New Age Research

By Fiona Boyd |

I must admit, I’ve always been someone to canvas other people’s views when I want to test out an idea or find some information and I’m not sure I’m going about finding it in the most efficient way. I used to be inundated with well-meaning types taking over and telling me my quest was in vain, but thankfully there’s been some generational renewal and in more recent times I’ve found that doing a bit of action research yields me a bigger, more comprehensive view on the area I wanted to find out more about.

So it was about two weeks ago when I had the task of identifying the top 100 cities in the world for arts activity. Now the reason I was doing this, for the time being anyway, needs to remain a bit of a secret, though needless to say, David and I, plus another arts and internet afficianado, Ed Dowling are cooking up a bit of a new venture. As happy accidents go, Ed had the idea of something that David and I had done full business scoping on, way back in the days when we were gelling the business concepts and plans around what was to become Arts Hub. The problem with this other business idea was that we just couldn’t figure out how we could get distribution quickly enough and to our target audience with the technology of the times. Really niche delivery systems were required and David and I could not see a way forward.

Nine years later and we have Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, though these will be the two we use for the new venture. For us, they are channels to our target, intelligent, choice-conscious audience who is interested in a great quality live offline experience, but isn’t interested in paying full whack if there’s any kind of potential for disappointment.

Faced with a research project that wasn't yielding any meaningful results with a basic Google search, I threw my challenge to my Twitter followers and was well rewarded.

In starting my research task I did some Google searches and was pretty discouraged that I wasn’t yielding any readymade lists. Surely in 2009 someone would have compliled a top 100 cities of the world for the arts? Well, not so I found. I was steadying myself for days of wombling around online when I decided I might just ask for a bit of help from my followers on Twitter. I’d completely forgotten about the fact that my tweets automatically feed to my Facebook profile, so was really heartened when not only the tweets rolled in, but also suggestions and whole documents of cities were posted on my Facebook wall. And all within the space of around 8 hours. Friends filed their favourite arts cities, then gave comprehensive rationales as to why these cities should be included in my list.

I was amazed. Then I receive a tweet from the Librarian at the Lonely Planet who sends me a UNESCO list of the world’s top ten arts cities and the reasons along with a request to have a copy of my Top 100 once they were compiled.

Now I must admit, my criteria for selection were rather crude. The cities must be big, and they must have a good amount of live arts activity going on in them on an ongoing and regular basis, that is, not just summer festivals and the like. I wasn’t that interested in ranking them in any kind of rigid order as for business purposes, we really just needed the biggest and most active. How to figure this out?

Well, I did actually do some of the research myself and took a look around various cities that described themselves as ‘creative’ or ‘creative class’ cities. Richard Florida, in his book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ had mentioned that really successful cities had plenty of gay people, artists and creative class workers, web developers, IT professionals, media professionals, knowledge workers etc – and all these people expected really good quality arts experiences to be readily available to them. Hence it made sense to look out for cities that could be described as ‘creative class’, there would be lots of arts activity going on there. This yielded me most of my US cities, but for the European ones, it was mainly my Facebook friends’ recommendations that gave me my leads.

Some of the bigger cities, like Brussels, I was told, were boring and whilst they may be big, there was not enough of note going on regularly to make them worthy of being on the list. Other smaller cities such as Antwerp were described as hotbeds of artisanship and bohemianism, with mainstream and alternative live arts activity available every night of the week and through all seasons. That one, though not a big city with a population of half a million, made it on the list.

My most useful contribution though, and I had thought of this, but figured ah, too hard – was from a longstanding friend whose band I used to follow around town when I was a youngster, and who is now an executive at Woodside Petroleum. The oil game must have been a bit boring that day as he found me a list of the world’s biggest cities by population and sent these through on Facebook. When I did a bit more googling I found a rash of arts activity going on in cities I had never even heard of. Fabulous, this list was getting somewhere.

I received responses from Facebook friends in the UK, New York City, and from Twitter followers from all over the world. I know it sounds like such a simple project and a simple request, but I was really amazed at how so many Twitter followers and Facebook friends took my question “Which are Top 100 cities in the world for live arts?” and really got involved.

Thanks to everyone who made a contribution, we’re really grateful. You made my task much easier than I thought it would be. I’d really been beating myself up about this one!

Attached is the list. Just bear in mind that this isn’t ranked or ordered. Also that there is a bias towards Australia and New Zealand in that our venture will focus on these regions first, even though in a global sense some of these cities might not make the cut. Also there are a few cities in India and China that we have on the list because their populations are just so huge, that if they don’t have a great live arts culture now, they are bound to in the future as the growth of a well-heeled middle class proceeds apace in these regions. The GFC has got to end sometime right?

If anyone wants the task of ranking and ordering these cities, by all means, be our guest. We’d love to hear from you! And if we’ve missed a city that you believe simply must be on this list – email it through to me at Fiona@collectzing.com and tell me your reasons.

TOP 100 Cities of the world for live arts

Australia

Sydney

Melbourne

Brisbane

Adelaide

Perth

New Zealand

Auckland

Queenstown

Wellington

Christchurch

Big Global Cities

London -

New York. NY

Paris

Tokyo

US Cities ( scoped on size and creative city ratings)

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Honolulu

Washington D.C.

Boston

San Jose

Minneapolis

Austin, TX

San Diego

Denver

Hartford, CT

Seattle

Miami

Houston

Dallas

Philadelphia

Chicago

Canada

Toronto

Montreal

Vancouver

Ottawa

UK (based on 2007 Theatre Assessment Review – regions indicated – http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/downloads/theatreassessment.pdf)

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Liverpool

Brighton

Birmingham

Manchester

Cambridge

Newcastle

Leeds

Leicester

Europe

Dublin

Marseille (54 theatres listed)

Nice

Lyon

Berlin

Copenhagen

Cannes

Monaco

Rome

Milan

Verona

Naples

Florence

Frankfurt

Hamburg

Essen, Germany

Madrid

Barcelona

Lisbon

Antwerp

Stockholm

Helsinki

Moscow

St Petersburg

Prague

Warsaw

Vienna

Zurich

Amsterdam

South America

Buenos Aires

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Santiago de Chile

Mexico City -

Guadalajara, Mexico

Lima, Peru

Asia

Osaka, Japan

Hong Kong

Shanghai

Singapore

Kuala Lumpur

Mumbai

Calcutta

Chennai

Hyderabad

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Lahore, Pakistan

Beijing

Delhi

Hanoi

Manila

Seoul

Bangkok

Jakarta

Near East/Middle East/Far East

Cairo

Istanbul

Tehran, Iran

Alexandria, Egypt

Total – 100

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