Danya giving the keynote at the Providence Athanaeum entitled “Urban Development as Freedom Practice”
Building Community Wealth Through Culture Shift
As part of our work with ArtPlace America over its final five years, Danya authored three papers and worked in partnership with Research Director Jamie Hand and the incredible ArtPlace network to develop practice-based research aimed at transforming community economic development through integrating equitable cultural practice.
The final paper begins:
“Since time immemorial, communities have been developing creative practices and culturally-specific traditions that are deeply intertwined with the way they produce, manage, exchange, and steward resources. What a society values, how it creates those valuable objects or practices, and who has access to them is indicative of a culture’s core beliefs. While it may be tempting to think of ‘the economy’ as a thing operating outside of anyone’s control, with its own rules and behaviors, we can look no further than our definitions of wealth, who has access to it, and how it is produced to understand who we are. Culture -and the creative practices that make it up, including the arts - has and will always be a critical way to understand an economy and work to shift it.”
Read the full economic development sector paper
Read the full housing sector paper
The Impact of Arts in Equitable Community Development
Despite our tacit understanding of the value of the arts, cultural programs can too often be undervalued in the dominant narrative. Several current and recent initiatives are focused on building a deep understanding of the role arts and culture play in affordable housing, equitable cultural ecosystems, and more.
Below is a recently published paper outlining the impacts of responsive cultural programs in Seattle’s Yesler Terrace, a large and storied affordable housing redevelopment. More info here.
Two other recent evaluations also show the value of community-arts partnerships in achieving equitable development.
Read our report about the City of Boston’s Artists-in-Residence program
Danya presenting an evaluative report on NuLawLab’s Stable Ground Project at the Boston Area Research Initiative Conference