Artful Business: Using the Arts for Community Economic Development

Rhonda Phillips, a former economic developer and now a University of Florida professsor says that coupling the arts with eocnomic and community development does make sense. She says we need to approach this task more systematically and we should understand the various strategies that have been put into play to accomplish that coupling.

Phillips says that communities across the United States are integrating the arts into their development efforts. Emerging as a viable approach, community development based on the arts is increasingly being recognized as a catalyzing force. This article presents a typology of artsbased community development approaches: arts business incubators, artist’s cooperatives, development of tourism venues, and comprehensive approaches.

Art as a strategy for encouraging quality community economic development has only recently gained wide spread attention in the U.S. However, its role in community development is long-lived, with roots in the City Beautiful Movement that began in the late 1890’s.

The arts as related to community economic development can be defined as: (1) an industry comprised of individuals, institutions, and organizations functioning as businesses interrelated with other local and regional businesses; (2) wide-ranging to specific cultural amenities; and (3) cultural education, tools, policies, and processes.

Bottom line: Phillips says that arts-based economic development makes a great deal of sense. Download a review copy of her paper here. It will be published this coming Spring in the Community Development Journal.

I noted with great interest that Phillips did not cite Richard Florida's work in her references. That I find interesting.