Received an email via William Moore (friend and believer in the Creative Space) We thought we should pass it along as TCS is a model of this new approaches to cultural facilities development and that we are open to working with partners/cities around the globe.
“So Barrie City Council with be thinking about cultural facilities development within the budget deliberation. This December 09 article in Municipal World I think is well-timed. This article, in part, documents Vancouver moving ‘out-of-the-box’ in their thinking on the advantage of culture.”
Two quotes I like:
“Employing a range of innovative approaches, the facilities plan ultimately focuses on accelerating the municipality’s shift from a role as planner, provider, and deliverer to one of enabler, convener, catalyst, and broker.”
“Similar to the ‘next generation of artistic leaders’3 who are notable for their multidisciplinary, collaborative, and entrepreneurial approach, municipalities need to think, plan, and act differently to maximize the potential of a city and its culture.”
William Moore
Here’s the article…
NEW APPROACHES TO CULTURAL FACILITIES DEVELOPMENT
By Reid Henry
Cities and culture have always been intimately connected — they are rich with linkages between all forms of creative enterprise and place making, economic development, social inclusiveness, and community building. Current thinking around cultural planning and “creative city” policies seeks to maximize the potential dividends of these complex relationships, weaving a cultural perspective throughout a wide range of civic strategies. Within this policy context, cultural facility development in Canadian cities is often at the centre of social, economic, and political agendas. However, many cities have struggled to develop new ways of thinking, planning, and acting that adapt to the realities of emerging creative and cultural practice.
Traditional Boundaries Blurred
Collaboration and convergence across entrepreneurial, artistic, and technological activities is a defining feature of practice throughout Canada’s creative communities. Much of this is driven by the capabilities and potential of new digital technologies, but also by the versatility and lifestyles of many new artists and creative practitioners. Recent studies of the cultural and creative sector in the Greater Toronto Area1 suggest that creatives work within and across the public, private, and third sectors as funded artists, free-agents, social entrepreneurs, small businesses, and global enterprises. Emerging creative practice and entrepreneurship in this context will require new approaches to facilities development that reflect the removal of boundaries between performance spaces, galleries, and workspaces and the blurring of distinctions between amateur and professional, consumer, participant, and artist.
A recent national study of cultural infrastructure undertaken by the Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities (CECC) at Simon Fraser University2 identified a growing trend across Canada towards developing facilities that are designed to leverage the benefits of collaboration and co-location in providing artists and creative practitioners with opportunities for knowledge sharing and critical debate, networking, sharing of skills and resources, continuing professional development, and social and mutual support.
According to the CECC report, these include:
multi-use hubs that integrate arts, culture, heritage, and library facilities to share resources and operation costs, and to develop strategic partnerships; cultural or creative incubators that, in various ways, offer a platform of sup-port for creators and enable connection, production, and networking among creators and with the public; artist live/work or studio complexes that focus on live/work studios, artist living spaces, and a variety of space uses, including rehearsal spaces, retail, and cafés; integrated community projects that include cultural, environmental, and social uses; and multi-sector convergence centres that are designed to maximize socialization, networking, and random collisions, and thus become major connecting hubs and economic engines in communities.
This emerging landscape of infrastructure and policy rationales leads to a complex and evolving array of models and values that requires a cross-pollination of thinking, greater openness to risk-taking, nimble partnerships, and compelling solutions.
Municipalities throughout Canada are focusing investment on these types of facilities in order to address a range of possible policy outcomes such as: artistic development; stimulating enterprise development as part of downtown revitalization initiatives; supporting cluster dynamics as part of a sector development plan; ensuring stability for creative practitioners in areas where property or land values are accelerating; adaptive reuse of redundant heritage buildings; incubation or knowledge transfer programs between post-secondary institutions and local enterprises; and cultural tourism development.
This emerging landscape of infra-structure and policy rationales leads to a complex and evolving array of models and values that requires a cross-pollination of thinking, greater openness to risk-taking, nimble partnerships, and compelling solutions that bridge the many traditional silos of city-building. Strategically weaving together cutting-edge creative businesses, imaginative cultural organizations, agile knowledge institutions, new technology, and dynamic urban environments has the potential to generate an unparallelled competitive advantage and cultural richness for cities. However, these new generations of facilities are requiring much more dynamic capabilities for municipalities to collaborate across organizational, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries.
