Artist-Planner Collaborations: Lessons Learned from the Arts and Culture Ecosystems of Three Sun Belt Cities for a New Model of Inclusive Planning

City leaders have an opportunity to critically engage with community-rooted artists and cultural organizations to orient arts and culture efforts toward communities’ most pressing issues.

Through cultural planning analysis of three peer cities — Houston, Denver and San Antonio — this report shows how art can be used in order to promote positive neighborhood change, including equity of access to resources and programs, inclusive planning processes and implementation of new strategies to promote inclusivity and maximize economic impact.

Investing in arts and culture across neighborhoods, race and income is a matter of cultural equity. Leaders in the arts ecosystem increasingly recognize the fact that access to quality cultural offerings and the ability to design and implement them should not be limited by identity, socioeconomic status or neighborhood.