Arts and culture organizations continue to expand access to a broader audience through community engagement, to prioritize diversity and inclusion, and to embrace Creative Placemaking. However, the formal anchor framework that was developed to guide community development efforts of other types of organizations (e.g., hospitals, universities and corporations), has not been brought forward to arts and culture organizations. The intentionality and defined strategies of the anchor framework to community revitalization is new to the arts world. The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) and Kresge Foundation's Arts & Culture team, have recently completed a deep dive into the current state of anchor activity among arts and culture organizations. Kresge and ICIC have identified a number of large arts and culture organizations leaning into the anchor framework that indicates engagement pathways for different types of arts and culture organizations, including colleges of art and design. Together with the Kresge Foundation, ICIC will share insights from the report, the paths that colleges of art and design are taking towards anchor engagement, and examples of how existing anchor collaboratives, spearheaded by colleges and universities, have incorporated arts and culture organizations as anchor partners.
