Position Statement: Arts Space in Somerville

February, 2024

Over recent decades, as property values rise, traditional artist buildings are bought on the cheap & redeveloped, displacing hundreds of artists, musicians, craftspeople, and other creatives, diluting Greater Boston’s creative economy. 

Traditional artist buildings were most often abandoned or underused industrial/fabrication or mill/factory buildings in Massachusetts. Of recent, they are 2-4 floors and have mostly been subdivided for individual artist workspaces and music rehearsal studios. They usually house dozens to hundreds of creatives, many also operating as small businesses and over time, become authentic, organic, creative communities, often joining forces, collaborating, sharing resources. 

These communities not only serve the creative tenants within them, but they are also the lifeblood of our regional arts and cultural ecosystem -- they are the workspaces where props and costumes are made for professional theater; where songs are written and music is designed for concerts, film, video games; where illustrations, paintings, video, and photography are created for galleries, museums, professional advertising, award-winning documentary film; where new plays, novels, biographies, and poetry are written; where stone is sculpted, metal welded, apparel designed and printed, guitars/amplifiers repaired, albums recorded, mixed, mastered, podcasts recorded and distributed--almost every creative endeavor is found in these hundreds of studios — and a few times a year, they open their studios, allowing the public behind the scenes, to see their process, equipment, materials and how it all works.  

Rent is often affordable as these buildings are typically old, often on the edges of cities/towns and not in 100% good repair. These buildings were once many, are now few and we lose more each month, each year. In Greater Boston alone, we’ve lost over 2 million square feet of creative space. And with it, we lose the artists and creative entrepreneurs to Pawtucket, Lowell, and New Bedford — but soon, as artists add value to those gateway cities, those property values will rise. Then they’ll move to Littleton,  Springfield, and so on.

These buildings, the few left, must be protected and preserved in order for our creative sector to stay intact. Luckily, in 2019, the city of Somerville created the Fabrication District. The FAB District is one of the smallest zones in Somerville -- one of the least amount of square feet, property, buildings. Most of the buildings in this zone are already said arts buildings. If a new buyer or developer wants to buy these properties, they are allowed, by right, to develop 4 floors and are required to build a percentage of space for Arts & Creative Enterprise (ACE) uses.

Both the City of Somerville and some developers have put forth zoning changes to parts of the FAB District. The city has rules for these changes to be considered, including a public process where residents and stakeholders can weigh in with their concerns/ideas. #ARTSTAYSHERE, through our Don’t F with FAB! advocacy campaign, will both participate in the city’s process and lead our own public education/advocacy process so our creative sector is aware, understands the impact of potential, changes and knows how to participate in the process. 

To be loud and clear: neither #ARTSTAYSHERE nor Don’t F with FAB! is against development. Our experience shows that the creative sector working WITH developers, governments, and neighborhoods always yields a win-win-win for all involved. We believe in everyone coming together to share ideas, concerns, and solutions. We believe in development without displacement. We believe that developers can get a return on their investments, municipalities can get tax revenue and community benefit, and that the arts sector can be integrated within both — in order to ultimately also serve both.

We are not against select changes in zoning in the FAB district. But it must be done responsibly and with arts stakeholders at the table — both with government and with developers. We can best share what our sector needs most and how both preserving ACE use & creating more ACE space can be win-win for all. It matters where it is within a development, it matters how it’s accessed by the public, it matters who operates it. Most importantly, it matters that it is and remains affordable. 

ArtsBoston, a proven arts service organization, conducted research about the residual impact of the creative sector. It showed that the arts overall, created more economic impact (dollars spent in the local communities where arts take place) than sports. This means tickets, travel/transportation/parking, restaurants, bars, cafes, and retail shopping. Click here to read The Arts Factor report.

The Arts = Economic Development. It’s not just something we say. It’s a fact. 

Through the next months, #ARTSTSAYSHERE will invite our sector and its supporters to join in our Don’t F with FAB! advocacy campaign. There’s lots to learn, lots to understand, and lots of ways to participate. You don’t have to go to every meeting. You don’t have to write a hundred letters. You show up in the way it works for you, your life, and your ethos. Our advocacy tool kit provides step-by-step ways to understand the issues and a menu of ways you can lend your voice, your time, and your support. 

We know what happens if we do nothing: We lose our artist community buildings. All one has to do is look at Boston’s Fenway and Fort Point neighborhoods, the South End’s iconic Piano Factory, the beloved EMF Building in Cambridge’s Central Square, and most recently Brighton’s Sound Museum, Allston’s 119 Braintree Street, and dozens of others. 

We now also know what happens when we organize, advocate, and share our collective voices. We preserve Humphreys Street Studios in Dorchester as majority artist owned/operated as affordable workspaces in perpetuity; we get interim music rehearsal space and an $18M building earmarked for affordable rehearsal studios in Brighton in perpetuity; we get $1M in relocation support for the artists at 119 Braintree Street, and we work together with RJ Kelly to keep 700+ musicians working at Charlestown Rehearsal Studios.  

We are all arts stakeholders. We are artists, musicians, craftspeople, creative small business owners, arts administrators, and advocates. We work across disciplines and among all genres. We are young, middle-aged, and seniors. We are gay, straight, trans, vegan, omnivores. We shop, eat, work, and live in our arts ecosystem of Greater Boston. We want to create and share our gifts. 

We want to make the world a better place.

But we need a place to do it. Please help us protect arts buildings in Somerville.

Don’t F with FAB.

Everyone can do SOMETHING. Join us.