Scene Not Heard

Dan Brown asks the question I left open in a previous post:

Does London have a blogging scene? Are all the local bloggers, as different as they are from one another, part of a scene? 

Is it a scene like Athens, Ga. was a music scene back in the 1980s? Or Paris was a writing scene in the 1920s? Or Mos Eisley was a scene for star pilots back in Episode IV?

I’m hoping lots of people will take up the affirmative and argue “yes,” but for now I’m going to say no – No, there is no “scene” here and I’m more than a little skeptical of there being one any time soon. 

A group, yes, but a scene, no… a community, maybe…

There are certain features that every scene has:

• promiscuous creative and conceptual cross-breeding, bandmate-swapping, co-editing, influence-sharing, idea stealing, etc 
• or, maybe “in-breeding” is more apt: scenes tend to be socially exclusive
• and come to think of it, the most creatively fertile scenes don’t lack for the physical kind of cross-breeding either
• a style, an identifiable look, or at least some distinguishing aesthetic feature, logo, typeface, palette, vernacular, idiosyncra…
• a place where it all happens, where everyone automatically gravitates to (think CBGB’s)
• a representative publication that everyone assumes everyone else reads every word of, and where anyone goes when they want to make sure their work gets noticed and talked about too
• a shared set of principles and values, that at least some people are able to speak somewhat articulately on
• rebellion, something to react against, a villain; or more broadly, belligerence (this relates to social exclusivity)
• exuberance, passion, zest, initiative — disciplined drive combined with and unadulterated joy
• something innovative, something unexpected that hasn’t happened anywhere else yet — at least not in quite the same way
• the source of that unexpected characteristic is often, itself, coming from an unexpected direction
• and it all has to be 99% unintentional; you can’t design a scene: they emerge kind of naturally and accidentally as people simply explore the boundaries of what they’re good at and what they love; if a community combines the proper amounts of diversity and uniformity, gets cooked at the right temperature for the right amount of time, you’ve got yourself a scene…

Now turning back to London specifically: scene or no scene, who wouldn’t want to be part of one? Nobody I’d want to associate with. ;)

Related Posts:

• Community is Here Today
• Social Media, Structure, and the Creative Cycle
• Our Web and the Will to Believe
• Another Look at LDNbeta
• Reiterating the Focus in London

Tagged as: collectives, community, creative scenes, creativity, scenes, social media, social scenes