Art Space Update

Mayor Ballantyne’s

Art Space Listening Tour

Over the past year Mayor Ballantyne and the Somerville Arts Council (SAC) have been conducting listening tours around arts and art spaces in the city. The objective of these meetings began as a way to hear directly from artists in studio buildings about why these spaces are unique work sites. The meetings now have expanded to include discussions with types of artists who do not have large shared creative spaces. Each meeting focuses on hearing the positive and negative factors of each building and/or the need for new spaces, and aims to address a short-term action item, while also providing valuable information to support the City’s efforts to enhance long term programs and policies in support of all Somerville art spaces.

Past and Upcoming Listening Sessions

So far, we have had conversations at Vernon Street Studios, Joy Street Studios, Brickbottom, Milk Row Studios, and Miller Street Studios. While previous listening sessions were focused primarily on visual artists in existing studio buildings, we believe that artists from different disciplines and without space should be heard. The next listening session being held will highlight the space needs of musicians as we see more of our music spaces disappearing. 

What We Are Hearing

The creative community that is cultivated in studio buildings is one of the defining characteristics that artists mentioned they loved about their spaces. The biggest challenges we are hearing are the pressures from the real-estate market. Some spaces are more at-risk than others, but everyone is feeling the rising rents and the imminent threat that their building will be sold and redeveloped. There is a lack of long-term security with the more benevolent landlords as well, some owners are aging, and tenants are not sure what will happen to the space once the ownership changes to another generation or is sold to someone else. 

What We Are Doing

The Mayor’s listening tours are important for her to have first-hand awareness of our community.  Beyond this work, SAC is working with several City departments to implement recommendations from the Art Space Risk Assessment. We are also in the middle our cultural capacity planning process which has hosted many community conversations and continues with a city-wide forum on May 23^th. We also recognize that art space issues are not just within our municipal boundaries, but beyond. Currently, we are working with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the City of Boston, and the City of Cambridge on a regional strategy for art space preservation and creation called Making Space for Art. By exploring regional each municipalities policy and data on the sector we will have a better understanding of the regional context of our art spaces. We are also talking to and collaborating with the regional art space advocacy group #ARTSTAYSHERE who has done work to preserve artists space in Boston. 

The Future

As we continue to look at our current art spaces and think about their creation, we are noticing a common theme in their creation. All these spaces came out of an individual or group of artists who were motivated to make a space for art, in combination with benevolent landlords who supported the artistic endeavor. Is the story for almost all our spaces in Somerville today, unless the artists were able to obtain ownership of their building. Understanding the past models, SAC is exploring how to cultivate that community motivation and property-owner benevolence in the contemporary real-estate market where property values dramatically increased and building owners are organizations rather than individual community members.

New to this Newsletter?

Questions? Contact:

Michael Rosenberg

Arts Development Manager

Somerville Arts Council

mrosenberg@somervillema.gov

The Somerville Arts Council is a municipal agency of the City of Somerville,

Katjana Ballantyne, Mayor

Support us and Stay connected