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Technical Assistance

Do you have a space related challenge? 

With over 30 years of experience, Artspace Consulting can assist your arts organization, non-profit, or city agency with a customized technical assistance scope of work tailored to meet your needs.

 

To meet communities’ current and future creative space needs, Artspace Consulting has expanded to include a number of customizable scopes of work ranging from helping organizations find a new home, guiding building owners as they plan for arts uses, assisting foundations as they work to strengthen their local arts communities, helping city agencies determine how best to proceed with an arts center development, asset mapping cultural institutions, to matchmaking organizations and users with proposed arts spaces.

 

We provide technical assistance services that include community engagement, project concept refinement, space-use planning, budget analysis, sustainable facilities analysis (30-year capital and operating development pro formas), and capital project fundraising strategies.

 

Artspace Consulting has found from its work in over 250 communities that each place has its own unique challenges and opportunities associated with their project, and begins each customized scope by listening to the needs of the local community and stakeholders.

 

Typical scopes of work include a visit by two Artspace Consulting staff to a given city, presenting at meetings, facilitating discussions, explaining possible governance structures, refining a project concept, and external research and analysis around the budget for creating sustainable space. Please refer to the case studies below to see the range of Artspace Consulting's technical assistance work across the country. 

 

Customized Consulting Case Studies

Artspace Consulting was invited to Albany in 2013 through a unique partnership between the Albany Housing Authority and the Albany Barn, a non-profit focused on affordable space for artists and creative entrepreneurs.  Ultimately, we provided technical assistance to help redevelop the former St. Joseph’s Academy, an abandoned school in the heart of Albany’s Arbor Hill neighborhood into 22 low-cost live/work residences, and 13,500+ square feet of multi-tenant creative arts incubator, enterprise and program space called "The Barn."

Albany Barn was taking on a big project for a small nonprofit operating out of a couple thousand square feet of rented space.  Artspace Consulting worked with Albany Barn to provide capacity building assistance – from board development, to staffing, to the financing, and management of a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit project. 

VISIT ACADEMY LOFTS AT THE BARN'S WEBSITE

Over the course of two visits in 2011 and 2012, Artspace Consulting worked with the Bemidji Community Arts Center (BCAC) to find it a new home. The organization was housed for 30 years in a historic Carnegie Public Library, but the building's difficulties and size were becoming untenable for the small but mighty arts center. The BCAC utilized a three-year Arts Lab grant to undertake an institutional self-assessment that included an Artspace visit to review candidate buildings for their suitability for adaptive reuse as a new home; and make a compelling case for funding and community support. Artspace toured site options and conducted an analysis of each in terms of location, size, ADA accessibility, parking, acquisition potential, remodeling prospects, estimated utility cost, space flexibility, and “intangibles.” Artspace also conducted several focus groups with local stakeholders to determine the community’s needs and desires for a new facility.

Ultimately, Artspace recommended a former grocery store (located directly across the street from the Library) as having the greatest potential to serve as BCAC’s new home. In 2014, the BCAC changed its name to the Watermark Art Center; and moved into its new home in 2017. The Watermark now has a space to meet its programming needs, including four galleries (one of which is rented by the Bemidji State University), education space that doubles as a rentable community room, and an acre of green space.

VISIT THE WATERMARK ART CENTER'S WEBSITE

Artspace Consulting was was invited in 2011 and 2013 to help the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) develop one or more viable project concepts to guide redevelopment of its historic, overcrowded Artist Studio Building in the Tremont neighborhood of South Boston.

Over two trips to Boston, the Artspace team facilitated a charette, conducted focus groups with stakeholders, and solicited ideas for a potential redevelopment of the Artist Studio Building on the Boston Center for the Arts campus. Artspace's report addressed a range of options, from modest renovation to code issues to a complete overhaul with significant additions at the back and/or front of the building. Strict historic preservation guidelines restricted the potential reuse options though keeping the building filled with artists was the goal.

Since Artspace's consulting study, the BCA has secured support from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund and an individual donor to conduct a structural assessment of the Artist Studios Building, launching the next critical step of determining the physical possibilities for the building. In 2020, the BCA is planning a renovation of the building into artist-in-residency spaces and programs to launch their 50th Anniversary.

VISIT BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS WEBSITE

In 2011, the Lac du Flambeau Native Arts and Cultural Center (NACC) hired Artspace to create a plan to move its vision forward for a new "Indian Bowl" facility that would preserve the culture and traditions of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. Artspace developed a business plan for the three arts organizations that would operate in the space, including development and operating pro formas, and determining a governance structure for the three non-profits and new umbrella non-profit. 

The new Waaswaaganing Indian Bowl facility opened in 2017 and is available year-round to community members, tourists, and school groups. The cultural space includes classrooms, exhibit space, wigwams and a retail shop for Woodland Art along with a new performance arena, and concessions stand. It combines the George W. Brown, Jr. Ojibwe Museum, the Woodland Indian Arts Center, and the Waaswaaganing Ojibwe Indian Village under one roof. 

VISIT INDIAN BOWL PROJECT'S WEBSITE

As part of Artspace's 2018 yearlong feasibility study in Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville with the Walton Family Foundation, Artspace's Consulting team created Creative Economy Asset Maps for all four communities. The data was based on past research and benchmarks from 2014, as well as 12 new in-person interviews, online research, Arts Market Survey responses, and local stakeholder input. Through the 6-month effort, Artspace found the region had seen enormous growth in the past five years and each downtown is a magnet for creative uses. 

SEE THE ASSET MAPS 

 

Pittsburgh Glass Center (PGC) invited 28 arts organizations and arts organizers to attend a convening in 2020 facilitated by Artspace Consulting to discuss the space needs of small and mid-sized arts organizations in the City of Pittsburgh. This workshop was an opportunity to continue the conversation around space needs that began during Artspace’s presentation to 45 arts organizations in Pittsburgh in July 2019 as part of Bloomberg’s Arts Innovation Management (AIM) workshops across the country. 

Artspace used the following methodology to inform a thorough analysis of the space needs of Pittsburgh's arts ecosystem.  

  • Workshop convening with 28 small to mid-sized arts organizations
  • Individual interviews with six arts and services organizations/businesses
  • Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis
  • Haves/Needs Matchmaking Exercise and Database 
  • Creative Space Needs Questionnaire 

The report is intended to help guide the conversation locally around what spaces are needed and where can spaces be better utilized. Artspace Consulting found through this process that there is a good balance of those that have space and those that need space, and created a database for arts organizations to post and find space.

Artspace Consulting was invited by the Pittsburgh Glass Center in 2019 to work with the organization as they prepare for a massive expansion and capital campaign. As part of our work, we conducted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis with a subset of the board and staff. The results of this recommendation were put into action items and recommendations for PGC as they embark on this new phase as an organization.