Michael T. Martin

This weekend is Prospect 1.5 openings for the St. Claude Arts District. While I’m excited to go see innovative art, personal artist studios, strange performance and go to all the good parties, I’m most excited about the research I’m going to do afterward. I’m going to go around to a sampling of businesses in the neighborhood and survey them on their sales volume comparing this weekend and other, non-event weekends. I’m still trying to formulate a scientific methodology but if that doesn’t develop, at the very least I can have some raw data that will indicate the economic impact of what the art events this weekend had on the local economy.

While more traditional economic development strategies are succeeding and failing at a regular rate, arts as economic development is a relatively recent trend. Ann Markusen is the foremost scholar on the subject and next week, in addition to my survey, I’ll be doing a study on ways that visual artists and musicians in New Orleans can leverage their assets to assure a stable and living wage. Basically, I’m going to attempt to lay out the foundation for a working class artist that isn’t dependent on the service industry for rent. 

There are many avenues to explore with this research and many galleries to see this weekend. I hope the two end up intersecting quite a bit. Also, a quick plug for the event that I’ve been organizing:

New Orleans Open Studios - 21 artists are opening their private space for public, self-guided tours. Saturday, November 13th and Sunday November 14th, noon-6pm. The kickoff party is tomorrow night, November 12th at 7pm, 1940 St. Claude Ave. There will be outdoor installations, a cadre of artists, and what ever else you might expect from a 21st century art happening.