By Camron Bridgford, JVA Consulting
At JVA, we appreciate turning conventional thinking on its head. As activators of community and social change, we love being able to look at an age-old problem or perceived barrier and finding a new, innovative way to turn lemons into lemonade.
An age-old problem for the arts and culture sector is its frequent reputation for funders as the “special project” to support—an area of philanthropic interest that is a siloed, transient investment with short-term impact that only turns into the next arts and culture institution reaching out its hand for a check. There are more important things to support out there, right? People are homeless, need health care, and have to put food on the table. Why should any foundation provide dire funds to support art?
I’ll tell you why. This week, Bonfils Stanton Foundation, Denver Arts and Venues, Colorado Creative Industries, and the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs hosted Jamie Bennett, the executive director of ArtPlace America, to talk about the importance of and current momentum in advancing creative placemaking across the United States. Instead of seeking to have the same old conversation about the arts, creative placemaking looks to advance an emerging concept that is having communities, funders and individuals looking at the arts in a whole new way.
Rather than just being a project that puts a temporary mural on a city wall, or an exhibit in a museum that is only visited by select people, creative placemaking makes the arts an organizing principle in building a complete community. It also brings the arts into the theory of change for funders, who typically operate off of a formula of input a = change b, which solves problem x.
For instance, take that mural on the city wall. Maybe it was painted in an up-and-coming area of town through a program sponsored by a public school district. Rather than looking at it as a singular creative output, creative placemaking says that mural is a creative input that produces more foot traffic leading to less crime, increased tourism and better commercial sales for businesses on that block; an opportunity to engage and educate at-risk youth and lessen delinquency; and a project that activates community engagement and collaboration among government, K–12 education, youth, residents and tourists.
The arts is the one unilateral asset that can be found in any community, which can help to drive a more stable community and robust economy, increase social cohesion and motivate civic activity. Don’t believe me about the arts as an economic driver? According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the arts and culture sector brings in $504 billion a year to the economy, or about 2.3% GDP. Comparatively, tourism is at 2.8%. The construction sector brings in only slightly more than that. In Colorado, the arts is the fifth largest employment sector in the state.
Its time to recognize the full suite of benefits that come from arts and culture—from the urban murals, to the history exhibit, to the food trucks in Civic Center Park—and to start approaching their contribution as a core sector of community planning and development.
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