Image Search results for watercolor paintings of Maine’s Monhegan Island, sort them by their dominant hues, and rearrange them in an grid to create a pointillist approximation of a Monhegan Island scene.

There were two strikes against this idea ever seeing the light of day: first, I’ve never considered myself an artist, and second, I was only a novice at the programming languages I would need to pull the necessary data from Google’s servers and put the mosaic together.

But then I read about the third reprise of SPACE Gallery‘s Free for All show, an unjuried “democratic curatorial experiment” that solicits work from “artists of all stripes.” If I could whip something together in 2 weeks, SPACE would hang it.

So I started coding, and my wife made a beautiful dovetailed cherry box to frame the program’s LCD screen (that’s a screenshot of the finished product below at right: squint and you might see something that looks like Monhegan’s lighthouse). Meanwhile, hundreds of other Portlanders were working on their own projects. At the opening last week, the galleries were nearly as packed as the walls.

Kindly set aside for a moment the question of whether what I made has any artistic value. Even if it’s crap, it was crap that served two valuable purposes: it forced me to stop procrastinating and teach myself functional PHP and Javascript, creative skills that will make me a more productive and valuable participant in Portland’s workforce. And seeing my project finished on a crowded wall of artworks—the products of tens of thousands of hours’ worth of collective effort—also made me feel like a more engaged citizen in a community of creators.

Around the time SPACE staff were putting the finishing touches on that show, the Warhol Foundation announced their award of a $150,000 grant that will, among other things, help entice visiting artists to spend more time in Portland, and increase their engagement with the community and with Portland’s rich history.

In July, for instance, Amze Emmons will set up a zine library and host publishing workshops at the tentatively-named RUM RIOT PRESS (named for the violent outcomes of Portland’s cutting-edge prohibitionist pilot project in 1851). Look forward to discussions and contemporary reenactments of how DIY printing culture played a strident and powerful role in our city’s — and nation’s — early history.

Later in the summer, SPACE will welcome Allison Pebworth’s “Beautiful Possibility” tour, which will set up the SPACE Annex in the style of a nineteenth century Chautauqua to host discussions of the varied historical narratives we use to make sense of our nation, and to talk about what it means to be an American.

Most galleries don’t do this kind of stuff: they’re in the business of selling art. Why spend hundreds of hours of staff labor to showcase amateur artworks from people like me, or pay for room and board for visiting artists who participate in the growing trend of art as social practice, when it’s apparently so easy to sell thousands of paintings of the same rocky coastline?

But SPACE doesn’t merely showcase great art and performances. It also engages the city and its citizens to be more creative and thoughtful in our own lives, whether or not we consider ourselves artists. In countless instances, SPACE has prompted us to learn new creative skills, to start new projects, to forge new relationships with each other. Taken individually, those instances can seem trivial: it may or may not matter much if a dental assistant becomes a typography enthusiast, or if a tenth-grader teaches herself three chords on the bass.

But taken cumulatively, across the entire city, these effects multiply, become tremendous. SPACE itself begins to look like a sprawling social artwork whose medium is the entire city: an institution devoted to making us a more creative Portland.

Image: Free for All opening night, photo by Christian MilNeil.

PS – Check out the Free for All show during this month’s First Friday artwalk, or anytime this month: the art comes down on March 3 (SPACE is located at 538 Congress Street). Also, while the Warhol Foundation’s grant helps a lot, SPACE still needs its members’ support to finance its everyday operations. Follow this link to join or renew online.

How many times do we actually ask you to do anything on this blog? Our tone is usually more of an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of Portland or a suggestion of someone you might be interested in meeting. We’re not really about action items—but here’s one!

At this month’s Portland Greendrinks event, on the second Tuesday (January 10) at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (561 Congress Street) Sean Sullivan from Bowdoin College will be filming for a video about career opportunities in Maine. He will be asking people their name, what they do in Portland and why they love living and working in Portland (and Maine). The footage will be used first for a video “to entice Bowdoin, Bates and Colby students to attend the Maine Based Employers Career Fair (prevent the brain drain!), which Bowdoin is putting on to feature opportunities available in Maine.” But since this also fits in rather neatly with the mission of Creative Portland, we will probably find uses for the footage of Portland-loving people too.

For extra incentives (and to highlight sustainable transportation in Portland), Sean has procured 3 free bike tune ups from Allspeed Cycles (that will be distributed at random to participants) and a discount code (for all participants) that waives the membership fee and gives $10 worth of free time from UCarShare ($35 value).

And for all you architects and interior designers out there, the event is co-sponsored by SMRT, the 125 year old Portland based architectural project management company.

So please, help Maine, help Portland and come to Greendrinks with a face and a soundbite to let the world know why you love Portland!

