City officials see new economic model for artists

Date: 12/19/2012

By G. Michael Dobbs

news@thereminder.com

HOLYOKE — Jeffrey Bianchine, Holyoke's creative economy industries coordinator, said there was a lot to see in how the arts have been used to improve the economy of Providence, R.I., and he believes some of it can be duplicated in Holyoke's downtown.

Bianchine and other members of the Planning and Economic Development Department went to Rhode Island last week to tour three mixed-use buildings owned by the nonprofit organization AS220.

"It's incredible what they have done there," Bianchine told Reminder Publications. "It's truly inspiring."

Bianchine explained that AS220 has purchased and renovated the buildings to serve as incubators for creative businesses. The buildings have shared facilities for the tenants such as gallery and performance space, a youth program, a recording studio, a print shop, a darkroom and media arts lab, a high-tech fabrication and electronics lab, a black-box theater and a dance studio.

Artists in the program also live in the buildings, which have 48 affordable live/work studios as well as a bar and restaurant. About 1,000 artists participate in the program annually and an estimated 93,000 people come as customers or audience members.

Artists involved in the AS220 program include those from theater, dance, poetry, photography, music, printmaking, painting, puppetry and more.

Bianchine said that once an artist is successful in establishing his or her business, they move out of the program into their own space, which strengthens economic development.

Providence and Holyoke share some of the common denominators that have made the AS220 program a success there, Bianchine said. Holyoke has available buildings and there is already a growing arts scene.

He said that AS220 "grew organically there and [a similar program] could grow organically here."

What will be necessary is to have a nonprofit organizations work with for-profit businesses, he added.

Bianchine said he knows there are people in Holyoke ready to try such a model and it will be his job to "get people talking" as well as looking at potential grants to help fund such a program.

He believes the timing is right for such an effort.