The Power of Arts and Culture: The Heart of Community Health, Revitalization, and Inclusion
A LISC report highlighting case studies from our work with four local community partners using the arts to strengthen community bonds, celebrate local culture while healing collective trauma, and fight displacement through creative economies.
Arts investment and cultivation can be a key driver for community-based organizations, funders, policymaking institutions seeking to improve community health outcomes and the economic reality of an area. ‘The Power of Arts and Culture’ highlights case studies from four LISC partners in three communities; 11th Street Bridge Park and Anacostia BID in Washington D.C.; Destination Crenshaw in Los Angeles; and Vanguard Community Development in Detroit. The initiatives and public works included further illustrate the intersection between economic equity, health equity, and the arts.
The paper also highlights community-centered economic inclusion (CCEI), a framework co-created by LISC and The Brookings Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking and a key strategy utilized by the partner organizations.
Here are three main takeaways from this report. For further insights, please review the full publication linked below.
Arts events can heal and strengthen communities
Festivals, programs, and more help people connect, bring joy and happiness, and address collective trauma. They create and strengthen bonds. These bonds then help build civic muscle to continue advocating for systems change.
One example includes Vanguard CDC’s rehabilitation of Black Bottom Park for use as a community arts gathering space—part of Vanguard’s mission to maintain Black culture as the North End of Detroit changes.
Public artworks celebrate local cultures and address collective trauma
Artworks like sculptures, murals, and more help us have aesthetic, and therefore meaningful, experiences in our neighborhoods. These help to create emotional engagement, develop empathy, and make meaning of collective emotions and experiences. In particular, artworks that reflect the local cultures of a neighborhood-especially when those cultures have been the subject of policing, erasure, and discrimination—are important in healing traumatic experiences and creating pride.
Destination Crenshaw is enacting this aspect of the work in Los Angeles, where it is creating a 1.3-mile outdoor art park featuring sculptures, murals, and more by Black artists (and in the process, enacting inclusive economic development strategies).
Creative economies can fight displacement and build belonging
Living wage arts and culture jobs, support for creative businesses, as well as affordable housing for creatives and cultural producers, are all critical to creating a local economy that supports all residents and protects against further economic and cultural displacement.
In Historic Anacostia of Washington, D.C., the 11th Street Bridge Park and the Anacostia Business Improvement District have created affordable housing investments, small business preservation programs, and more for creatives and cultural leaders.
Learn more about the projects, perspectives and experiences from the ground, and more about the holistic intersection between health, community economics and the arts below.
