Portland is a really peaceful city, that’s true. But it turns out that of all the States in the U.S., Maine is the most peaceful. I don’t mean most yoga studios or spas per capita, though we have plenty of those. I mean peace as in the absence of violence.

For two years in a row, The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has ranked Maine at the top of their United States Peace Index. And if Maine were a country unto itself (which it feels like sometimes) it would rank fifth on the IEP’s Global Peace Index. To see how striking this is, consider that the U.S. as a whole ranks 82nd out of 153 countries!

The IEP “is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress,” according to the full report on the rankings. “The second annual edition of the index, produced by Institute for Economics and Peace, provides a comprehensive analysis of peacefulness at the state and city levels, as well as an analysis of the costs associated with violence and the socio-economic measures associated with peace,” explains the report. “The USPI measures peacefulness according to five indicators: the number of homicides, number of violent crimes, the incarceration rate, number of police employees and the availability of small arms.”

Our neighbors Vermont and New Hampshire rank right behind us, and Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA was ranked the most peaceful of all major U.S. metro areas (Portland was not rated independent of Maine). And, as you can see on the map above, New England is the country’s most peaceful region.

Although Maine as a whole has some significant socio-economic challenges, we all feel the positive effect of the lack of violent crime, the social ease of not requiring large police forces and the commitment to self-improvement that comes along with low incarceration rates.

So when people wonder what they can do to make the world a better, more peaceful place, one of the answers is, be more like Maine!

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.

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.

The Boston/New York face-off in the Super Bowl got me thinking about Portland in relation to those two urban centers of gravity. Many creative professionals here maintain ongoing ties with one or both, and culturally they are quite distinct. Although I’ve lived here for seven years—and although I’m not a sports fan—I find myself rooting for the Giants. Ex-New Yorkers can even think that their urbanity has had a pervasive effect on Portland, but in truth, Portland has probably changed them more than they have changed Portland. To get to the bottom of this struggle for identity—this battle for the soul of Portland—I consulted Colin Woodard, author of American Nations. And like many New Yorkers before me, I tried to change his New England mind and he ended up changing mine.

Q:What is the theory behind American Nations and which Nation is the City of Portland part of?

A: American Nations argues that there has never been one America, but rather several Americas. The original colonial clusters were founded by people with distinct ethnographic and religious characteristics, ideals, values, and political and societal goals. Throughout the colonial period they saw each other as competitors and sometimes as enemies, fighting on opposite sides of the English Civil War and the American Revolution. They colonized mutually exclusive portions of the middle region of our continent, laying down the cultural DNA that subsequent immigrants have confronted as the “dominant culture” around them.

Maine, including Portland, is part of Yankeedom, the Greater New England cultural space established by the early Puritans.

Q: The Super Bowl on Sunday pits the New England Patriots (representatives of Yankeedom) against the New York Giants. What “Nation” do the Giants represent?

A: New Netherland, the Dutch-founded area around New York City, to include northern New Jersey, western Long Island, Westchester and Fairfield counties. Established by the Dutch at a time when the Netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the Western world, New Netherland has displayed its salient characteristics throughout its history: a global commercial trading culture— multiethnic, multireligious, and materialistic—with a profound tolerance for diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience.

Q: Portland has become multiethnic, multireligious and tolerant of diversity (not sure about materialistic) due to the influx of Africans, Asians—and New Yorkers. Plus we have great bagels, a tattoo parlor from Brooklyn, and lots of first-rate writers and other creatives that have moved here from New York. As an ex-New Yorker myself, I have to ask, what does it take to overthrow the “dominant culture” of a city?

A: All that could be said of Boston, Arlington, Charleston or, indeed, London. Don’t confuse the trappings of contemporary urbanity with “New Netherlandishness.” Portland’s food, art, and culture scenes  owe their existence to transplants from many places, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other parts of Maine. That’s not to say New Yorkers haven’t enriched our city, but one can overestimate their contribution.

The dominant culture in Portland has been Yankee ever since the Casco Bay area was first colonized in the 1650s, the decade after the English Civil War. While New Netherlanders have much to be proud of, there are important virtues of this Yankee culture. There’s an emphasis on community — rather than individual — good, and a strong social taboo regarding flashy displays of wealth, privilege, and power that is almost entirely alien to Gotham. There is, indeed, an emphasis on cultural conformity — at some level, Yankee culture expects outsiders to melt into the pot, as it were — but its also a culture programmed by the Puritans to improve itself through civic institutions and engagement.

Many affluent, big city professionals have who’ve come and helped invigorate our city have builtupon foundations laid decades and, in some respects, centuries ago. It would be a mistake to assume that Yankees – and indeed, Mainers — haven’t played a central role in the creation of contemporary Portland. (I point your readers to one of my previous works, The Lobster Coast, for more on this.) In short, you wouldn’t want to overthrow the dominant culture of Greater Portland. It’s what makes the city work in the first place.

