NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman Announces $3 Million in Grants From Mayors' Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative

Neighborhood transformation through the arts is the goal of 21 selected projects

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
July 15, 2010

		Contact: Victoria Hutter 202-682-5692 hutterv@arts.gov

Bethlehem, PA -- Under the massive silos and steel girding of an industrial steel blast furnace, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman announced 21 grants totaling $3 million awarded through the NEA Mayors' Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative (MICD 25). The announcement was made at the base of the former Bethlehem Steel Plant known as SteelStacks Campus.

MICD25 supports creative placemaking projects that contribute toward the livability of communities and help transform sites into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their core. The grants range from $25,000 to $250,000 and are awarded to 21 communities ranging from Easton, Pennsylvania (population 26,000) to Los Angeles, California (population 9.8 million). This is the first grant program developed under Chairman Landesman's leadership.

Chairman Landesman was joined for this announcement by Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, Easton Mayor Salvatore Panto, ArtsQuest President Jeff Parks, Lafayette College President Dan Weiss, and NEA Director of Design Jason Schupbach. The chairman said, "I am thrilled that the NEA's vision of Art Works has led to MICD25 and these innovative and exciting projects. I am confident these projects will make a difference to their communities. I look forward to traveling to as many as possible in the coming months and to seeing how art works."

Design Director Schupbach noted, "From post-industrial small towns using arts strategies to reinvent themselves after the major manufacturer has left, to a growing city implementing an environmentally sustainable public art project, these MICD25 grant awards will spark innovative methodologies for the recovery of our communities during this most challenging of economic times."

Each of the MICD25 projects takes a problem such as isolated neighborhoods or a neglected waterfront and uses the arts to solve that problem. The aesthetic and communal qualities of art make them excellent construction materials for transforming physical spaces. Although the arts are at the center of each of the projects, the grantees are extending beyond the arts world to collaborate with local entities such as chambers of commerce, downtown redevelopment councils, departments of transportation, urban planning offices, and park and recreation offices. 

The 21 MICD25 projects are:

Learn more about the funded projects.

Chairman Landesman has spoken frequently about the arts as an economic engine in helping communities reimagine and reshape themselves. The chairman's Art Works vision (described below) has guided his travels to 25 cities and towns nationwide over the last eight months. They are at the core of the NEA's recent collaboration with the Department of Housing and Development (HUD) through HUD's Sustainable Communities Grant Programs. In addition, the NEA's Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal includes Our Town, a project that would provide approximately $5 million to 35 communities to support planning and design projects, and arts engagement strategies to build stronger and healthier places.

To develop MICD25 and to inform the Art Works vision, Chairman Landesman and staff at the NEA looked to recent research. Chief among those is the work done by Professor Mark Stern and Susan Seifert with the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania. Their research demonstrates that the presence of arts has three main effects:

1. The arts are a force for social cohesion and civic engagement. People who participate in the arts are more likely to engage in other civic activities, leading to more stable neighborhoods.
2. The arts are a force for child welfare: low income populations with high cultural participation rates are more than twice as likely to have very low truancy and delinquency rates.
3. And finally, the arts are a poverty fighter. They do this through direct employment, and they do this by leveraging other jobs: the restaurants, retail stores, and hotels that spring up alongside cultural districts.

About Art Works

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman has laid out the guiding principle that will inform his work at the agency, which can be summed up in two words: "Art works." Chairman Landesman means this in three ways:

1. "Art works" is a noun. They are the books, crafts, dances, designs, drawings, films, installations, music, musicals, paintings, plays, performances, poetry, textiles, and sculptures that are the creation of artists.
2. "Art works" is a verb. Art works on and within people to change and inspire them; it addresses the need people have to create, to imagine, to aspire to something more.
3. "Art works" is a declarative sentence: arts jobs are real jobs that are part of the real economy. Art workers pay taxes, and art contributes to economic growth, neighborhood revitalization, and the livability of American towns and cities.

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