Spark kindles Triangle's creativity

RALEIGH -- In a parking lot hidden behind brick buildings in downtown Raleigh, a slight man with a shaved head walked up to a microphone and spoke to about 100 creative-minded people who gathered for a potluck dinner. For a moment, they could barely hear him over the whistle and chugging of a train pulling out of the station a few blocks away.

"You're in the city, man!" someone shouted at the speaker, designer Aly Khalifa.

The remark spoke not just to the noise of the train, or the sirens, car alarms and music from a nearby restaurant that created the evening's soundscape.

OK, the comment implied. There seem to be the makings of a real urban environment here. It's apparently populated with lots of creative people.

Now what?

That question was the crux of Spark Con, the September event that sought to figure out how to bottle the Capital City's creative energy. And it's still on the table as Khalifa and other organizers plan the second conference. They're not even sure how to define Spark Con.

"The other day, a friend said, 'Spark Con -- what is it?' " Khalifa told the crowd of 2006 participants who gathered for Tuesday night's potluck. "That was pretty sobering because I had absolutely no answer, whatsoever."

Launched from Designbox, the interdisciplinary think-tank collective that hosted the potluck, Spark Con was a three-day event where people brainstormed ideas for Raleigh's creative future and took in the talent of local musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers and others. The concept grew out of discussions about how so many people are moving here, beckoned by the good press the region gets -- why not get everyone together to figure out what the potential is?

"It was an experiment," Khalifa said. "If there was a Spark Con, what would it be? That was the starting point."

The core of visioneers built decentralized networks and used a broad definition of creativity to make connections and identify the goal: to make the Triangle "the creative hub of the South." Khalifa is unbothered that they still can't quite define what they're about and where they're headed. There's time.

And for all that could be off-putting about the concept -- the risk of being self-congratulatory, tediously hip, parochial, boosterish -- the minds behind Spark Con could end up providing the cohesion needed by a city undergoing rapid change.

Enter the vibosphere

The organizers' head count for Spark Con was 2,000 to 3,000 people, including 200 who attended workshops where 60 flip-chart pages of wish lists were compiled. It was the first time that many of the participants -- newcomers, downtown scenesters, traditional arts players and entrepreneurs of various stripes -- had talked to one another.

The wishes, as wishes are supposed to do, cover a lot of ground: Create a "vibosphere" by building up the arts. Welcome everyone's ideas. Introduce artists to techno-geeks. Make the city greener. Get people out of their cars. Find ways to pay for it all.

In the background was Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class," the 2002 book that resonated across the nation in places where people were eager to redefine creativity.

"Creative professionals can be programmers," Khalifa told The News & Observer last month. "They can be people who run shoe stores. They can be a whole variety of things."

This expansionist approach might sound so inclusive that it could become meaningless. But that's the wrong way to look at it, according to Spark Con principal Ty Beddingfield.

In the '90s, Beddingfield and a partner started the popular Five Points hangout The Third Place Coffeehouse, which they sold to a customer three years ago before going into new ventures. For Beddingfield, that meant product design. He says the move followed a revelation that the regulars at his coffee shop were potentially part of a larger community.