C.S. Lewis had it.

Hemingway had it.

Jack Kerouac had it.

So did Henry David Thoreau, Robert Penn Warren, Langston Hughes, St. Peter, U2, Nora Ephron, Sofia Coppola and countless other Creatives, past and present.

Heck, even Randy Elrod has it.

So what is it?

Community.

But not community in the general sense.

An intentional, intimate community of Creatives.

This post emerged from a side comment I made over breakfast with Randy a few weeks back.  Randy was sharing about “The Campus” in Franklin, Tennessee, which is a close-knit community of Creatives that eat, share and collaborate together.

As Randy described The Campus, I interjected that many of the greatest artists and artistic “schools” in Art, Literature, Music, etc. grew out of small communities.

In Randy’s romping grounds, a small group of Vanderbilt poets, called the Fugitives, led a Southern literary renaissance and changed the way literature is critically assessed.

C.S. Lewis was part of an Oxford community called The Inklings, which included J.R.R. Tolkien.

Thoreau attended a group that went by the name “Hedge’s Club” in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Along with intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson, they became known as the Transcendentalists, and laid a strong foundation for the emergence of a truly American voice in Literature.

Hemingway, through his mentor Gertrude Stein, joined American expatriates in the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris, from which the leading voices of the Lost Generation emerged.  Picasso also emerged from this community.

As you do your homework, you quickly learn that nearly all great Creatives belong to a small community of artists, intellectuals and leaders.

Writer/director Nora Ephron (a la When Harry Met Sally… and You’ve Got Mail), belonged to a New York City community of Creatives led by agent, Sam Cohn.

U2 emerged from a Dublin avant-garde community called Lypton Village.

Dada, one of the 20^th century’s most influential art movements started as a small community in Zürich’s Cabaret Voltaire.

And this idea of community extends beyond Art.

In my hometown of Dalton, Georgia, a handful of men, all friends, built the carpet empire that put the town on the map.

A group of guys, dubbed the PayPal mafia, were behind an extraordinary list of web technologies and innovations.

Some of the most popular bloggers grew out of a small alliance of bloggers that helped each other earn links and subscribers.  Look at what Brian Clark has done with Copyblogger.

Even Jesus built the Church through a small community, right?

Let’s look at what community offers you and I as Creatives:

1. Identity: It gives us a sense of belonging.  In addition, it gives us direction, purpose and values.

2. Collaboration: It gives us people to push and challenge us.  It also gives us people off which we can bounce our ideas.

3. Competition: It gives us momentum and pressure to contribute and innovate.

4. Credibility: It gives us what’s also known as social proof.  In other words, it shows others that what we’re doing matters, because they see the interest, comments and support of our community.  Plus, it influences them to want to join us.

5. Courage: It gives us the strength to withstand criticism and attack. More importantly, it gives us a support system that understands what we’re trying to do, as we explore and experiment.

As you study creative communities, you will learn that, just like the individuals within the community, no two are exactly alike.

Some are formal and structured.  Others are informal and ad hoc.

Let’s face it, we can’t all move to Franklin and join The Campus!

And we shouldn’t.

The world needs us to create communities where we are.  To scatter seeds.  To discover new “schools” and voices and sonic landscapes for others to explore.

And just as Creatives within a small community benefit from each other, small communities can benefit from other small communities in exactly the same way. Just Google “Six Poets at Six Gallery” to see what happened when a small East coast community of writers met a small West coast community.

I’ve sprinkled a lot of links throughout this post so you can learn more about some of the many creative communities that have existed.

I’m very interested in what’s going through your mind right now!  So let’s talk…

Are you part of a small community of Creatives?

If so, how has this changed and challenged you?

If not, how are you going to cultivate one?

What questions do you have for Randy and The Campus on creating a creative community?

Keith Jennings is a professional writer and emerging poet based in Atlanta, Georgia.  His blog, Keitharsis, teaches readers ways to deliberately cultivate depth & imagination in everyday life.  Connect with him at www.keithjennings.com and on Twitter at @keithjennings.

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