Creative Economy Practitioner's Toolkit: Taking Advantage of Campus and Community Resources (Part 2)

This toolkit is excerpted from a paper that reports on a research and technical assistance effort to examine creative-economy initiatives in upstate New York and how they can be translated into strategies for community and regional development in small and medium-size cities*. We focus on the potential role of higher-education institutions in building local creative economies and lay out specific strategies for community and regional economic-development planning. These strategies include: stakeholder gatherings, super-collaborators, local and regional arts councils, festivals and special events, collaborative organizational designs, service-learning arts projects, student-led community arts projects, research collaborations and arts-based brick-and-mortar projects. The toolkit is followed by research references and an appendix of useful
national and New York State creative-economy resources. View the project Web site (with photos), New York Creative Economy. To access the entire paper, download it from the Cornell University site.

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Strategy 6: Bridging Town and Gown with Service-learning Arts Projects

Service learning is an educational approach that builds bridges between academic study and practical experiences. It helps students pair the theoretical knowledge learned in academia with participation in the everyday challenges of communities. It enhances and reinforces academic knowledge with practical experience, while strengthening civic values and moral character and responding to community-identified needs. Service-learning fosters reflection on, and appropriate responses to, community problems and needs. In service-learning, students work in partnership with communities to become active agents of social change. (Cornell University Public Service Center, para. 4)

Developing service-learning opportunities is an excellent strategy to promote campus/community relationships. Service learning focuses the energy of students on a specific problem to generate innovative ideas and regenerate people and institutions. Service-learning interactions involve students and organizations in engagement, relationships, knowledge building and inquiry. Courses can be offered by landscape and architecture departments to design the landscape and buildings to define the town entry, by anthropology and history departments to develop a town historic site for tourism, or by business departments to offer marketing advice to small arts-related businesses. It is a major commitment for both professor and community contacts, but the students’ enthusiastic engagement and the creative outcomes are worth the effort.

Putting Strategies into Action

To find whether your local colleges are involved in service learning, check their Web sites for “service learning” to find academic course offerings. This is distinct from “public service” or an office serving as a student-volunteer clearinghouse. Service learning is structured differently on every campus, so it may take some time to find its format and participating faculty. For example, Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., has a strong tradition in service learning, offering over 100 courses since 1995, but calls it “community learning” (Trinity College Community Learning Initiative).

Finding a faculty member in a program related to your service-learning idea and who has been or is willing to be involved in service learning is the first step. It may take several tries to find the right person for your project. Talk with each contact and describe your organization or interests, project background and goals. Decide whether there is a match in concept, whether you can work with this faculty member, and whether the project should be a formal course or a special topic with just a few students. The impetus for developing a service learning course can come from students as well. Read “Encouraging Professors to Embrace Community Learning” from the Trinity College Web site. (Trinity College Community Learning Initiative (a))

If the college or university campus you are researching is a member of the Campus Compact, your search may be easier. The Campus Compact is a coalition of college and university presidents who have made a commitment to promote public service and service learning on their campus. All schools have a designated representative and will probably have service-learning activities highlighted on their Web sites. The organization has local chapters and 950 members.

Case study: The Franklin School Project and Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.

Service learning at Syracuse University (SU) enhances academic goals by providing SU students with community placements that closely fit the needs of both students and the community. The Franklin Magnet School focuses on arts education and collaborates with Syracuse University’ School of Education to offer the Franklin School Project course. Its goal is to examine and apply theories of teaching and learning within a cultural and sociopolitical context. Students in this course collaborate with instructional staff as they tutor children in the Franklin School context, describe characteristics of one student's emergent literacy based on direct experience and conversation with school-based instructional staff, apply instructional strategies that foster children's oral- and written-language development, and select age-appropriate children's literature (Syracuse University Franklin School Project, para. 1).

Several years of partnership between the Franklin School and SU via this service-learning course led a group of SU students to initiate a student club called “Friends of Franklin.” This club extends the collaboration to an annual “Showcase of the Arts” benefit to raise funds for the Franklin School. This year's show featured 120 students from both schools performing in seven groups, including dance, drumming, chorus and band. Syracuse University students helped design costumes for the performances, taught dance techniques and performed for the students at Franklin.

