CulturalSpaceAgency
DataBASE
Cultural Space Reports
The Office of Arts & Culture's Cultural Space program has commissioned and collected a number of resources and reports to help navigate city rules and expand cultural space in the community.
CAP Report
In November 2013, the Office of Arts & Culture hosted an event focused on cultural space issues, called Square Feet Seattle.
The event drew over 200 people, including artists, developers, City staff and elected officials, arts leaders, and more. At the end of the day-long event, the audience was invited, through a series of exercises and interactivities, to identify an issue related to cultural space that the City should address. Nearly four years later, the idea has expanded significantly, and following extensive research, outreach, and community input, we present the result of that exploration, The CAP Report: 30 Ideas for the Creation, Activation, and Preservation of Cultural Space.
Structure for Stability
Following up on one of the ideas from the CAP Report, this new study explores the creation of an independent real estate entity to hold cultural space in partnership with the cultural community.
Structure for Stability is a deep-dive into the proposal that the City create a new Public Development Authority, a property-holding, property-owning, and property-developing organization that acts as an intermediary between the cultural development community and the commercial property development community. This new Cultural Space Agency would fight cultural displacement, would build ownership in the cultural community, and would stabilize properties that anchor cultural communities in some of our fastest-growing neighborhoods.
Build Art Space Equitably (BASE)
In 2018 the City's Office of Arts & Culture's Cultural Space launched the BASE: Build Art Space Equitably certification cohort. This cohort is a (roughly) 20-person all-BIPOC group of leaders from the worlds of commercial real estate, arts & culture, philanthropy, finance, and government. The group spends a year working through a curriculum centered on the intersection of cultural development, community development, and commercial real estate development. At the end of the year's collaboration the group receives a City Certification in the creation of equitable cultural real estate. This is the report, generated by Framework Creative Placemaking, that follows the development of that first year's cohort.