The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) announced Tuesday that it has selected North Collinwood for its Artists in Residence Program, an effort to use artist-based development to help revitalize one urban neighborhood.

The two-year, $500,000 pilot program will provide a small loan program for artists buying or rehabbing homes in the target area, a small grant program to support artists' work in carrying out community-based projects, and artist home ownership services such as credit counseling and saving programs.

A panel of arts, community development and planning experts selected the target neighborhood through a competitive process. Seth Beattie, Strategic Initiative Director for CPAC, said the panel was impressed by the grassroots, arts-based approach of Northeast Shores Development Corporation, the nonprofit that serves the neighborhood. A total of 13 community development corporations from various Cleveland neighborhoods applied to the program.

"We wanted to work with someone that got it, and Northeast Shores made a compelling case," says Beattie. "They've done a great job of giving artists license to use the neighborhood as their canvas, yet they've followed behind and supported them, resulting in organic, grassroots redevelopment of the neighborhood." He cited the arts-based businesses on Waterloo Road as one example.

Although the details of the program have yet to be worked out, Beattie mentioned several possibilities, including $2,500-$10,000 grants to artists for community-based projects, arts-based community dialogues, and integrating arts-based development into current redevelopment projects in a deeper way.

The program is being funded in part through a $250,000 grant from Leveraging Investments in Creativity's Creative Communities Challenge Grant Program, a one-time competitive grant program made possible through the support of the Kresge Foundation.

CPAC is a nonprofit arts and culture service organization that works to strengthen Greater Cleveland's arts and culture sector. Some of its programs include the Artist as an Entrepreneur Institute, a business training course addressing the needs of working artists, and From Rust Belt to Artist Belt, a conference series that examines the role of artists in the redevelopment of industrial cities.


Source: Seth Beattie
Writer: Lee Chilcote