The service-learning course first brought Franklin to the attention of the SU students who deepened and extended their relationship and commitment to the school through the club. To close the loop, the annual fundraiser brings attention back to the course. Now there are two distinct, campus avenues for SU student’s involvement with The Franklin School.

Challenges

Service-learning projects require substantial administrative coordination and oversight, record-keeping, and a supervision partnership. This takes extensive planning. Students are the energy of the projects and leaders need tolerance for change and fluctuation in the quality of students and their interests from year to year. Matching student learning and community needs sometime lead to unexpected but interesting outcomes. The semester-length courses (roughly 12 weeks) can inhibit comprehensive solutions and the organization may have to complete the project. In many cases, the project is a life-changing event for those involved, especially the students.

Strategy 7: Capitalizing on Student-led Community Arts Projects

Entering into partnerships with undergraduate or graduate students as volunteers or for credit has cost, speed and flexibility advantages. Working with students can infuse “traditional operating procedure” with a good strong dose of “out of the box” thinking and first-hand information about their demographic cohorts that may be applied to develop innovative programs. Students are energetic with many valuable skills such as research methods, writing, specialized computer software and design. Students seeking out or initiating community projects are passionate and motivated and can sometimes provide community partners with access to on-campus resources. Initial relationships with students may develop into regular internships at your organization or their long-term commitment to your organization as a volunteer or board member.

Putting Strategies into Action

Start by contacting campus community-service and volunteer clearinghouses and identifying informal opportunities for students in your organization. Create meaningful projects for students with focus, clear outcomes and autonomy. Formalize relationships as internships or temporary employees. Involve students in your meetings, ask them for their opinions, and listen to their ideas. Help students build on their impulses to be involved and creatively engaged and avoid the impulse to say “no” when they want to pursue a new direction.

Case study: Culture Link, Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y.

Culture Link is a student-led organization that promotes the exchange of multicultural music between the Ithaca College community and the surrounding Ithaca community. Building on the worldwide reputation of the College’s School of Music, Culture Link advocates for the sharing of ideas, resources, talents, and abilities from a wide variety of cultures and ethnic backgrounds, promoting a greater awareness and understanding of multiculturalism.

The Culture Link multicultural festival in 2005 brought over 50 Ithaca College students, faculty, and non-Ithaca College guest artists to the Community School of Music and the Arts (CSMA) as a part of a two-day celebration of multicultural experiences and performances. The festival was produced by volunteers with more than 80 performers and over 400 audience members in attendance throughout the festival. Local media covered the event and admission was free, allowing any community member, regardless of financial status, to attend. (Ithaca College Culture Link, para. 1-3)

Challenges

Student clubs and organizations often struggle with issues of succession and varying degrees of quality and commitment depending upon who is running the club. Students are typically only in leadership positions for an academic year or maybe even a semester, making longer-term commitment and planning challenging. Community partners in this case need to be prepared to provide supervision, mentorship, planning and focus in order to take advantage of all these relationships have to offer. Expectations for follow-through and communication after the event or program is completed may need to be spelled out. Working with students requires patience with their limited experience and occasional lack of diplomacy.

Strategy 8: Research Collaborations with Higher-education Partners

Creative businesses and arts administrators can find value in accessing the research engines of universities. Students and faculty are often seeking “real-life” experiences to apply their new skills in research, organizational strategies, business planning, marketing and information systems, including feasibility studies and strategic planning. You have the problems and they want to help; it is a win/win relationship. Working with students and faculty is a viable alternative to hiring expensive consultants. For example, depending upon their department and level of study, students can develop high-quality research documents with which to approach donors or to develop into grant proposals for funding agencies. University faculty possess considerable expertise in helping organizations focus vision and mission in order to pursue grants and other sources of funding. Another advantage is the extended exposure of your organization through partnerships with university faculty and students. Not only will more people learn about your program, but partnerships can enhance recruitment for volunteers, new board members, and paid staff.

