This paper explores the rapid development of a creative class in Jordan over the 2010s. During this period, Jordan’s creative sector grew rapidly in scale and influence, partly due to the high profile of art and artists in the 2011 Arab Uprisings, partly due to the rapid growth of international funding through programs of cultural diplomacy, as Jordan became a hub of international response to the Syrian crisis, and partly due to shifting municipal strategies in Amman, with municipal leaders increasingly pursuing “creative city” strategies of investing in the arts in order to drive gentrification and wider development. One impact of this was that a small set of creative professionals in managerial and curatorial positions acquired significant prestige and influence over this time. A second impact, however is that for a much larger group of class aspirational youth, art’s close ties to gentrification, aid employment, and other markers of class mobility, positioned the arts as an important source of prestige and cultural capital, central to emerging class identities. Due to the history of creative sector development in Jordan and internationally, the figure of the artist indexed not only creativity, but also entrepreneurial subjectivity and branding, liberal political attitudes, and a set of cosmopolitan practices. As aspirational youth learned and demonstrated artistic dispositions as part of an emergent class identity, they shaped wider social change and urban transformation.