The Creative Class

I am working on a few posts which I will name 'The Psychology of the Creative Class.' The inspiration for these pieces came after I became familiar with Richard Florida's work on the subject. This post will feature a snippet by Florida himself as featured in his 'Globe and Mail' column.

Richard Florida's text:

I recalled those Saturdays recently when I had my hair cut in Toronto. It turned out that the hairdresser, a stylish young man in his late 20s or early 30s, was once a resident of Birmingham, an upscale suburb of Detroit that I knew well because my wife lived there when we met. Without thinking, I said, "My wife used to get her hair done in Birmingham; what salon did you work in?" "I wasn't a hairstylist then, man. I worked for General Motors," he said. "Really?" I said, trying to dig myself out of a hole. "What plant did you work at?" "Plant?" came his reply. "I didn't work in a factory — I'm a mechanical engineer and I worked on new product development."

My jaw dropped. This man had quit a high-paying job in a good company so he could cut people's hair. He had left the creative class because it wasn't creative enough for him and had gone into a service industry to express his creativity.