Putting Strategies into Action

Search the Web sites of local or regional colleges and universities to identify ongoing research that matches your needs in content or approach. Read the local newspaper and campus publications to identify faculty who work in the area of your interest. Contact faculty members, departments or institutes or project administrators to share your needs and how they could help. Land-grant universities such as Cornell, Rutgers and the University of Maryland have contractual arrangements with their states to engage in research with local communities. For example, the Cornell Cooperative Extension System has offices in every county of the state, extending university research results into the community from a variety of fields. You may have to initiate contact rather than waiting for them to come to you. Figure out how research collaboration can benefit the university and your organization and propose an arrangement. Some schools such as Cornell’s Johnson School of Management require some students to complete a community service project as a condition of their financial aid from the Park Foundation.

Case study: Roy H. Park Leadership Fellowship Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

The Roy H. Park Leadership Fellowship Program was founded to develop leaders who focus on personal contribution as well as professional achievement. Each Park Leadership Fellow must make a significant public-service contribution to the Johnson School, the University or the greater Ithaca community through the completion of a service-leadership project. These projects serve as a capstone learning experience for leadership development by providing the Park Fellows with an opportunity to practice their leadership skills, integrate the perspectives of diverse disciplines, and develop an enduring commitment to public service while benefiting either nonprofit organizations or for-profit start-ups that stimulate economic development.

In 2004, Park Fellows undertook the following arts-related projects:

• strategic analysis of market opportunities to develop a business plan for the historic Ithaca State Theater;
• assistance to launch a socially-oriented, for-profit enterprise focused on producing fine chocolate while promoting art and education in society.

(Cornell University Johnson School Park Leadership
Fellows Program Service Leadership Projects, para. 1-2)

Challenges

Trying to make the gorilla waltz: In research collaborations, we are up against the challenge of balancing power, objectives and outcomes within an inherently unbalanced relationship. Make sure you get something useful — what you want and need – from the arrangement. Bridging the worlds of creative pursuits and business (or planning or computer science) presents language challenges and barriers. Identify the person in your organization that can express and interpret needs, assets and data for the collaboration. Language can be technical and complex, plans need to be in place that will bridge perceptual and conceptual distance in order to successfully apply research to specific needs as well as to establish and maintain successful, long-term relationships.

Strategy 9: Perils and Promise of Arts-based Brick and Mortar Projects

Undertaking building projects to form an arts center is currently very popular. These projects can provide physical evidence of a community’s united effort to combat blight, dysfunction, and disinterest through a downtown renovation. A community arts space in a central location can be a gathering space that teaches local history and helps a community develop its sense of place even as that specific place changes use. An arts building that creates foot traffic at all hours of the day and evening can have a beneficial ripple effect on a downtown area, creating a cultural anchor to complement or attract retail or business anchors. These projects often work with organizations that engage in main-street development and historic preservation, extending the networks around the project. Large arts-related spaces with multiple uses create synergies and creative linkages. If a community chooses to use the “Community Build” approach to construct the building, they can build solidarity, cohesion and pride as well as bricks and mortar.

Putting Strategies into Action

An arts-related building project needs to be directed by a group or individual with a very clear vision and the communications skills to convey it to diverse groups of community members. The director(s) should have a long-term to commitment to the project and have the perseverance to withstand the inevitable setbacks.

Clearly stated goals and scope of project as well as careful planning are needed to bring a brick-and-mortar project to fruition. Wide collaboration and strategic thinking about the sort of place this should be is essential. Identify the holes in your region in terms of arts services. If a jazz venue is proposed, do market research to find out if such a venue will be economically viable in this community. Maybe it would make more sense to collaborate with a local restaurant to present jazz or create a genre-neutral music space for presenting diverse types of music and attracting audiences to hear it.

Understand the cultural norms of your area and know when and why you are deviating from them. Identify who is in your community, including immigrant groups and ethnic enclaves in your area that could help you take a multi-cultural approach to programming. This may require expanding your definition of culture. (See Walker, C., Scott-Melnyk, S., and Sherwood, K. report). It will also build your resources and audience base.

