How Do the Arts Build Communities?

"There is a growing interest in the intersection of community development and cultural programming. Two national studies have recently been published addressing this subject. 'Culture Builds Communities' is a study published by Partners for Livable Communities and 'Community Development and the Arts' has been published by the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild as part of a major Ford Foundation initiative."

This paper is designed to give an overview of how the arts can be used in a community development setting, especially as part of a community development corporation (CDC). As Director of Cultural Development for Peoples Housing, a 15 year-old nonprofit community development corporation, Tom created a Community Arts Programme that combined grass roots programming with youth development and economic development. This essay reflects his experience developing these programmes as well as research in this field.

Tom asserts that a community arts programme can help in community building in three main arenas:

Human Development

"The arena of human development is where an arts programme can have the greatest impact on community development. The power of the arts is to unleash a person's creativity, to give him/her a voice, to open up a channel for a person to succeed and thrive in hitherto unknown and unpredictable ways."

Physical Place

"CDCs construct buildings and so are in the space creation business. We should pay more attention to the physical design of our projects and build in beauty as much as possible. We should seek to employ neighborhood workers in as many aspects of the design and construction as possible. And we should look at building in community-use spaces in our projects or outside of them."

Economic Exchange

Tom lists several examples of how the introduction of an arts center can promote economic exchange:

• Jobs in the programme or facility.
• Increased use of neighborhood services.
• Volunteers, visitors, and patrons use neighborhood services.
• The sale of locally made art work or crafts.
• The creation of live performance attractions that attract people from outside the community.
• The creation of cultural ventures that are spin-offs of work being done in the neighborhood arts programme.

In conclusion, Tom states that a neighborhood based arts programme can help in the community development process in many ways. He admits that while some of some of the impacts are intangible and not immediately measurable some are dramatic and overpowering.