Theresa Cameron

Cultural Districts and Communities: Catalysts for Change

Posted by Theresa Cameron, Feb 06, 2015 0 comments


Theresa Cameron

This week’s blog salon on Cultural Districts and Communities: Catalysts for Change explored how cultural districts are improving, engaging, and sometimes changing their communities. Kicking off the salon, I introduced our new tool - the National Cultural Districts Exchange, which is a suite of online tools and resources to provide research and information about cultural districts. This new resource is meant to be an exchange of ideas, information, and resources - and this blog salon supplemented this new tool with great viewpoints and unique perspectives on cultural districts.

Rebecca Chan’s post discussed how cultural districts are one of the major drivers of change for the communities they serve. She writes,

“It is our job as the activators and administrators of these cultural districts to use designation (whether formal or informal!) as a platform through which to incorporate artistic expression and culture heritage into larger community initiatives; and cultural district managers must constantly assess, re-assess, and refine their cultural district mechanism, whatever form that might take, to ensure it is serving the various communities within its prescribed geography.”

Mayor Jim Brainard’s post told how the development of a cultural district for this suburban community was very important to him as Mayor. He wanted his constituents to experience the arts locally, so he created a City Center for his residents that improved quality of life and helped Carmel achieve the status as one the Best Cities in America.

Looking outside the United States, we had the opportunity to learn about a unique cultural district in France visited by Tom Borrup, “a cluster of 8 small neighborhoods that formed a fascinating and alluring heritage and creative district with an approach I hadn’t seen in the United States.” Tom’s post got me thinking about what cultural districts might look like in the future here in the U.S. Could this model of community development and involvement through resident cooperatives happen? What do you think?

This blog salon only touched on a small part of this world of cultural districts. I Hope that through Americans for the Arts National Cultural Districts Exchange we can continue these conversations and exchanges, and continue to strengthen and grow our cultural districts.

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