Drum up support for your project from skilled volunteers such as architects, engineers and contractors, carpenters and painters. Create a model of the space you are envisioning and a prototype of a calendar of events for the community to view. Propose a budget for the first five years of operation based on the work other communities have done in building similar projects and their budgets and timelines. When appropriate, begin discussions with potential tenants for your space such as restaurants and galleries on the ground floor, artist studios and the professional offices of creative businesses on the upper floors. After-school and summer programs are often looking for creative recreational opportunities for kids and can become a steady and secure source of revenue.

Investigate opportunities available from community development corporations. Find out how to take advantage of federal and state rehabilitation loan programs and talk with groups who have packaged funding for similar projects.

Brick-and-mortar projects take a long time and you need to maintain interest in the project. One strategy is to begin the arts programming you have proposed in an alternate space. If you are able to present concerts, plays, recitals and exhibits in another space but under the name of the new building project, your audience will associate the quality of that programming with the project. Every presentation becomes an opportunity to ask for donations and volunteer participation.

Case study: Hamilton Initiative, Hamilton, N.Y.

The Hamilton Initiative is a limited liability company (LLC) formed for the purpose of acquiring and renovating selected building structures in downtown Hamilton, N.Y., in rural Madison County where Colgate University is located. Supporters with an interest in the vitality of the Village of Hamilton engaged in an effort that benefited the college and the village by dramatically improving the appearance and functions of key downtown structures.

The Hamilton Initiative purchased and renovated seven historic buildings that occupy or influence three important corners at the five-way intersection at the village's center. The project's goal is to restore the facades of the buildings while renovating or reinventing interior spaces to encourage business downtown, including tenants such as the Blue Bird Restaurant and the Colgate University Bookstore.

Several of the buildings fall within Hamilton's historic district, which is architecturally significant because many of its structures were built during a brief period after an 1895 fire destroyed much of the business district. While most of the facades were relatively intact, remodeling over the years has masked their architectural character. Work on the buildings enhanced the quality of life in the village and its economic climate. It also complemented a community development effort by the Village of Hamilton and the nonprofit Partnership for Community Development. Its goals are: to attract and encourage new and existing small businesses by providing architectural guidance and other incentives to improve the village's streetscape, restore the facades on privately held buildings downtown, and renew the Village Green. (Hamilton Initiative, para. 1-4)

Challenges

Because these projects are so capital-intensive, they can quickly overwhelm a low-density community. Results can be slow and frustrating, causing the project to lose momentum. There may be a conflict about what the Main Street area is designed to serve and attract or who is benefiting from the project. Hidden or unstated agendas need to be discussed. The needs of retailers, real-estate developers, the Chamber of Commerce and the Tourism Board should be balanced with those of senior citizens, youth, pedestrians, cyclists and other groups. “Disneyfication” is a term that has been coined to refer to the generic makeovers of towns and neighborhoods within cities that ignore the norms, aesthetics and traditions of longtime citizens of those areas. Try to elicit lively debate about these issues.

Conclusions

The practitioner’s toolkit is designed to be an on-the-ground resource that bridges the gap between interest in creative economy as a concept and implementing workable strategies that positively affect communities. It is of particular use to nonurban practitioners because it provides resources, connections and ideas to those who may otherwise feel isolated in a sparsely populated area, especially those with higher-education institutions. In addition, the toolkit is flexible and stresses the importance of assessing local conditions and adapting to serve them. We plan to reconfigure the toolbox as an interactive resource on our Web site in the future. In this way, users will be able to add examples of successes and challenges to the nine strategy areas and support one another’s efforts to build local and regional creative economies and address the growing understanding that people, quality of place and innovation are central to sustainable economic development.

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Susan Christopherson, Ph.D., an economic geographer, is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Suzanne Loker, Ph.D., a consultant in the apparel industry, is a Professor and J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise, Department of Textiles and Apparel, Cornell University. Susan Monagan, B.A., is the manager of audience development and special projects in the Department of Theatre Arts, Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y., and is engaged in several projects initiated by Cornell's CARDI (Community and Rural Development Institute) where she is pursuing an M.P.S. degree that looks specifically at using art in community development, focusing on interviews with community arts practitioners. Monagan’s thesis, "The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six Portraits,” was published on CAN, and she was the subject of a cross-sector interview on CAN, both in 2006.