For many Portlanders, our Farmers’ Market is just about the best thing in town. Twice a week from April to November, more than 30 farmers descend on Portland, and we get the benefit of fresh, local produce and meats from across Maine.

Come December, the whole operation just moves indoors, to the Maine Irish Heritage Center (the former St. Dominic’s Church). Starting this past weekend, the Portland Winter Farmers’ Market is open every Saturday morning, with farmers hailing from Sumner, Dresden, Etna, Greenwood, Unity, Bethel, up and down the Pinetree State.

This week, your correspondent saw an array of celeriac, Manchego cheese, duck eggs, fingerling potatoes, rabbit pot pie, bunches of winterberries, Anadama bread, cider, sunchokes, bagels, honey, feta marinade, and a colorful bounty of carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, garlic and more. Over on the stage, a fiddler and guitar duo serenaded the crowd with old-timey music. Kids ran around, parents mulled purchases, old friends reconnected, and pretty soon bags were stuffed with the makings of many delectable dinners to come.

Make your way to the big brick church at State and Gray streets any Saturday morning over the next few months, and join the foodie fray.

Photos by John Spritz. Top: Fishbowl Farm

Common Wealth Farm purveys free range duck and chicken eggs…and bagels.

A farmer’s market inside a former church basement? Well, why not?

Soaps, cheeses, and jams from Nezinscot Farm.

The Pickle Jar Defenders playing away.

Creative economies prosper when they think creatively about themselves. In Portland, you can see that in action in the “Springboard” sessions run by Common Good Ventures.

Every month or so, Springboard pulls together local business leaders to think as out-of-the-box as possible about a nonprofit organization’s problem. In just 90 fast-paced minutes, some of Portland’s most resourceful businesspeople cluster around a table and help the organization develop ideas about a better business plan, more savvy marketing or, really, any business issue.

It all happens at the offices of the VIA Agency, in the historic Baxter Library building, which they have completely retooled for their own look and style. Around the table are local representatives from the worlds of marketing, law, finance, media, retail, and more. Up steps the nonprofit’s Executive Director and he/she walks the group through the organization’s background and particular issue.

What follows is a zippity-quick process of tossing out ideas that are posted on the wall, with time for explanations. In a structured format, the conversation goes back and forth boisterously and convivially. At the end of an hour-and-a-half, the nonprofit comes away with a raft of implementable ideas and perspectives. The for-profit attendees come away knowing that they have had direct—and quick—input into a local organization’s core concerns.

For example, a Springboard session this morning focused on Community Television Network, Portland’s cable access channel. CTN wanted ideas on how to boost sales of their video production services, which in turn support their nonprofit programming. By the end of 90 minutes, the wall was covered with colored stickies categorized into topics like Outreach, Cool Quotient, Social Media, Re-Branding, and Local Products.

Will Springboard replace McKinsey’s management consulting teams? Unlikely. But the process does provide a way for Portland’s nonprofit and for-profit communities to interact in a cooperative, non-threatening, results-driven atmosphere. Plus, it’s free for the nonprofit—and fun for the participants!

You can contact Chad Sclove if you want to attend the next Springboard.

Photo by John Spritz

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

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

The First Friday Art Walk has entered a new phase in its life cycle as the flagship of Portland’s creative economy. Since July, designer Jennifer S. Muller has been producing a beautiful broadside map and program distributed the previous Thursday in The Portland Press Herald. The way the heavy, uncoated stock of the piece absorbs the ink makes it look more hand made than commercially printed, which is just the right touch for the Art Walk that aims to stoke local commerce through the propagation of fine art.

And building on the uproarious success of the What Cheer? Brigade at the SPACE Gallery Block Party, tonight’s festivities include New York’s Asphalt Orchestra for more street band fun. (Thank you, Portland Ovations) Programs? Marching Bands? And soon food carts? This is beginning to sound like a sporting event for creatives!

Some of tonights highlights include: a performance at 4:30 in Congress Square by The Milkman’s Union presented by the Portland Music Foundation to highlight this year’s Portland entries in the NYC’s CMJ Music Marathon; the opening reception of Good Design is Good Business: The Elements of Branding, the 2011 AIGA Maine Annual Exhibit at the Lewis Gallery, Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square; an exhibit of photographs from the Portland Ballet’s “Who’s Your Dancer” project will be  on view at the KeyBank Monument Square branch; and the work of at least one Portland mayoral candidate is on view!

John Rooks is a true Portland original. As the founder and president of The Soap Group, he is at the forefront of business consulting for sustainability and social justice. In his new book, More Than Promote, he looks past the duality of consumerism and environmentalism and “reassembles a new thing; a strategy and methodology of promotion that is, simultaneously, sustainability.” Neat trick, John.