Rethinking Municipal Strategy
In this increasingly complex environment, cities such as Vancouver have started to rethink their role and investment strategy in relation to the infrastructure issues and opportunities connected with their cultural and creative sector. Vancouver’s 15-Year Cultural Facilities Priorities Plan was generated to support the development of a constantly evolving arts and culture facility ecology. The facilities plan includes a decision-making framework for assessing gaps and potential projects, and an enabling environment, with strategies and tactics for developing capacity, enhancing resources, and building partnerships. Employing a range of innovative approaches, the facilities plan ultimately focuses on accelerating the municipality’s shift from a role as planner, provider, and deliverer to one of enabler, convener, catalyst, and broker.
Sector Engagement
New thinking began with the plan’s engagement strategy. Critical perspectives were gathered throughout the planning process, and were delivered through an internal steering committee of senior municipal department staff and an external advisory committee that spanned the breadth of artistic and cultural disciplines.
More broadly, an online survey gathered detailed intelligence on cultural space usage, needs, and opportunities from 530 individual artists and creative entrepreneurs, as well as not-for-profit arts and cultural organizations. Individual interviews, public open houses, and thematic workshops (eg. regional attractions, studio providers, etc.) provided critical insight into the cultural space dynamics in Vancouver. Equally important, the strategy afforded a series of venues for investigating new collaborations and building awareness among the sector. Through this process, new opportunities for facility development were identified with the city’s housing centre, real estate services, and park board to pilot non-market artist studios on the ground floor of social housing sites, adaptive reuse of surplus property for arts uses, and flex-space within new community centres.
Analysis Framework
Recognizing that contemporary arts, cultural, and creative practice occurs in a broad range of traditional and non-traditional facilities, a new analysis framework was developed that would reflect the full spectrum of spaces used throughout Vancouver. Across the city, 560 venues were identified, categorized, and mapped, employing a unique framework comprised of nine categories based on a facility’s purpose (primary, secondary, and ancillary), typology, and delivery factors (owner-ship, disciplinary scope, platform of development, size, and permanency). The approach generated a comprehensive understanding of Vancouver’s cultural space “DNA,” including the private, public, and not-for-profit players in facility provision, spatial dynamics of cultural spaces, and “global” priorities for future facility development.
Facility Assessment Criteria
In order to guide future decision making by the municipality on capital project evaluation and prioritization, and to support the facility planning efforts of the community, a detailed assessment criteria matrix was generated. The criteria was developed to provide the city with a decision-making mechanism that was transparent and aligned with the values articulated in the Culture Plan approved in 2008. Balancing a range of criteria focused on vision, the capacity of the project team, sustainability, and impact recognized that cultural space development is equally strategic and opportunistic. In designing the criteria, it was critical to ensure that the municipality could advance its overarching strategies, yet be tactically flexible.
The City of Vancouver’s new Cultural Facilities Priorities Plan reflects one of the most comprehensive approaches in Canada to rethinking the way a municipality supports the development of the full spectrum of creative space. By cultivating greater leadership capacity, stronger partnerships, more innovative collaborations, and broader resources, municipalities can success-fully adapt to an increasingly complex and multi-faceted environment. Similar to the “next generation of artistic leaders”3 who are notable for their multidisciplinary, collaborative, and entrepreneurial approach, municipalities need to think, plan, and act differently to maximize the potential of a city and its culture.
Artscape, Creative Convergence Centre’s — Building Capacity for innovation, 2009; Gertler, M. and Vinodrai, T. Measuring the Creative Economy: The Structure and Economic performance of Ontario .5′ Creative, Cultural and New Media Cluster’, 2007.
Duxbury, Nancy, Ed., Under Construction — The State of Cultural Infrastructure in Canada, 2008.
Decode, Canada Council for the Arts — Next Generation of Artistic Leaders and Arts Audience Dialogues, 2007.
Reid Henry is the former Director of Consulting with Artscape Inc., a not-for-profit enterprise focused on creative urban development based in Toronto.
Reid is an independent consultant and can be reached here
