The arts are infrastructure
What is art? For community and economic development, it is infrastructure. More specifically, the cluster of activities we call “the arts” is the stuff on which healthier, wealthier and more sustainable communities can be built on.
The arts:
- Help communities attract visitors who would spend more than visitors who go there for other reasons.
- Attract and keeps residents with greater educational levels, incomes and the potential to generate higher income.
- Provide a greater variety of employment opportunities in communities that are suffering from the loss of jobs in blue-collar fields or declining businesses.
- Prepare young people for the future by developing the kind of skills that can help them go from running a cash register to leading an enterprise.
- Help neighborhoods become better places to live. People who participate in the arts tend to be more engaged in the civic life of their communities.
- Support the efforts of community development organizations to revitalize neighborhoods.
- Bridge cultures, which can help to make for more peaceful and inclusive society.
- Connect, like roads, people and places.
- Provide a foundation for members of communities to understand their distinct cultures, commonalities, and the issues that need to be addressed to build better societies.
It is not a matter of whether the arts are good investments for
These questions, and more, are what the Arts Build Communities is working to answer. Because every community is unique, there is no single answer that will work for every place equally well. NJ ArtiFacts is one of a number of ways we will help leaders of cultural organizations and communities make more cost-effective decisions connecting arts and community and economic development.
Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP
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