The City Artists built

Helping Artists Navigate Their Way Home

Artist Based Community Development

Cleveland, Ohio. While not everyone realizes it, the city is home to both one of the largest concentrations of artists in the country and a nationally recognized network of high-quality community development professionals working to develop vibrant neighborhoods throughout our community.

But CPAC believes that we can do even more to position the city as a national creative hub and an urban laboratory for reinventing “Rust Belt” cities through arts and culture. In 2007, we launched a multi-year initiative to increase artists’ access to affordable home and business space and to make them more active partners in revitalizing our urban neighborhoods.

Through the generous support of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, CPAC has launched Artists in Residence and From Rust Belt to Artist Belt, two programs that are sparking a new conversation about how Cleveland, and other cities in the industrial Midwest, can serve their artist communities … and how artists can revolutionize how we think of industrial cities.

Artists in Residence

In partnership with Northeast Shores Development Corporation, Artists in Residence is a two-year initiative that is exploring what artists can do for Cleveland neighborhoods, and what Cleveland neighborhoods can do for artists. The two-year, $500,000 pilot program will focus its efforts on this relationship in Cleveland’s Waterloo Arts and Entertainment District. The initiative will include:

• A micro-loan program for artists buying or rehabbing dwellings within the neighborhood,
• A micro-grant program to support artists’ work in carrying out community-based arts projects within the neighborhood. View grant guidelines and the application form
• The development of a number of artist homeownership services, and
• A coordinated local and national marketing campaign on behalf of the program. View Cleveland Arsenal application.

View media release..

Putting Artists on the Map

To gain deeper insight about how artists are currently shaping communities, CPAC released a five-part research series about where artists are located, and how they make space-related decisions. The links below will direct you to each component of this research series, Putting Artists on the Map.

Part 1: Summary

Part 2: Geographic Analysis - Neighborhood Profiles

Part 3: Attitudinal Analysis - Artist Housing and Space Survey

Part 4: Predictive Analysis - Regression Model

Part 5: Properties Analysis - Artist Housing Characteristics

From Rust Belt to Artist Belt 3: Conference Website

From Rust Belt to Artist Belt 1 and 2: Reports and Prior Summits

The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture is a participant in the Creative Communities program of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, funded by the Ford Foundation and the Kresge Foundation.