LINC: Creating Affordable Artist Space

Are you trying to focus on your art but worrying instead about getting evicted from your studio? Are you looking for affordable space to work or perhaps create your own live/work digs but don't know where to turn? Do you spend more time worrying about zoning codes, financing, and development than on your own creative process…but feel you have no choice? LINC is working to help you find the answers you need.

LINC - short for Leveraging Investments in Creativity - was established as a ten-year initiative to support individual artists around the country. We recognize that in many communities, artists are being forced to become "developers by default," particularly in markets with high housing costs, limited supply of space, and/or areas where the space does not meet their unique needs. LINC is working to help artists find accessible information and support, to answer complex questions related to the development of affordable space.

We're not trying to act as developers, and we certainly don't have all the answers; but we're working to provide information on examples and strategies that work, encourage people and agencies working in community development to consider artists space in the context of their work, and help artists meet their space needs.

LINC's National Artists Space Initiative is working to create sources of information-new ideas, strategies, and support-for artists, community developers, public agencies, and others around the country to increase the supply of affordable space for artists to create their work. We're working to accomplish this through several mechanisms:

We are building a clearinghouse of information on models, policies and information related to artist space-build. We realize most people don't have a lot of time to explore the web, so we've created a series of "two-minute" topics on key issues. I've highlighted some of our favorite resources for each topic below; but each site offers other useful examples, as well. The "two-minute" topics currently posted to the LINC web site on artists space include:

Creating Artists Space: Access the Toronto Square Feet guide as an indispensable bible for developing space. Chicago Artists Resource has revised it, offering information on financing and leasing space, credit issues, remodeling or developing a property, models of ownership and much, much more. Square Feet Chicago: The Artist's Guide to Buying and Leasing Space is available here.

Financing and Development Resources: Access detailed lists of funding sources for projects.

Arts and Cultural Districts: Find more information about arts districts around the country, with examples of successful projects.

Making Space for Artists "Green": Uncover lots of information on how to make projects "green," as well as related funding sources.

We are sponsoring research on a national scale, to identify successful models and avenues of learning to share with others. LINC recently sponsored a major research effort by the Urban Institute which identified over 75 artist space projects nationally, and digested the lessons learned in over 26 projects in seven cities around the country. This research will be synthesized in five specific short reports available online at the LINC site upon completion, one of which will be tailored specifically to the needs of artists.

We are creating national partnerships with key players in community development, finance, public development or preservation of lands, and others to integrate artists' space in their ongoing activities. (Currently we are in the beginning stages of trying to create a loan fund for the early-stage development costs for artists' space.)

We are also creating a national network of innovators who can help us by identifying new ideas, sharing lessons learned, and perhaps developing new solutions to perplexing problems.

More information about LINC's many programs available here. If you have suggestions of additional topics you'd like us to pursue, or if you have a favorite "space" success story, example, or publication we should know about, please contact Adele Fleet Bacow at afbacow@community-partners.net.

Adele Fleet Bacow is President of Community Partners Consultants, Inc. and coordinates LINC's National Artists Space Initiative. She is an urban planner with expertise in community cultural development and the arts, and can be reached at afbacow@community-partners.net.