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ARTS AT THE CENTER OF REVITALIZATION
ARTPLACE | In an unprecedented private-public collaboration, 11 of America’s top foundations have joined with the National Endowment for the Arts and seven federal agencies to establish ArtPlace, a nationwide initiative to drive revitalization in cities and towns with a new investment model that puts the arts at the center of economic development. ArtPlace today announced its first round of grants, investing $11.5 million in 34 locally initiated projects. In San Francisco, CA, Artplace funding was granted to Intersection for the Arts and the 5M Project.
Real estate developer Forest City is partnering with the organization Intersection for the Arts to redevelop four downtown acres that include the old San Francisco Chronicle building, empty parking lots and vacant warehouses. These partners have already begun converting the properties into a profitable hive of film and digital-media businesses, artists’ workshops, social-entrepreneur offices and cultural event space.
Each project supported by ArtPlace has been selected for developing a new model of helping towns and cities thrive, by strategically integrating artists and arts organizations into key local efforts in transportation, housing, community development, job creation and more.
The approach being taken by ArtPlace, known as “creative placemaking,” has emerged over the past twenty years as a promising way to increase the vitality of communities and help them grow. In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts built on its two decades of work in creative placemaking by announcing the first grants in its new Our Town program, designed to support public-private partnerships to strengthen the arts while energizing the overall community. ArtPlace takes this movement a step further, as the first major public-private partnership to encourage creative placemaking across America. Read more here...