Creativity

The pictures propped against the mirrors at BLue Hair Studio Friday were not what you'd expect to see in a salon. No severe-cheekboned models; no pages torn from gossip magazines touting the actress with the latest trendy look. Instead, these were paintings and photographs more appropriate to a gallery exhibition: a metallic-orange flower in a gold frame; a translucent photograph of an ethereal figure; a bull in profile against a bold orange background; a pair of watercolor eyes staring out from a night-dark landscape, framed by deep purple sky and water.

In a kids' entertainment world of expensive game systems and disposable plastic toys, there is an alternative: Make something. Play with it. The do-it-yourself trend, which embraces projects in engineering and crafts, dovetails nicely with the perennially popular, mainly girl-driven activity of decorating. Making or redecorating an actual dollhouse in the real, not virtual, world isn't as easy as clicking on colors and furniture; it takes time, creativity, and patience. The reward?

WHILE ERICA Hawthorne's Small But Mighty Grants may look to bolster the little guys in Philly's creative economy, the small guys aren't the only ones on the rise in the city.   A new report compiled by the Econsult Corp. for the city's Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy looks at how many people are employed by the creative sector in Philadelphia. Although previous studies have tallied the number of creative jobs here, this is the first study to look at all jobs — including ostensibly noncreative jobs — involved in the arts in Philadelphia, from dancers to security guards at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The study found that the creative sector is the fourth-highest employment sector in the city — behind only health care, educational services and retail, and is responsible for 48,900 jobs.

With a minimal tax base and Trenton officials threatening to reduce state aid to the city, Camden is getting creative about how it generates revenue — or perhaps simply catching up to what other towns have done for years. City council voted last week to begin charging those who hold events in city parks, whether the applicant is a seasonal sports league or a family hosting a single-day gathering. Camden-based youth organizations will have their field fees waived, but must pay for lighting, bleachers, and other amenities.

Two summers ago, I made a special trip home to Youngstown, Ohio to watch my mom make the only thing that seems to shake my midwinter blues every year: sour cherry jam. When blackened snow flecked with trash lines the curbs and the gray dawns grow tedious, one spoonful of that magnificent jam brings summer back. Put it on toast with a little butter and it tastes like cherry pie. It's easy enough to buy gourmet jams in Philadelphia, but that's not in my nature. I come from the old school.

ARTPLACE, A new national collaborative grant program dedicated to fostering public creative spaces, has awarded $15.4 million in grants to 47 arts organizations around the country. Three of the grants were awarded to Philadelphia organizations — though only one of them is using the money to create a giant hammock.   The humongous recliner is courtesy of the Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, which received $200,000 to kick-start activity on the waterfront through the creation of multiple layers of nets that people can climb on. The project was designed by the Croatian-Austrian design collective Numen/For Use, and the local installation will reside at the Race Street Pier.

WHEN photographer Christine Alix walked into a print room at the University of Pennsylvania last May and saw dozens of prints covering walls and floors in dramatic splashes of color and surrealistic design, she was stunned. There amid the display was Sarah Dekker, the beautiful young woman who had created the work, probably looking humble and a little baffled by her accomplishment, as if to say, "Did I do all this?" "Sarah is so completely humble, but never fails to create diverse bodies of work that are nothing short of stunning," Christine said.

Periodically and cyclically, the economy will stink, even more so for people who are less experienced, educated or trained, the youngest members of the work force. The Depression walloped one generation. The recession, oil shortage, and stagflation whipped mine. Many classmates avoided the job market, or the pronounced lack thereof, by diving into grad school and further debt, which drove them toward more lucrative professional if not necessarily innovative endeavors. As The Inquirer's special report "Struggling for Work" makes clear, these are days of diminishing economic returns for the "millennial generation," adults 18 to 34, entering a challenging and rapidly changing marketplace.

EVAN MALONE had it good. His grandfather, Daniel Malone, an engineer for RCA/GE and later a maker of military systems and parts, had a workshop in his home "with all kinds of deadly stuff I tinkered with as a child. That's where I first caught the engineering bug. " Today, Evan Malone is doing unto others with NextFab Studio, a marvel of a shared workspace and prototyping station loaded with high-tech machinery, insights and enthusiasm. Now celebrating its second anniversary in a ground-floor space at the University City Science Center, NextFab has proven so popular it's about to expand into a second location on the west side of Washington Avenue "five times as big," shared Malone last week.

The man who wrote the music for Cabaret and Chicago , Curtains and Kiss of the Spider Woman , and more than a dozen other shows - to say nothing of "New York, New York " - leaned against the side of an upright piano in a Center City rehearsal room and broke into a smile. "Yes, yes," said John Kander, to the dozen men on folding chairs who had just finished another run-through of the song called "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!," which opens The Scottsboro Boys, a musical about a true travesty of American justice, about racism and anti-Semitism, hatred and hypocrisy, told in the form of a minstrel show put on by blacks with a white "interlocutor," or onstage ringmaster.