Nora Robertson

When I started the New Oregon Interview Series in 2009, formal discussion of the local creative culture was in decline.  My editor Tiffany Lee Brown had been a panelist in Vera Katz’ 2001 talks on Richard Florida’s ideas about the creative economy.  In the meantime, a major recession had made a lot of creative economy theory seem irrelevant.  A more intimate approach that let the artists speak about their experience of the cultural space seemed more relevant.  It was also more in touch with a new form of entertainment: the evening of conversation.  A mostly spontaneous discussion between a moderator and participants in a casual space like a bar or restaurant, the evening of conversation is more lively because it reverses some of the traditional power dynamics of public speaking.  It’s a real conversation, and promises something any fertile civic culture needs—a public forum.  Writer Matthew Stadler told me in an interview for the New Oregon series that “public space is an action, it’s not a piazza.  It’s a set of actions that give strangers common ground.”

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