A man sits and plays a piano painted with vibrant colors on the concourse level of MARTA's Arts Center Station. Floor to ceiling glass art is behind him along a wall of windows. (Photo courtesy MARTA Artbound)
Art isn’t some luxury. It can be the foundation of downtown recovery, public health, or even transit systems that are truly accessible.
In this episode of Next City, we explore how four cities highlighted in The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning are putting arts and culture at the center of their efforts to become more equitable.
- Randy Engstrom, former director of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, shares how cultural strategies are helping the city’s downtown recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.
- David Fakunle, an assistant professor at Morgan State University, introduces the concept of “existential determinants of health” and shares a Baltimore storytelling program that connects the idea to residents’ lived experiences.
- Katherine Dirga, director of MARTA’s Artbound program in Atlanta, explains how public art, music and even soccer are transforming the transit experience and ensuring everyone is represented in public spaces.
- Jules Rochielle Sievert of NuLawLab shares how organizers in East Boston are combining art and advocacy to resist displacement.
They argue that culture is the connective tissue across multiple sectors of city-building. “Most cultures around the world understand that ‘arts and culture’ is inherently connected to the health and well-being of the population,” Fakunle says. “So it is never arts for the sake of art. It's art for the sake of health.”
“Culture isn’t just decoration,” Dirga adds. “If we want planning and policy to succeed, then culture has to be structurally embedded into these things.”
Listen to the episode below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple, Spotify or Goodpods. This episode is based on a Next City webinar, a recording of which can be viewed in our library.
This post was originally published on Next City.