Creativity and the city
Photography Maddalena Vatti
under lockdown, many creatives can work from wherever they choose. but for those just starting out, the lure of the big city is hard to shake
By Vona Roberta
For many young creatives, the appeal of the big city runs deep – that desire to never miss a beat, to be in the company of millions even when you’re alone. But most importantly, city living feels like a prerequisite for building a career in any creative profession.
“Cities provide the critical mass to support an activity. You need enough people to form a theatre company, or to fill the seats,” Andy Pratt, a professor of cultural economy at London’s City University, said in a 2017 interview with the British Council. “Artists need the challenge and stimulation of this diversity to produce new ideas and creative solutions.”
If my countless assistant jobs and internships in the mid-2010s taught me anything, it was that useful connections – the ones that lead to real work – are built at production lunches and post-shoot coffees; in the smoking sections of company HQs. But in forcing many of us to work from home, and restricting communing to the internet, the coronavirus pandemic has turned this aspect of work upside down.
These new circumstances have made me think about all of the young creatives and new graduates building their careers during a grim summer of redundancies, cancelled internships and dire job prospects. As lockdown continues and officer remain shut, many are questioning the time-honoured assumption that one needs to live in crowded, expensive hotspots like London and New York to make it in creative professions.
“As more companies adopt working from home, more people are moving out of town. Affordable and low-tax cities like Jacksonville and Memphis are likely to win against New York and San Francisco. No longer does where you live decide where you work,” said Alberto Brea, chief growth strategist at advertising and marketing agency DiMassimo Goldstein. “Some might argue that Florida is not New York (but) it really does not matter when everyone is in lockdown.”
It’s a tempting proposition. Contrary to what pop culture would have you believe, it is possible to have a thriving career outside of so-called cultural capitals. In the UK, a Creative Industries Council report estimates that 75% of creative jobs are based outside of London.
And besides, big city living is expensive. According to crowdsourced cost-of-living calculator Numbeo, you’d have to budget at least £1,500 per month to live in London – assuming you have several roommates, live outside the city centre, barely eat out, follow a strict budget and travel every day. By comparison, living in Birmingham under the same conditions would cost £950. And why restrict yourself to the UK? A quick glance at Lisbon’s Numbeo page indicates that a creative currently living here needs just under £900 a month to live well (and they might bump into shoe designer Christian Louboutin, who owns a home in the city.)
“I’m from London, but recently moved to Longford to explore my horizons and live in the countryside. By living in a smaller city, you focus more on the work and its level of quality rather than worry about rent and competition,” says actor and writer Tim Sanmi, who moved to the town near Dublin before the pandemic. “I will admit that it has been a lot of trial and error since I got here and more so during the lockdown.”
However, not everyone is swayed. “Being in London meant that I was suddenly part of a diverse and extensive creative scene that, otherwise, I wouldn’t have access to. Looking at where I started with unpaid work and paying for projects out of my pocket, to where I am now, with paid gigs and an irreplaceable network, has made it worthwhile,” says London-based German fashion photographer Ina Moana.
“Personally, I think it's worth it if you make moving to a big city for creative opportunities work for you by planning ahead, completing projects, networking, interning, building a good portfolio for the time that you know you can afford to be there.”
For Hampshire-based stylist Maarya Kazmi, spending weeks confined to her hometown has only strengthened her desire to relocate to a big city. “The pandemic just made it more obvious to me that I really need to move to London for my career as that’s where all the opportunities are,” she says.
I’m reminded of author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who in his bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, points out that anticipating black swans (rare events) is beyond us. In professions that exist purely in hope of black swans – styling, producing, acting and design – exposure to as many random places and people as possible could seem like a statistically sound strategy.
Of course, for newcomers like Kazmi, the post-pandemic job market will call for unorthodox strategies. A recent Financial Times article noted that there are 66% less graduate vacancies in the UK compared to last year, according to estimates from Graduate Coach, a coaching firm. In the New York Times, it is noted that in the US, about 42% of jobs lost recently would not come back.
As the higher ups in the industry tune in to social media for recruiting talent or even looking for opportunities as the pool of campaign work dries up, we are seeing a burst of networking opportunities. “I've found people are a lot more intentional with their outreach and responses are more genuine. Now that everyone is getting more comfortable with remote work, graduates who are not living in big cities can benefit from this new method of interaction. I really believe that this will set a precedent for remote work in the UK, and we will start to hear voices and ideas that aren't so London-centric,” said Diane Mensah, founder of Work in Progress, a platform that connects graduates with career coaches.
What remote working takes away is the opportunity of coincidences and makes space for more intentional dialogue. For example, as a result of increased online engagement, on LinkedIn, there has been a shift from random connection requests to ones with notes and mentions of common interests attached. This signals that it’s a good time for early career creatives to make introductions to people who’d normally be on a flight or at a gallery. Now that even Ivy League schools have turned to hold their degree classes online, massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera and EdX are turning into an increasingly respected mode of upskilling. For young people, online learning would indicate a great deal of enthusiasm to future recruiters. (I once got an interview just by mentioning the course I took in a new subject without any formal training in that sphere whatsoever).
Coronavirus gave us the push to upgrade our tech acumen and question how much travel or luxury we need. A byproduct is that things will change in how we approached the hustle, what worked before might not necessarily work after this.