Development Challenges and Opportunities

Every city and community present unique challenges to artists space developments (ASD), and on top of that, there are a few barriers and biases that exist across all communities and sectors. Overall, these challenges include a lack of funding for arts production facilities, the broader community’s concerns about gentrification, development capacity, poor communication about what artists have to offer the community, and lack of data about artists’ community impacts. Presented below are the Urban Institute’s findings on development challenges and opportunities.¹ The challenges are first briefly introduced, and then the details of their composition and how they could be more effectively addressed are analyzed.

General Barriers to Artist Space Development

Some of the pervasive, generally held assumptions that can make ASD challenging from community development and urban revitalization policy perspectives are:

Challenge #1: For decades, funding for arts-related space development has primarily focused on arts presentation and consumption institutions rather than on artist-focused organizations or individual artists.²

Challenge #2: Generally, affordable space has not been regarded or articulated as a critical need for artists in the same way that grants or financial support are viewed as a central need.³

Local Barriers to Artist Space Development

Other challenges are purely contextual, depending on the capacity of people and organizations interested in developing artist space and the realities of local real estate economics:

Challenge #3: There is little capacity within the arts community to do artist space developments and engage in the arenas outside of the arts necessary to bring artist space projects to fruition.⁴

Challenge #4: The markets, by virtue of their nature, are dynamic and responsive to larger economic conditions. Artists space can be developed in both bull and bear markets; however, with very different strategies.⁵

Addressing Challenge #1: Shifting Public and Foundational Funding Towards Supporting the Creative Process Government and philanthropic funding is primarily oriented towards supporting the presentation, distribution, and consumption of artistic work, either through capital projects (e.g. museums, concert venues), percent-for-art programs, and/or the planning of culture districts. Emphasis on supporting spaces devoted primarily to artists’ production needs (e.g. live/work or studio space) is a growing movement, albeit needing higher placement within urban revitalization agendas. For example, cultural districts often touted as part of a city’s economic development and community revitalization strategy are most often designed without significant provisions for the artist in mind. In most cases, they primarily offer opportunities for the consumption of art (i.e., galleries, theaters, museums). The same also can be said of most cultural plans, which indicate projected and desired cultural facilities over a number of years. That said, in recent years, with growing interest among policymakers and urban planners in the concepts of creative economy and creative cities, which emphasize the value of concentrations of creative people in one place, there appears to be a greater window of opportunity to integrate artist space developments into urban revitalization agendas.⁶

Addressing Challenge #2: Restating Affordable Space as Fundamental Need Contrary to commonly held assumptions, the clarion call that artists need affordable space was sounded only recently, spurred by the changes in development patterns brought about by the dotcom boom.⁷ Now that it is starting to become a topic of note for national and local arts communities, university research centers, public policy think tanks, and research entities specializing in cultural policy, LINC is addressing this challenge head-on by developing this section of the website, meant to provide an efficient source of verified information. Nevertheless, affordable artist space—particularly for the purpose of production—continues to be a concern for communities across the United States and needs to be made a priority for urban revitalization policy.⁸

Addressing Challenge #3: Increasing Developer Capacity and Promoting What Artists Offer Communities Although large urban areas like Boston, New York, Seattle and Philadelphia, have established precedents for developing artists space, overall there are few people in both the arts and community development fields who have proven ASD track records. This challenge most directly affects the willingness to participate by other organizations instrumental to any development process—namely, lending institutions—but it is also compacted by the technical realities of ASD products, which can be highly complex depending upon the special needs of their chosen artist market.

Developer capacity is greatly improved when artists team with established actors in their existing, local community and economic development systems.⁹ The main challenge here is a generally held assumption amongst the broader community that the presence of artists spurs the displacement effects of gentrification. Community development corporations (CDC) that partner with artists can most past this challenge by establishing good methods for communicating to the general population what artists have to offer communities.¹⁰ For example, the position of CDCs developing artist space for the first time is enabled by an information campaign set forth by the CDC explaining how an artist space development can be beneficial to the community, how artists have a tendency to provide/invest sweat-equity in their projects, etc.

Addressing Challenge #4: Rolling with the Markets Strong markets and weak markets each present challenges and opportunities.¹¹ In strong markets, the demand for land and buildings, particularly in urban centers, raises the value of properties, threatens space affordability and eventual displacement, as well as increases the amount of public subsidy required. However, all things considered, strong markets can present opportunities to artist space developers as the perception of risk to private investors is greatly reduced as prospective cash flow is assumed to be continuous and/or increasing. Weak markets also present opportunities of ASD as soft demand for property and buildings makes them more affordable and lowers the cost of overall development costs. The challenge of weak markets is that it is simply more difficult to borrow money as, in this situation, cash flow risks are higher for investors.

Potential Opportunities for ASDs to Capitalize

Despite these four common challenges to developing artist spaces, a number of other factors are conducive to the development of artists’ spaces, including:

• General favorable disposition towards artists
• Recognition of artists as part of the economic engine
• Successful precedents for artist space
• Artist leaders and a range of institutions experienced in bringing ASDs to fruition
• An organized artist’ community concerned about affordable space

¹ Modified from three Urban Institute reports, referenced below.