For his presentation at TEDxDirigo, Rooks tackled the issue of authenticity (often hilariously) and it’s post modern sci-fi doppelganger, the simulacrum. For those of you less up on your Philip K. Dick (and Arnold Schwarzenegger) than John, a simulacrum is a copy for which there is no original. His point is that advertisers have to move beyond the wink-wink head fake of “green” marketing to the more radical transparency of authenticity.

I was intrigued by John’s concept of the “authenticity audit” and about how it might apply to Portland. In many ways, the appeal of Portland—and of Maine—is that they are originals for which there is no copy, so I though we would hold up pretty well. I asked him to sketch out for us what an audit of Portland might look like and, true to form, what he came up with was both tougher and more helpful than I had anticipated:

When a cruise ship pulls into Portland, and the tourists spill out into the street, money falling from their pockets as they shuffle their way into chowder houses, are they experiencing the real Portland?

Do we, as residents experience the real Portland?  Is there any such thing as a Real Portland? It’s not a metaphysical question.  It’s a strategic question important to mental and economic health of our city.

Today, the question is important because Authenticity is a new kind of currency.  Brands and destinations are all claiming that they offer authentic products and experiences.  Realwashing is the new greenwashing.  So, as both a brand and a destination it seems that Portland might want to explore its own Authenticity a bit.  The underlying logic says that consumers (or in our case residents) want more Authenticity in their lives.  And brands (or cities) need to be ready to deliver.

But contrary to popular mythologies, Authenticity is not an effortless way of being.  It does not just happen.  People, businesses and even municipalities need to work hard at it. This is where things get exciting.  It turns out that Authentic people are happier.  And Authentic businesses are more profitable.  Authentic cities, the logic follows, would have happier people and more profitable businesses inside the city limits.

If we were to perform an Authenticity Audit on Portland, what would we find?  If we measured what Portland says about itself (via Portland Downtown District, LiveWorkPortland, PACA, Greater Portland Convention and Visitors Bureau, Portland Buy Local, the Chamber, City Hall, Maine Department of Tourism, etc., etc) against what Portland actually does, what do you think we would we find?  That’s the authenticity formula – the difference between what you say and what you do.  And between the two is an Authenticity Gap™.  Within the Authenticity Gap are opportunities to make yourself, your business and your Portland a better place.

What Rooks is pointing to, from our local perspective, is that the conditions that have created the creative economy in Portland need to be explored, understood and promoted. And beyond that, the sustainability of the creative economy here is based on the authentic talents and efforts of people and companies that are responding to the authentic needs of their customers and the challenging conditions of our times. And that response is an ongoing human performance, not a robot on auto pilot. It’s not easy being authentic, but it wasn’t easy for Kermit to be green, either.

Image of John Rooks courtesy of TEDxDirigo, photograph by Jason Esposito

It’s an old story—repeated from SoHo in New York in the 70s to SoMa in San Francisco in the 90s—the artists move in, the rents go up, the artists move on. But in the last 40 years, cities have learned that there are alternatives to this shell game that gentrifies the avant-garde. Live/work development has been used successfully in many cites as a way of enabling working artists to stay in the neighborhoods that they have helped to revitalize.

“Developing spaces that keep artists and creative people living and working in our downtown is essential to maintaining our city’s appealing character,” says Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Creative Portland Corporation and the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance (PACA). “We know that a vibrant arts scene attracts commercial activity and helps keep our local economy strong.” To this end, Creative Portland has invited representatives from Artspace—a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, Minn. that specializes in the development of artist live/work spaces—for a two-day visit next week to help assess the conditions for such development in Portland. Artspace will meet with everyone from real estate developers, philanthropists and city officials, to community members, artists and cultural institutions to determine the needs and interest in this type of project, and to help frame the issues that would need to be resolved among these parties.

While in Portland, Artspace will also visit three potential development sites: the Portland Public Works garage at 55 Portland Street; the Masonic Temple at 8 Chestnut Street; and a block of properties at the corners of Hampshire Street and Federal Street in the India Street neighborhood. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see what turning one of these underutilized buildings into a live/work development could do both for local artists and for artists looking to relocate here from elsewhere.

A highlight of the Artspace visit will be a free public presentation, on Thursday, September 29, at 6:00 p.m. in the Rines Auditorium of the Portland Public Library. After a 30-45 minute interactive presentation about Artspace’s model for developing artist live/work space and examples of their projects throughout the country, the audience will be invited ask questions, provide feedback and contribute their views on community needs and interest in a live/work project in Portland.

Artspace has a national overview on creating affordable space for the artists and arts organizations, and they’ve been doing it for more than 30 years. Andy Graham, President of Creative Portland, says “I’m happy to have Artspace visit Portland because it gives us an opportunity to talk about what is missing in Portland, to imagine together what Portland needs to be even better.”

Photograph of blueprint mural on Free Street by Corey Tempelton, Portland, Maine