My City Lives: Origins
by Adil Dhalla
The origins of Creativity Killed the Recession are humble in that we had no plan beyond bringing creative people together. There was no grand desired output, no concept of a movement; it was a solution that made sense to explore. The exploration evolved into an adventure and we found ourselves submerged in creative culture – at times overwhelmed at the sheer amount of ideas and activities that people were involved with. It has been inspirational to be introduced to the greater creative community and intimately engage with a small subsection within it. The summation of your inspiration challenged us to dream big when considering how we could take the concepts of creativity, community and collaboration and turn it into tangible change.
The manifestation of your collective ideas – My City Lives – is now being created.
The idea stemmed from us putting together what problems we all shared at Creativity Killed the Recession such as the need for economic stimulus, supporting arts and culture, connecting communities and having pride in our city and its institutions. Addressing these things, we determined, would elevate us not only from the recession but towards a level of prosperity that we all believe is possible for our city, our country and perhaps even the global community. My City Lives, therefore, will have its roots in Toronto but its success here can lead to an even greater impact beyond our immediate boundaries.
What determines if it’s successful? By our definition, so long as people are participating in the creation of content, then we can go home happy. The idea is to achieve an unprecedented level of exploration, but it’s only possible with the participation of others who believe that by being involved they are contributing towards ending the recession. We might not achieve exactly this, but the very fact that people are trying and believing is all we can ask. After all, as the late Margaret Mead famously said, “a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Of course, the most important question is: what exactly is My City Lives? I’m going to wait until next week to unveil the answer to that question – not necessarily to build up suspense but rather so we have some time to produce an early demo to compliment our words.