Let's Talk About Our Arts Community's Affordability Crisis
During this year of mobilization around San Diego-Tijuana’s designation as World Design Capital 2024, Space 4 Art is hosting a series of community conversations to discuss the local arts community’s urgent need for affordable, purpose-designed spaces in which to engage the public with accessible artistic and cultural activities.
This acute lack of affordable artist spaces has been at the center of our mission since our founding in 2009. But the problem recently came into sharp focus for the entire arts community, with the unsettling news that MCASD intends to sell off its downtown facilities at the historic Santa Fe Depot.
At Space 4 Art, we feel strongly that this artistic legacy must continue. Accordingly, we will devote our first convening to exploring how the arts community might preserve and reimagine this historic site, and create and activate other essential cultural infrastructure so that artists may live, work, educate youth, and share their work with the community in affordable, accessible spaces.
To highlight the risk and urgent need, our April 20 meeting will take place at Space 4 Art’s former gallery— itself a crucial community-based arts space lost to gentrification in 2017. We urge you to do three things:
Attend our meeting on 4/20/24.
Share information about our 4/20/24 meeting with your networks.
Contact your elected officials about the desperate need for community-based cultural infrastructure in San Diego. For a full list of elected officials at all levels of government, enter your address using the button below.
Across the Golden State, elected officials are awakening to how the affordability crisis is driving away artists and other cultural workers who supercharge the creative economy that feeds healthy growth in communities across the country and around the world. Let’s make sure they hear what our region needs to really and truly thrive.
Join this crucial conversation beginning April 20 and stay tuned about all the convenings we have planned for 2024. Entry is free, but RSVPs are kindly requested.
One of the easiest ways you can help us is by spreading the word about this important meeting and networking event. Please share a link to this blog article and/or use our Social Media kit. Invite all the artists, musicians, dancers, writers, performers, and arts supporters in your networks!