Q: So you think that urbanites from New York and all the other metros are attracted to Portland in good measure because of the qualities of Yankeedom—emphasis on community, lack of materialism, value on civic engagement—that are expressed in here? And all that New Netherlandish stuff are just superficial trappings that have—in fact—embedded themselves in many metros without changing the essential character of those places?

A: Urbanites are drawn to Portland for many of the reasons pointed out in your website. Every “nation” has cities with different characteristics and attributes (compare and contrast Paris and Marseilles, for instance), but the dominant culture does have a powerful background effect. So, yes, there are Yankee cultural features at the foundation of what people celebrate about Portland.  New Netherlanders — and Left Coasters, Midlanders, Irish, French, Greeks, Serbs and Somalis — have enriched our city, but the dominant culture remains. That, indeed, is why we call it “dominant.”

Q: Point taken. So who do you think will win the Super Bowl?

The Patriots. (Where’s that other team from? Unlike the Mets and Knickerbockers, their team colors aren’t the orange blue and white of the old Dutch Republic.)

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

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

For the intrepid Portlander (including your devoted editor) next Saturday promises to be even more immersive than usual. From 9 to 5 I will punch in at the Portland Stage Company on Forest Ave. and have my head filled with “Maine Ideas Worth Spreading” at the second annual TEDxDirigo conference. Then, at quittin’ time, the more than 200 conference attendees and speakers will pour out onto the street and find themselves just half a block from the second coming of the creative Portland carnivale that is SPACE Gallery’s Block Party. For the next three hours, the Portland Arts District will be filled with creative manifestations of all kinds. Think FirstFRIDAYxSteroidos!

And interesting for us that this is the second year that LiveWork Portland has been around to cover these events. TEDx Dirigo wasn’t on our map (literally) last year because it happened in Brunswick, at the Frontier Café near Bowdoin College. This year they hope to triple the attendance by hosting it in Portland. We were particularly enamored by the steamroller stunt at last year’s block party, and while no steamrollers are on the menu for this year’s event, there is a much longer list of individual artists and groups staging installations and performances than last year. And although they only come from Providence instead of Brazil, this year’s party band, the What Cheer? Brigade, is a 19 piece sometimes marching brass band that “mixes the sounds of Bollywood, The Balkans, New Orleans, Samba and Hip-Hop, with the intensity of a punk rock band.” Wow!

When I think about it I imagine a day of extreme cultural and intellectual density. The kind of experience you expect to find only in big cities. But these things are possible in Portland because of an unusual balance of factors—call it “small density”—that puts lots of smart people in proximity to each other without crushing overhead or soul-destroying commutes. And all that extra time and energy fuels a community of non-profits robust enough to stage ambitious events like these—sometimes two or more in a day. Portland is itself a “Maine idea worth spreading.” Pass it on!

While the national—and global—economic picture is decidedly mixed, there are signs that Portland, Maine, may be exceptional in more ways than it’s number of James Beard nominations per capita. This may be highly anecdotal, but in the last few weeks many postings for high-level creative jobs in Portland have moved across my radar. These are not just-out-of-college quasi-paid internships, but well-paying jobs worth moving from Brooklyn, Boston, Berkeley or Austin for. Putney, a veterinary products startup based in Portland, was the highest ranking Maine company on Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growng small companies with an impressive 291% three year growth rate. Go to the careers page their website and you’ll see they are looking for a director of marketing; If you follow Mediabistro you would have seen a posting for an art director at Kemp Goldberg Partners marketing and advertising agency; and (as I mentioned in a recent post) The Via Agency has 8 positions to be filled.

At a time when all levels of government are talking about how to spur job creation it is great to see that the creative economy (at least here in Portland) is actually doing it. All kinds of non-profits are sharpening their business focus as well in hopes of remaining relevant and positioning themselves as worthy targets for scarce investment dollars. The speakers at the upcoming TEDxDirigo conference receive coaching in how to distill their “ideas worth spreading” into 18 minutes or less and then get a high quality video of their talk to help them spread those ideas further. MaineBiz just did a profile on founder Adam Burk. TEDxDirigo talks are not quite elevator pitches, but they’re a way to give creative social entrepreneurs a leg up on getting attention—and funding.

Art, it must be said, is not business. But there is a lot of business that develops around art. In order for that process to happen there need to be opportunities for artists to find support for their own basic research and let others jump in to find applications. The Maine Arts Commission just released a report on the economic impact of Museum attendance in Maine as a way of demonstrating an aspect of that link. MAC has shown unwavering support for both local arts organizations and individual artists, both crucial components in the growth of the creative economy from which many of the cultural perks of Portland flow.

