Framing Session for Supporting Cultural Equity in Community Development
This is the framing paper for the “Supporting Cultural Equity in Community Development” session at the NNIP Fall 2012 partners meeting.
As this local session will explore, neighborhood change is more than a question of economics. The discussion, which will focus on supporting and evaluating cultural equity in community development work, will be heavily informed by Urban–Greater DC’s collaboration with Building Bridges Across the River (BBAR), the DC-based nonprofit organization responsible for the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC) and the 11th Street Bridge Park project. BBAR and its collaborators have centered equitable development in both projects, including making arts and culture a standalone strategic category of the Bridge Park Equitable Development Plan. Urban–Greater DC released a discussion paper in 2021 exploring how cultural equity cuts across all aspects of the park’s strategic planning – a focus that has involved all three of today’s panelists.