Resulting from The Reinvestment Fund's (TRF) collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania's Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) and the Rockefeller Foundation, Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment demonstrates that the intrinsic value of arts and culture can be a key ingredient in neighborhood revitalization by nurturing a wide range of local assets, building social capital and promoting entrepreneurial and civic growth. The publication calls for investing in community-based creative activity to enhance its place-making role and potential, and offers investment ideas for three specific areas: creativity, development and knowledge.
“In looking at the future of cities, we think it’s essential to uncover and invest in those neighborhood assets that have great potential for transformation,” said Jeremy Nowak, CEO of TRF and author of the publication. “We wanted to highlight the particular role community-based arts and cultural activity plays in this kind of revitalization and to propose an investment strategy that encourages and advances the self-organizing transformations of place that this activity creates.”
With insight from TRF's own lending portfolio, Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment seeks to:
- Stimulate development in urban neighborhoods by opening up new models for investment.
- Increase the rate and effectiveness of culturally-driven community change and build institutional capacity, intellectual capital and a public brand for the field.
- Broaden the notion of who can and should be part of planning, policy, decision-making and financing related to neighborhood development.
- Offer a framework for how a unique combination of civic actors can create a vision for place-making rooted
A summary document, 'The Power of Place-making' is also available at the link below, along with a number of briefs resulting from the project including:
- From Creative Economy to Creative Society
- Cultivating “Natural” Cultural Districts
- Migrants, Communities and Culture
- Culture and Urban Revitalization: A Harvest Document
- Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment