MetLife Foundation Innovative Space Awards (last chance!)
Deadline: April 23, 2010

The MetLife Foundation Innovative Space Awards (ISA) program recognizes, rewards, and promotes successful artist space development projects that exhibit innovation, affordability for artists, sustainability, and community impact.The program emphasizes the role affordable artist space projects play in community revitalization and socially progressive community development, and will increase awareness of replicable, sustainable approaches and models. In 2009 awards ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 to provided support for six winning projects. The ISAs currently have an open call for entries to apply for the second and final cycle of awards.

National Endowment for the Arts: Challenge America Fast-Track
Deadline: May 27, 2010

The Challenge America Fast-Track category offers support primarily to small and midsized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved populations—those whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. This category, as an essential component of the National Endowment for the Art”s goal of providing wide access to artistic excellence, supports local projects that can have significant effects within communities. Grants are available for professional arts programming and for projects that emphasize the potential of the arts in community development.

Ford Foundation Space for Change Planning and Pre-Development Grants
Deadline: May 28, 2010

LINC, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, announces an open call for proposals to the Ford Foundation Space for Change Planning and Pre-Development Grant program. Non-profit arts organizations with strong track records of artistic excellence, who are intending to buy, build, renovate, partner in the development of, or become anchor tenants in a vibrant artist space can apply for up to $100,000 in support of a facility project.

National Endowment for the Arts: Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth
Deadline: June 10, 2010

The National Endowment for the Arts’ Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth category offers funding for projects that help children and youth acquire knowledge and understanding of and skills in the arts. Projects must provide participatory learning and engage students with skilled artists, teachers, and excellent art. All proposed projects must provide the chance for students to experience exemplary works of art (e.g., live performances); to study works of art in order to understand their cultural and social contexts and to appreciate their technical and/or aesthetic qualities; and to create artwork. Projects must also provide for the assessment of students according to national or state arts education standards.

Photo: Courtesy of whizchickenonabun

Image: Cirque de Soleil, Associated Press

Climate: As we face economic development challenges, now more than ever, public support for culture is expanding to reflect the deep interdependence of arts & entertainment (from professional to amateur), local business, built environment and everyday neighborhood culture. In his February 16 article, Is this any time to increase arts funding?, David Brewster reflects on this current climate:

In his 2008 book, How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, [Obama adviser and former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Bill Ivey] argues for shifting funding from major institutions to the “expressive life” of communities and the more indigenous American cultural forms. This is dramatic stuff, for it would mean less emphasis on fine-arts institutions such as museums and more on getting money to where culture actually happens. Here’s how Andras Szanto puts it in a fascinating article in The Art Newspaper:

“Ivey is hardly alone in pushing beyond traditional notions of high culture. He represents a new school of arts-policy thinking that places value on hitherto underappreciated, amateur, community-based, digitally-mediated, often commercial arts—the kind of creative pursuits, in short, which most Americans enjoy. This broadening of perspective would constitute the biggest shift in policy since the implementation of large-scale cultural support in the post-war era.”

While I don’t think community arts and major institutions should be placed at odds (in fact they feed each other), CODAC has been driven by this same tide of interest in finding new ways to support America’s many cultures on their own terms. Through CODAC, Seattle is looking for ways to support physical space for the fluid, everyday, community-based arts that have driven the character of neighborhoods like Central Area, Georgetown and Capitol Hill.

What: CODAC is an advisory committee created by Seattle City Council with the lead sponsorship of Councilmembers Nick Licata and Sally Clark. Council created CODAC in response to a series of events establishing growing consensus that new land use planning and policy tools can help neighborhoods successfully retain and develop beloved local cultural amenities. (Watch a film of the culminating rally / special meeting of City Council and read the Seattle Times article leading for it.)

Why: Cultural Overlay Districts can help the city achieve its economic development, social services, & smart growth goals. We all value places of assembly. Places to hang out, express, organize and define ourselves. Increasingly, business owners, developers, property/land owners recognize the value of these places while Cities recognize their multiple public benefits. At the same time, these places are coming under considerable pressure related to rising property values.

Culturally relevant community spaces are a critical ingredient in successful urban density. Cultural infrastructure, affordable housing, open space and social services, are all key strategies that help mitigate the impacts of gentrification on existing residents in our urban neighborhoods. Through projects like Living Cities, an urban development funding partnership established by 19 of the world’s largest foundations, and the “Sustainable Communities Initiative,” a joint project of the federal HUD and DOT that has set a goal of seeing “every major metropolitan area in the country conduct integrated housing, transportation, and land use planning and investment in the next four years,” we are seeing that districts are increasingly recognized as a particularly effective scale for coordinated community infrastructure development and revitalization.

The CODAC’s district-based regulatory, zoning and financing recommendations can be a model for local governments throughout our region who are increasingly looking to cultural spaces to serve as critical anchors in their own sustainable economic development and land use planning. CODAC proposes innovations that systemically account for the value the creative industries drive in neighborhoods, giving cultural infrastructure advocates an empowered seat at the table of regional planning and development.

Outcome: There are many ways to support local culture at a policy level that should continue to be pursued. CODAC’s mandate is specifically to look at creating a program available to any neighborhood during the neighborhood planning process. The program would allow establishing a district in your neighborhood to incentivize and concentrate attractive amenities of the neighborhood’s choosing. On Capitol Hill, for example, it could mean placing an arts & entertainment overlay district on Broadway to lead revitalization and meet the community’s demands for maintaining Capitol Hill’s legacy as an accessible place for fringe arts & entertainment.

The CODAC’s proposal includes the formation of cultural districts, the expansion of incentive zoning to encompass cultural uses, and the creation of a city position to facilitate cultural development. Seattle is a national leader in this work.

Currently: CODAC is charged with making recommendations to the City in April 2009 that will be the basis of legislation.

Challenges & Opportunities: What is the niche / value-added of the CODAC project to other existing policies and organizing? How will this fit with the neighborhood planning process? There’s so much action and planning surrounding light rail station areas…

How can we grow the capacity to ensure these new CODAC tools can be put to use right away?

What challenges and opportunities do you see?