Understanding ASD Impacts: Physical, Social, Economic, Cultural

The arguments made in favor of artists space developments (ASD) need to be grounded in documented impacts, and further substantiated with appropriate precedent examples. The following section presents the three typical arguments in favor of ASDs as found by the Urban Institute, as well as lists of the formally documented impacts ASDs making in the physical, social, economic, and cultural realms.¹

Arguments Supporting ASD Projects

Advocates for ASDs claim and predict positive outcomes in the areas of community economic development and social improvements, viable business ventures, and services to artists, as suggested by the Urban Institute’s research.² These claims are made to a wide variety of people in the art, community development, and municipal governance realms, as well as to individual investors and potential business partners. Each claim comes with its own unique set of challenges and opportunities.³

• Community Economic Development and Social Improvements: Most ASDs are positioned primarily as community economic development and social improvement strategies (for example, “artist spaces may improve the physical environment of a community through the reduction of blight, animation of vacant property, and preservation of historic buildings”). This positioning is largely due to the perception that artists are catalysts for economic development and their presence in a neighborhood will change its character and attract new residents, particularly those with disposable incomes. Accordingly, many community development corporations take the lead in pursuing the creation of ASDs in their neighborhoods. Challenges inherent in this situation include the community’s concerns about gentrification, poor communication about what artists have to offer the community, and lack of data about artists’ community impacts. The physical and programmatic impact of the strategy on the project typically results in multifunction design, including multipurpose community spaces and community arts programming. The real estate development impact typically results in a range of financing sources and a longer-term development process.
• Business Ventures: Some ASDs position themselves as viable business ventures, seeking resources from private investors and commercial lenders (for example, “artist spaces may capitalize on the area’s creative economy”). This positioning is, again, largely due to the perception that artists’ spaces stimulate economic development, in addition to spurring increases in property values, and are profitable real estate ventures. The existence of a new artist space in a community may, for example, create new local job opportunities and increase foot traffic in a neighborhood, thereby stimulating the local economy. Emerging research on creative clusters appears to be somewhat useful in pursuing this strategy and helps investors take the risk. One known challenge of the artist-space-as-business-venture situation is that developers may have a difficulty finding support for their nonprofit subsidiaries, public and private funders may question the “social mindfulness” of the nonprofit. There is no typical physical and programmatic impact, rather the development tends to respond to the market. If this type of ASD is funded solely with private funding, it might open faster.
• Services to Artists: Other ASDs focus on the services they will provide artists, particularly artists who have specific requirements for the production of their work. Advocates for these types of initiatives emphasize that artists are valid professionals with specific business-related needs, placing additional emphasis on the artists’ demonstrated investment of sweat-equity in improving properties. One challenge with this situation is mistakenly posturing of artists as supplicants. The physical and programmatic impact is that the space will reflect the unique needs of the workforce of artists that it serves, in terms of being suitable for the types of artwork made, sharing equipment, and gathering to critique work.

Impacts on Artists and the Broader Community

Regular, formal documentation of impacts or societal contributions is far more persuasive in garnering support than sporadic opinions or “anecdotal” observations. Among gatekeepers of resources for ASDs even informal knowledge of a “successful” ASD is an important precedent for future projects. The Urban Institute found that the claimed and predicted impacts of ASDs were grouped into effecting either artists or the wider community. Documented impacts on the broader community can be categorized into physical, social, economic, and cultural realms. Impacts on artists—the community’s cultural capital—tended to fall within three categories: ASD availability and development infrastructure, artists’ careers and professional development, and artists relationships to the broader community.

Community Physical Impacts:

• Reducing / improving blighted areas
• Beautifying space
• Animating / revitalizing vacant or neglected property
• Providing multipurpose community facilities
• Increasing both pedestrian (considered positive) and automotive traffic (considered less positively)
• Preserving historic buildings
• Contributing to placemaking efforts within communities.

Community Social Impacts:

• Increasing access to arts programs for local residents, and formal and informal opportunities for participating in aspects of local production and consumption
• Increasing availability to multipurpose community amenities
• Diversifying demographics and incomes within a community
• Increasing both youth development and intergenerational interaction opportunities
• Promoting ethnic pride
• Developing artists’ relationships to the broader community
• Demystifying artists and the artistic process
• Increasing recognition of artists as workers and professionals
• Creating or promoting an identity for people and places

Community Economic Impacts:

• Promoting or catalyzing creative clusters and cultural enterprises
• Promoting immigration of artists, and population
• Catalyzing increase in the cost/value of real estate, leading to positive impacts of revitalization and gentrification, and, negatively, displacement
• Diversifying community development strategies
• Increasing role of cultural enterprises and cultural workers regional economies
• Increasing job opportunities (albeit small scale), from space development and programming operations
• Contributing to regional economy because of artists’ high rates of self-employment, direct export activity, cross-sector collaboration, stimulation of innovation
• Creating import-substituting entertainment options for regional consumers

Community Cultural Impacts:

• Increasing access to venues where artists can produce, present, critique, and mentor work
• Increasing artists’ mobilization and activism around affordable space and broader community issues
• Creating artist-developers, advocates, and intermediaries
• Creating and reinforcing artists’ networks, positively impacting artists’ careers and professional development by leading them to better access to information and resources

These impacts do not exist in a vacuum, and the social, economic, and cultural capitals that are created by ASDs are related to each other and can be exchanged and converted to multiply their effects. For example, increased investment within a community can lead to economic regeneration through urban revitalization. Note that claims like ASDs “create spin-off businesses,” or “support tourism destinations,” are still based more in casual evidence, and have not been formally documented yet. For example, it is not yet fully understood what the mechanisms are for developing local, regional, national, or international tourism destinations. It is possible that an ASD created to support infrastructure for a national tourism destination may instead become infrastructure for a local tourism destination.

¹ Except where noted, the information presented in this section comes from the Urban Institute report: Jackson, Maria Rosario, Florence Kabwasa-Green, the Urban Institute, Artist Space Development: Making the Case (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2007).

² Markuseun, Ann and Greg Schrock. “The Artistic Dividend: Urban Artistic Specialization and Economic Development Implications,” Urban Studies, Vol. 43, No. 10 (2006).

³ Ibid.