CONTEXT

The cultural planning process built on momentum generated by residents and grassroots groups in Arlington over the course of a decade. In 2013, these efforts coalesced when Arlington’s Town Manager appointed members to the Arlington Commission on Arts and Culture, formerly the Arlington Cultural Commission. Three years later, town staff and community leaders from the Arlington DPCD and the ACAC joined forces to initiate the Arlington Arts and Culture Action Plan.

The Arts and Culture Action Plan offered a strategy for integrating local arts and culture life with other civic priorities, such as economic development and social cohesion, and other planning efforts, including the Arlington Master Plan and cultural district planning. It also clearly articulated how arts and cultural planning could support other facets of community development, including public space management, municipal construction, transportation initiatives, and education and youth development. Ultimately, the Action Plan outlined six goals to support the town’s vision for cultural planning and policy:

• Strengthen Arlington's infrastructure for arts and culture, with a focus on implementing public and private funding programs and management models to support the Town’s arts and cultural activities
• Improve policy conditions and administrative procedures to help the arts and cultural sector thrive. These included updating local zoning codes to support a greater variety of arts and cultural uses, revising local bylaws that impose restrictions on public cultural life, and easing restrictions on the use of public facilities and open spaces by the arts and cultural community
• Pursue interdisciplinary planning initiatives that engage arts, culture, and creativity as vital to implementing the master plan vision, including an ongoing cultural asset inventory, measuring the impact of arts and cultural on Arlington's planning and community development priorities.
• Expand public access to opportunities for creative development, participation, and expression, including opportunities for partnerships among arts and cultural organizations that are responsive to civic priorities around diversity and inclusion, arts-based youth development programming, and collaborations among arts and cultural community, libraries, and schools.
• Strengthen the organizational infrastructure of Arlington arts and cultural institutions, including efforts to support local arts and cultural organizations with aspects of strategic planning such as audience development, marketing, and income generation.
• Elevate the social infrastructure and connectivity of Arlington’s artists and creative professionals, including Town-initiated opportunities for artists to network, perform, and share their work, and recruitment of members from the local arts and cultural community to the Arlington Cultural Council.