by<\/a>\u00a0Devon MacKay<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday, I had coffee with a successful young actor who is relocating from Brooklyn to Winston-Salem at the end of the summer. I asked her why, with no family, school or work in the area, she wanted to make the move. She said that she had never met so many creative people in one place working to advance their community more than their own careers and egos. She also cited the weather (and who could blame her?). For me, her perspective brought into sharper focus what I think we need to remember about our pursuit of being the City of Arts & Innovation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since I moved to Winston-Salem from New Haven, Conn. four years ago, I find myself having the same conversation nearly every time I meet someone new. Due to my work at the arts council, I have a lot of coffee with young professionals and artists interested in being more involved in the community.\u00a0 <\/span>Whether my caffeinated conversation partner is a native or a transplant, we seem always to agree both that there is something special about Winston-Salem that bewitches and grounds us here, and that it still needs this or that one thing that we feel it\u2019s missing. Whether we agree on that \u201csomething\u201d hardly matters. The point, rather, is that so many of us \u2014 regardless of whether we were born here or moved here \u2014 are inspired by and want to be a part of Winston-Salem\u2019s growth. Our belief that it needs us seems to be precisely why we love it so much. You can easily get wrapped up in this town.<\/span>You don\u2019t have to look far to find some great examples of this devotion, like the Winston-Salem native who started a music festival to create the kind of performance opportunity that he and his friends almost left Winston-Salem to find. Consider the painter who, frustrated with the lack of professional opportunities for visual artists in Winston-Salem, recruited artists from his MFA program not only to move here, but to donate half of their online-gallery sales to a new fund that supports emerging visual artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, too frequently behind the well-intentioned ruminations on what Winston-Salem needs, I hear people compare it to other cities like Asheville, Durham, Charleston, Austin \u2014 you know the drill. Too often they point to \u201cthings\u201d that those cities have which we don\u2019t. I admit, I did this a lot, too when I first moved here. And I still insist that we need a good French restaurant with white tablecloths, snooty staff and a wine list filled with obscure, low-alcohol imports. Although this sort of comparison is inevitable, it\u2019s important to remember that craft breweries, fancy tacos, pour-over coffee, food trucks and, yes, even French restaurants per se do not make a community creative. They certainly signal to residents and visitors alike that Winston-Salem is a cool, fun town, but we should not conflate what we think is cool with what is creative. To me, the real potential of places like Small Batch and Hoots derives not simply from the selling of beer, but from serving as a place for eclectic, interesting people to gather and connect through ideas.<\/span><\/p>

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