Okay people. calm down...
All the spin over a report from The Atlantic Cities naming HatCity as the 6th best city in the United States for the Arts is about as misleading as Mayor Boughton outlandish "Danbury Triple A Bond Rating" claim.
I'll let the breakdown of the report from The Atlantic speak for itself.
But which U.S. cities and metros have the most extensive artistic communities?
With the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Kevin Stolarick, I used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to rank the leading metros for both their numbers of artists and their concentration relative to their population. We used the data on "artists and related workers," which covers both employed and self-employed visual artists in the United States. There are about 237,000 such artists across the U.S., of which roughly 210,000 are located in cities and metro areas.
The list of the top metros with the largest number of artists largely follows population size, as you would expect. New York comes in first, followed by Los Angeles, with Chicago in third place, San Francisco in fourth and Seattle fifth. Atlanta, greater Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Orange County, California and Dallas, Texas round out the top ten. Even with all the hub-bub of Art Basel, Miami ranks just 28th on this metric.
Now, the important part...
But we wanted to examine which metros have the largest concentration of artists relative to their population. We use a measure called a "location quotient," or LQ, which is basically a ratio that compares a region’s share of artists to the national share of artists. An LQ of one implies that its regional share equals the national average; less than one is less than the national average and greater than one is more than the national average. An LQ of two, for example, means a region has twice the national average of artists.
Based on the location quotient ratio, Danbury ranks six with a LQ rating of 2.460. In other words, Danbury ranks six in terms of the number of artists versus the national average...which is a FAR CRY from Danbury being the 6th best city in the United States for the Arts
That being said, Danbury has a great musical and artistic following. I strongly encourage everyone to bookmark Amanda Bloom's Danbury-based arts, news, and entertainment website "The Mercurial" for everything artistic in Danbury!
SHAMELESS PLUG UPDATE: As a HUGE fan of the music scene in the area, if you're looking for a sample of Danbury's best musical talent, then make sure to attend the legendary Monday night open mic jam at Tuxedo Junction (formerly located at the 1Bar). As a preview of what you can expect on any given Monday night, from a previous open mic jam, here's my video of local area talent Jon Chapman singing Bob Dylan's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You."
i am error, 1:33 PM
On September 26, 2007, ten plaintiffs filed suit in response to an arrest of aday laborers at a public park in Danbury, Connecticut. Plaintiffs amended their complaint on November 26, 2007.
the sheer amount of creative talent in this small city has always been shocking to me. more shocking is the fact that the city both passively and actively works to marginalize arts in the city (with the lone exception of the film fest, which unfortunately has at its core no real ties to the area or its creative community and seems to be disorganized and mismanaged).