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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2009 > October > 03 > Entry
Artists restoring neighborhoods…
Lots of us in the Midwest have long since grown tired of the “Rust Belt” moniker that’s become attached to our region, but I recently heard a use of the term that excited my interest.
A couple of local arts administrators were talking about a conference in Cleveland called “Rust Belt to Artist Belt,” by an organization there called CPAC, the Community Partnership For Arts and Culture.
CPAC’s executive director is somebody well known in Dayton arts circles — Tom Schorgl, the one-time chief of Culture Works who left here about a decade ago to head the Cleveland non-profit. Funded by some heavy-hitting foundations in Northeast Ohio, CPAC’s mission is to build the local arts community by studying the day-to-day needs of individual artists and small- to medium-sized arts organizations, then figure out creative solutions for them. For instance, Schorgl said, CPAC found ways to help provide affordable health insurance for self-employed artists.
“Economic development and recovery are important, and we’ve studied how the economic activity of arts and culture in Northeast Ohio contribute,” Schorgl said. “We help artists and arts and culture organizations improve their business practices, and focus on the artist as entrepreneur.”
Lately, CPAC’s main focus has been working with other agencies to help restore run-down neighborhoods — in particular, Collinwood and Detroit-Shoreway — by helping artists and their families to move into some of the city’s thousands of vacant homes. Turn art-making into community-building? Other cities have done it.
Thus the “Rust Belt to Artist Belt” workshops. The first one was to help bankers, developers, zoning officials and realtors understand “how artists work and what they do, sort of demystify them; what happens when artists move into a neighborhood? What do they need?”
The next session was for artists, to help them approach and work with the sort of people who could help them move into and improve neighborhoods that needed new bloodThe effort has attracted national press attention; a recent Wall Street Journal story praised CPAC and Cleveland’s efforts and pointed at progress.
What can smaller cities, such as Dayton, do?
“Look inward first and don’t rush to copy another community,” Schorgl said. “Assess what you have that is indigenous and strong and build on that. What’s your brand? Appalachian art? Dance? And be sure you’re building partnerships beyond the arts and culture center, into the larger community. Evaluate, and don’t be afraid to fail.
“And remember you have to be in this for the long term; you won’t fix anything in just a few years.”
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