In a similar vein, Maine AIGA’s annual exhibit this year is entitled, “Good Design is Good Business,” and the focus is on “the elements of branding.” Maine AIGA president, and partner at Portland branding shop Might & Main (formerly Forge), Sean Wilkinson says, ”Well designed presence in the world is what sets one great idea apart from another. It is ‘intelligence made visible.’ Your expertise as a business is only as valuable as people perceive it to be, and hiring a designer is one of the most important steps in shaping that perception. It also keeps good folks like me gainfully employed.”

Good folks, gainfully employed in Portland, Maine—the image of a glass filling…

background photo by Corey Templeton, Portland Daily Photo

The summer’s other great sequel was not in 3-d multiplexes but right on Congress street in Portland. Ad Age named the VIA Agency, Small Agency of the Year, Gold. Why the Harry Potter motif? “The Via agency is housed in the Baxter building, built in 1888 as the public library of Portland, Maine. The imposing peaks and gables of the stone facade and wooden beam-studded high-ceiling interior led one Via client to dub the building the “Hogwarts of Advertising.” … And if the building is Hogwarts, then CEO and founder John Coleman is its Harry Potter. With similar rounded black-framed glasses, an affable charm and wide-eyed curiosity about everything, Mr. Coleman even seems to have Master Potter’s magic touch — in the advertising industry at least,” reads the lead of the Ad Age piece.

Careful readers of this blog will remember that VIA won silver for the same prive last year, no mean feat for a Portland agency. But the intervening year has been a very good one for VIA and they attribute at least a bit of that good fortune to being located here. ”To live in a smaller town and to go to baseball games and do the grocery shopping and all of that, helps in understanding the broad spectrum of different kinds of people, but I truly believe that what it really does is afford us the opportunity to think,” Mr. Coleman said. “I love New York, but I feel blessed to live in a place like Portland.”

Go to the Portland section of the Via website and the first thing you read is “Portland isn’t just where we are. It’s who we are.” (I wish we had written that!) They then lead you through three iPad swipes of highlights that tell you why it’s great to live in Portland followed by listings for eight (at last count) really great jobs. Talk about brand story! VIA is itself one of the best advertisements for Portland that Portland’s got. And for those of you who like a little wistful bitterness to temper your jubilation, read Chief Creative Officer Greg Smith’s reaction to the award, “So That Didn’t Suck.”

On Monday afternoon, El-Fadel Arbab sorts through vivid, homemade signs like those pictured above, painted with slogans (“Humanity before Politics,” or “Be the Voice for Those Who Cannot Be Heard”) which he will take to this Saturday’s Peace in Sudan Rally in Washington, D.C. Schoolchildren from Portland, Maine, and our surrounding communities crafted the posters after hearing Arbab’s story.

“If you’re looking for people to help you and they don’t know anything about you, how can they help you?” Arbab asks. Since arriving in Portland from Darfur in 2004, Arbab has dedicated himself to telling the story of his childhood and his people – how the Sudanese military and Janjaweed mercenaries came when he was 12 years old and burned down his village in Darfur, a western region of Sudan, killing most of its inhabitants and separating him from family and community. He made his way to Egypt after four years, where he reunited with his mother, some of his siblings, and members of his extended family before they earned visas to come to the U.S.

Arbab’s story is remarkable, but perhaps just as surprising is how many people with stories like his live in Portland. Our metropolitan area is home to one of the largest organized Darfuri refugee populations in the United States. The Fur Cultural Revival, a non-profit organization headquartered at the Meg Perry Center in Portland, works to spread awareness about the Darfur genocide in the U.S. and ease the transition process for Darfuri refugees in the area. Through FCR, Arbab has organized a rally on the 23 of each month at Monument Square in remembrance of July 23, 2004, when the U.S. Congress declared genocide in Darfur. He sees it as another way of raising awareness.

Arbab is almost halfway toward his goal of telling his story in all 50 states.

“For the rest of my life, I will be sharing this story. I have been enslaved by the government of Sudan, burned alive, lost so many members of my family,” he says. “My story is one example, and it’s not just about Sudan. It’s about breaking the cycle of genocide.”

His preferred audience is students. “The distance between the United States and Sudan that leaders feel doesn’t exist for students. They see the human side of the conflict,” explains Arbab. “Kids want to learn and change the world.” Currently, schools across the country must sign up on a waiting list, booking Arbab a year in advance.

This Friday, FCR will bus Portlanders down to D.C. for the rally, organized by the Enough Project, Save Darfur Coalition/ Genocide Intervention Network, the FCR, and more. Arbab will speak alongside other internationally recognized human rights advocates at the event. Before the rally, Darfuris against genocide are holding a global hunger strike, which will begin at noon on Friday and end at noon on Saturday.

While Arbab’s work increasingly takes him to new parts of the country, he remains dedicated to building relationships among native and new Mainers. “When I go to a different state, Maine is on my mind – the streets, restaurants, stores, views,” Arbab says. “When I come back to Portland and see the view of the ocean, I feel so relaxed, like I am home again.”

Pictured above: Arbab with signs made by Portland’s youth.