Last week, Interactive Architecture ran an article about the Singing-Ringing Tree sculpture in Burnley, Lancashire, UK. The video resonated very much with some of my recent thinking on how public art that is part of the commons can be at the heart of community economic development.
First of all, it reminded me of an interview of Douglas Rushkoff about his latest book Life Inc where he tells the story of how Middle Age cathedrals were built:
The Vatican and central Rome did NOT build the cathedrals. The funds came from local currency. They were what we would now call “demurrage” currencies that were earned into existence. Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with! They started investing in their infrastructure and their windmills and their water wheels; and also in their future in the form of cathedrals and other tourist attractions.
The second thought I have had recently is that a currency is a unit of contribution to a common goal, and it is this common goal that gives the value to the currency, because the common goal provides a social incentive for everyone to participate in their own way, some by contributing directly to the common goal and being issued currency, others by contributing indirectly to the goal by accepting it for goods/services. In my view, individuals’ common goals or common individual goals are what initially create community, more than anything else.
A public art piece like the Singin-Ringing Tree is such a common goal. It creates long-term value for local businesses like the cathedrals of the middle-age. It creates identity and pride for the local population. It also create jobs.
One approach to funding art is to seek grants from tax-funded government development agencies, but this approach can be viewed as quite inefficient since it requires tax collection, projects competing for funding with other projects, and a hierarchical and highly centralized decision making process.
Another approach could be to use a community currency dedicated to the particular art project. It would work like this:
- The art project would issue acknowledgments for in-kind or monetary donations made to the project. Issuance would be made public.
- Businesses could show their support by accepting some of these acknowledgments for partial payment of goods/services they provide.
- The notes, if printed in paper, could bear an artist rendering of the public art piece to be built.
- After it is built, the public art piece would likely attract tourists to whom the notes could be sold as a “piece” of the art piece, likely for many times the face value in dollar, since originals would be in limited supplies. This would provide a natural way for the currency to disappear from circulation, and be replaced by new ones for new projects.
Great reminders – and insight!
Cathedrals were financed by way of patronage, by the privilege few. To bolster social status, in the case of the bourgeois, or to mark and glorify their allegiance to the church, from which they derived their legitimacy, in the case of kings.
When municipal authorities were involved, it was in fact assemblies of the wealthiest bourgeois, whose sin of hubris is measured by the grandeur of the cathedrals that were built under their orders, by the countless commoners, when they did not reduce their treasury to bankruptcy, throwing the masses into famine.
Thank you @cityislander. Would love if you could point me to some historical resources. I don't think that @rushkoff underappreciates the hubris factor. I think he points to the fact that the sort of money that was accumulated back then by merchants had to be spent anyhow, so they'd rather spend it on building reputation by investing it in having their name associated with the construction of the cathedral.
Right on Guillaume. This also reminds me of J. S. Boggs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
Thank you Eric for the link.
Do I have to find you are reference to convince you that the commoners had absolutely no say in deciding to build what? Here's one: the word commoner itself.
I don't have to be convinced of that, no. Rather, I'm interested in any historical accounts of the funding process. How money was raised? what was offered in exchange (redemption, vanity nameplate, etc.)? how in-kind versus monetary donations were accounted for? what was the role of financial intermediaries? whether the type of money used influence these behaviors? what impact the contribution had on the contributor's business? etc.
I'm afraid I can't help with these questions in much detail. I can only share my opinion that “Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with” sounds misleading, if one sides with the common view that that ignorance, superstition and fear ruled the lives of commoners, and that erecting cathedrals was a matter of reputation for and an instrument of control by a handful of kings and noblemen or would-be noblemen such as the mercantile class (I guess in the later stages of the middle ages).
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the emerging of community currency briought many things inti light of discussions , things where clasical economists were unable and did not have enough courage to discuss at all , the theory of money which emerges from the theory of Value ( it will be shoking for all of you to say that the science of economy did not developed a theory for value till this moment ) , first paper money issued in the world was by th emongols of China ( because they did not have enogh gold to support their economy and army ), this paper money was also a local money versus the golden global money at that time , or it can be said it was complementary money , Gold was money before till paper printed money appeared , now many people are sceptic ( as they were before ) that community currency can work activly ( in fact many affraid that it willwork activly ,the governments ) , we can show that the paper money and the economic system related are made by human but it enslaved human itself , the same thing that happenned with the humans at the times of Profet Ibraham were they created idoles and stone gods and became slaves to those immaginations that they had , we are living in the same rythem and stage , destroying the dominations of money control upon our life and system will free us ( the truth will free you ,as Jusus chrise said ) , abstract truth is relatd to reality as you see just as mathematics ( abstract ) is working theough physical word , Like in new testement was said : and from the old world will emerge the new world ( a new system that set humans free instead the system that enslave them now ) , God bless us all
the emerging of community currency briought many things inti light of discussions , things where clasical economists were unable and did not have enough courage to discuss at all , the theory of money which emerges from the theory of Value ( it will be shoking for all of you to say that the science of economy did not developed a theory for value till this moment ) , first paper money issued in the world was by th emongols of China ( because they did not have enogh gold to support their economy and army ), this paper money was also a local money versus the golden global money at that time , or it can be said it was complementary money , Gold was money before till paper printed money appeared , now many people are sceptic ( as they were before ) that community currency can work activly ( in fact many affraid that it willwork activly ,the governments ) , we can show that the paper money and the economic system related are made by human but it enslaved human itself , the same thing that happenned with the humans at the times of Profet Ibraham were they created idoles and stone gods and became slaves to those immaginations that they had , we are living in the same rythem and stage , destroying the dominations of money control upon our life and system will free us ( the truth will free you ,as Jusus chrise said ) , abstract truth is relatd to reality as you see just as mathematics ( abstract ) is working theough physical word , Like in new testement was said : and from the old world will emerge the new world ( a new system that set humans free instead the system that enslave them now ) , God bless us all
the emerging of community currency brought many things into light of discussionsnowdays , things where classical economists were unable and did not have enough courage to discuss at all , the theory of money which emerges from the theory of Value ( it will be shocking for all of you to say that the science of economy did not developed a theory for value till this moment ) , first paper money issued in the world was by the Mongols of China ( because they did not have enough gold to support their economy and army ), this paper money was also a local money versus the golden global money at that time , or it can be said it was complementary money , Gold was money before till paper printed money appeared , now many people are skeptic ( as they were before ) that community currency can work actively ( in fact many afraid that it will work actively ,the governments ) , we can show that the paper money and the economic system related are made by human but it enslaved human itself , the same thing that happened with the humans at the times of Profit Ibrahim were they created idols and stone gods and became slaves to those imaginations that they had , we are living in the same rhythm and stage , destroying the dominations of money control upon our life and system will free us ( the truth will free you ,as Jesus Christ said ) , abstract truth is related to reality as you see just as mathematics ( abstract ) is working through physical word , Like in new testament was said : and from the old world will emerge the new world ( a new system that set humans free instead the system that enslave them now ) , God bless us all
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Just come across your comments on the Singing Ringing Tree. The whole Panopicons project (there were 3 other pieces of major public art) had regeneration at its heart. There are three other films about Halo, Colourfields and Atom – the other Panopticons – all in North East Lancashire, England.