What Kind of Space Do You Need to Create?

The City of Tacoma and the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation are looking for feedback from all you artists and creative types on what kind of spaces you'd like to see to foster creative expression in Tacoma. 

The City of Tacoma and Greater Tacoma Community Foundation are committed to supporting the conditions for a thriving, vibrant Tacoma.  Authentic, interesting neighborhoods include a healthy mix of creative and cultural uses from theaters and galleries to record stores and coffee shops that reflect the diversity of our community.  We are interested in the retention and improvement of existing spaces and the development of new opportunities for all types of creative uses.  In order to make our vision a reality, we need your input!

The idea of "creative spaces" is a pretty broad category - potentially encompassing professional performance spaces and museums alongside shared shared studios and coffee shops. If we accept the idea that a varied mix of these spaces and more strengthen our city as a whole, we're then left with questions about how that mix can be achieved. A conversation last night about creative space in Tacoma took on those questions - among them:

How do we build our neighborhoods to include a sustainable creative life-force?

How do we best use our existing assets?

What strategies do we currently employ to engage the creative community?

Where are the gaps?

The conversation and an online survey are part of a study to help the City and local property owners and developers advance projects and provide new options for artists of all types to live, work, create, fabricate, sell, display, perform, and otherwise engage in various modes of creative activity.

Answers to the survey will help inform development decisions and let both the City and developers know what kind of needs and wants there are for creative spaces in Tacoma in terms of space, size, design features, location, cost, and amenities. 

If you're an artist, what kind of space would be attractive to you? Are there examples of spaces elseswhere that could work in Tacoma? How do we integrate these spaces into the existing urban fabric?

The survey, along with more information about Creative Space Tacoma is available online at creativespacetacoma.org - take the survey now through February 9, 2015.