Urban Planning + Cultural Policy = Community Vibrancy

The ICA/Boston's Barbara Lee Foundation Theater filled quickly for the "Cultural Planning Learning Session" after lunch on Novembe 18th. 

After giving props to MassCreative's Create the Vote campaign, the BCA's Veronique LeMelle set the stage for the afternoon's presenters: 

•  Julie Burros, Director of Cultural Planning for the City of Chicago, spoke from a practical perspective about Chicago's Cultural Plan and the need to develop a strategic plan that can carry cultural policies forward through multiple city administrations; and
• Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, Senior Advisor to the Arts and Culture Program at the Kresge Foundation and an Obama appointee to the National Council on the Arts (NEA), who spoke from the perspective of one grounded in research.

Dr. Jackson's overview of her key findings (summarized below) are drawn from her reflections on how urban planning research about arts and culture has progressed in recent years. (Hint: research has mostly focused on the obvious; namely the impacts of arts education and of arts-presenting organizations.)  
By contrast, she presented the following:

1. "...arts and culture are present in cities and also ways in which people actively participate—through recurrent festivals and community celebrations, informal but recurrent gatherings in parks and community centers..."
2. "... important aspects of communities that [all too often] go overlooked [by policymakers] and are missed [by community members] only when they are gone..."
3. "...other manifestations of arts and culture mattered in [equally] important ways—for building social capital and collective efficacy ..., for workforce development through the acquisition of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, for mitigating crime and improving public safety, and for the advancement of creativity in and of itself."

All to say, Dr. Jackson urged all interested in the potential synergies between urban planning and cultural policy (in 'place-making,' that is) to look up--to  broaden their field of vision, and project beyond current horizons.

Our next post will attempt to summarize the 

Fairmount Indigo Collaborative's recent "Community Envisioning" Meeting

in light of Dr. Jackson's key observations.   Subscribe to make sure you don't miss it.