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Artist-Planner Collaborations Lessons Learned from the Arts and Culture Ecosystems of Three Sun Belt Cities for a New Model of Inclusive Planning

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Artist-Planner Collaborations Lessons Learned from the Arts and Culture Ecosystems of Three Sun Belt Cities for a New Model of Inclusive Planning Artist-Planner Collaborations Lessons learned from the arts and culture ecosystems of three Sun Belt cities for a new model of inclusive planning. Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash Building Better Cities Building Better Lives June 2019 Report contributors: Grant Patterson and Leah Binkovitz Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research 6100 Main Street, MS-208, Houston, TX 77005 For more information, contact [email protected] or 713-348-4132. Copyright © 2019 by Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research All rights reserved. Recommended citation: Patterson, Grant and Leah Binkovitz. Artist-Planner Collaborations: Lessons learned from the arts and culture ecosystems of three Sun Belt cities for a new model of inclusive planning. Report. Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University. Houston, TX: Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2019. TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents 2 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 6 Case Studies 8 Emerging Themes 16 Arts and Culture within Complete Communities 18 Employing Artist-Planner Collaboration in Complete Communities 20 Conclusion 22 Citations Artist-Planner Collaborations Lessons learned from the arts and culture ecosystems of three Sun Belt cities for a new model of inclusive planning. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Executive Summary ibrant arts and culture offerings attract visitors from around the region and Vbeyond, provide gathering spaces and encourage social interaction and collective action. Furthermore, they facilitate the celebration of unique places through historic preservation, public art, cultural festivals and other community-rooted creative activities. In Houston and other cities, cultural planners are working to proactively and comprehensively plan for the impact that the arts and culture can have on their cities and neighborhoods, strategize how to promote and expand those impacts and engage with diverse stakeholders to envision the future of arts and culture moving forward. City leaders have an opportunity to critically engage with pendence and ownership, with funding that often comes community-rooted artists and cultural organizations to with particular requirements or waivers. orient arts and culture efforts toward communities’ most pressing issues. Artists should be more than resources for Cultural planning in three peer cities neighborhood promotion, but rather, key stakeholders in This report seeks to understand the state of cultural navigating neighborhood change. While some efforts in the planning in three peer cities—Houston, San Antonio and cities discussed below have begun to move in this direction, Denver. These cities share some key traits. They are expe- there is opportunity to deepen the involvement of artists riencing rapid socio-demographic and economic changes and cultural workers in the various streams of work going which play out in dynamic and contested ways across the on in changing neighborhoods. Artists and other commu- cities’ neighborhoods. Furthermore, neighborhood lead- nity-rooted creatives can work alongside planners to build ers, as well as planners and policymakers, have become deeper trust with neighborhoods and create more informed increasingly driven to central issues of context sensitivity, and inclusive outcomes. Given this potential, leaders in the cultural preservation, equitable development and equi- arts and culture sector should seek a deeper understanding table access to resources. The study reveals emerging of how place-specific cultural work and spaces contribute themes by reviewing planning documents and interview- to community and economic development, as well as how ing key stakeholders in the arts and culture ecosystems arts institutions and cultural ecosystems impact urban of those three cities. Because arts and culture work is policy. In doing so, artists and arts organizations can be highly integrated across industries, public and private brought into planning processes to shape them and result- entities and organizations of various sizes, interviews in ing policy around the needs of the community. Artists may the study included artists and arts organization employ- also face challenges ensuring their work benefits of existing ees, leadership in philanthropy, cultural planners, private community members, rather than playing into processes consultants and others. This comparative, themes-based of displacive neighborhood change, particularly given the approach suggests a way to leverage the range of talent prominence of tourism-related funding streams for the and resources in that space toward positive neighborhood arts. Artists also have to consider balancing creative inde- change. The emergent themes included the following: 2 Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ! EQUITY OF ACCESS TO RESOURCES AND services. Furthermore, cultural planners have employed PROGRAMS: Increasing transparency, offer more intentionality when inviting stakeholders into organizations opportunities for capacity building planning processes, thinking of arts and culture as an and open up new sources of funding that reach more essential piece of neighborhood vitality. diverse groups. Applying these lessons to an artist- ! INCLUSIVE PLANNING PROCESSES: Having planner partnership model in Houston a deeply representative group of stakeholders present to guide the process in cultural planning The emergent themes presented above provide insight and decision-making and including artists as key into how Houston can accomplish the equity goals in its stakeholders in other planning efforts. 2015 Arts and Culture Plan and how the city can opera- tionalize an emergent artist-planner collaboration mod- ! IMPLEMENTATION: Implementing new strategies el within efforts such as Complete Communities. This in public arts administration, as well as in private neighborhood planning initiative was started in 2017 as a funding to promote inclusivity, maximize economic way to provide action plans for five pilot neighborhoods impact and find new ways to measure impact. in Houston that have been historically underserved by By exploring the experiences of funders, community public and private investment. This initiative provides an groups and artists whose work intersects, core lessons ideal testing grounds for bringing in artists and creative arose that suggest how an emerging model of artist-plan- organizations to enhance community engagement rath- ner collaboration can be tested in Houston. This form of er than merely providing opportunities for promoting planning would creatively explore and address equity tourism. In order to do this, programs such as Visit concerns both in access to the arts as well as equitable My Neighborhood, which provided some resources for neighborhood change. Those lessons include the following: community groups to work with artists on place-based projects, and the Resident Artist Program can be directly 1. Cities and philanthropic actors are exploring new integrated into the Complete Communities planning and strategies to answer demands for increased cultural engagement processes. To do this, artists can be brought equity in the arts and culture ecosystem of cities. in as co-planners, utilizing cultural programming and They do this by helping small organizations and arts engagement to elicit stories and input from residents. individual artists build capacity, by diversifying Furthermore, arts and culture can also be made a topic of how they evaluate and invest in art and artistic focus in the planning process in addition to issues such as programming and by intentionally trying to reach housing, health and transportation. broader audiences. The city and others who fund and support the arts can 2. Many artists grounded in specific communities create make other changes to explore the integration of arts and work focused on the stories of those communities. culture and community development. Firstly, funding ca- Because of the unique communicative and pacity building can support artists doing social-justice ori- representative skills required to do work, artists adeptly ented or place-based work, leveraging city resources with discover histories and celebrate visions for the future. private investment and bridging the talents of community As such, they have increasingly sought stakeholder developers to artists and cultural workers. Secondly, roles in both cultural and general planning processes. support can be offered to arts organizations seeking to In the case of Houston, for example, three grant-funded integrate human and social services into their suite of residencies paired artists with a specific neighborhood programming, take note of where successes occur and and city department or nonprofit to produce original promote those victories. Thirdly, planners in Complete work. But other cities, like Los Angeles, have tried out Communities and other planning efforts can and should longer-term, strategic residencies, including embedding include artists or representatives of cultural groups in the an artist in the city’s department of transportation to core planning and implementation teams. In doing so, help advance its Vision Zero efforts. arts and culture can be an effective tool to engage neigh- 3. Understanding their own potential to make positive borhoods around the history, culture and unique aspects changes in their communities, artists and their of place. That wisdom can then be used to inform the organizations have begun to strategize partnerships policy proposals presented in the planning documents. to help
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