The following is coverage of Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) conference titled "From Rust Belt to Artist Belt" held at CSU Levin College on May 14, 2008.

For background on Cleveland's nationally recognized Rust Belt to Artist Belt program, read the CPAC white paper From Rust Belt to Artist Belt: Challenges and Opportunities in Rust Belt Cities.  

Quotable

From the keynote address by Ann Markusen, director, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, University of Minnesota:

I’m nervous about the language of cultural districts. To tag one area as cultural district is not OK. If we want arts and culture to succeed we have to scale down. Reusing corner stores or old theaters can anchor small organic regrowth. We tend to think about agglomeration, but what's often more powerful is to have a cultural center working side by side (with artists group).

Human capital is as important as physical character.

We are looking at decentralized and natural cultural districts. The Lincoln Center model of putting all things together in one big place, I think, is an outdated model. If its over scaled, it’s hard to keep them running, which is an opportunity cost for other ways of doing things.

From Brian Friedman, director, Northeast Shores and the Waterloo arts district

You can't advertise that you've put in your live/work zoning variance, most artists haven't gotten a loan. So, those aren't a marketing tool for artists.

Lillian Kuri

This is a groundbreaking day for Cleveland; it wasn't planned, but at the same time as this conference we have the groundbreaking of the Capitol Theater (a revitalization of an 1920s-era movie palace in Detroit-Shoreway at W. 65th Street and Detroit Avenue as a indie film house) and unveiling of District of Design. It indicates what’s on horizon and that we’re getting this notion of appreciating our cultural assets. And understanding scale – the power of scale. To reinvent post industrial cities we cannot do it in silos. We need to integrate community development with sustainability and think about power of creative assets. That's where we get that bubbling up opportunity.

Note: Cleveland has committed $3.5 million for the Detroit Avenue/W. 65th St. streetscape to tie district together. Susie Frazier Muller is the artist hired for streetscape design. And it has attracted private development: The Bush Brothers invested in artists housing, the Studios at W. 78th Street. Attracts other private investors like the Marous’ Battery Park who understand what’s going on.

Jeremy Nowak, CEO, The Reinvestment Fund

Rather than thinking about getting an arts and community development group working together, I think it's more effective to think about investing in placemaking, in higher quality amenties. Placemaking is a creative and uncertain process. It seems embedded in certain tensions. Between markets and civic capacity; between design and utility; between artifact and what's new. Artists are experts as placemakers because they're adept at handling the tension between repurposing ideas and places.