Healing Spaces: Insights from CAST’s Cultural Space Cafes on Affordable Artist Housing

“Permanently affordable housing is healing work and not just healing to get it (home); there’s a shit ton of healing that needs to happen to bring people into the space where they both believe it for themselves and others…a space that heals.”

— Keith Hennessy, Artist & Cultural Space Cafe Panelist

Often, when affordable artist housing is discussed, it is from the view of the cost of the “brick-and-mortar” building. There may be a conversation around the artist’s individual needs based on their discipline, e.g., sinks to wash paint brushes or insulation in walls to drown out the sound of someone practicing their music. From there, collective needs like exhibition space, production space, and loading zones are added to the mix.

Rarely is the topic of healing brought into the fold.

CAST hosted two Cultural Space Cafes on Affordable Artist Housing in the Bay Area. Each cafe was co-created with an art anchor (a BIPOC leader who held deep knowledge and/or lived experience on the topic) to shape the dialogue. We hoped that from the dialogue, we would better understand the next step or action towards short and long-term solutions.

What did we learn?

The first Cultural Space Cafe in July 2024 was about the topic of Affordable Artist Housing, inviting our community to discuss and explore how cities can create space for artists to live where they work. The event featured a screening of Director Kevin Duncan Wong‘s film Home Is A Hotel, which follows the lives of five community members who reside in Single-Room Occupancy hotels in the Tenderloin, South Of Market, and Chinatown Communities. The screening was accompanied by community conversation led by Wong and other community members, residents, and leaders.

Our second Cultural Space Cafe in September 2024 focused on Affordable Housing Across the Generations in the Bay, a conversation that was initiated with what I call Bay Area artists who have created “legacy” work. Grounded in the luminary work of Bay Area artists amara tabor-smith, Keith Hennessy, Rashida Chase, KKINGBOO, and Joanna Haigood, this session explored what it could look like to prototype systems of care that allow artists to stay rooted where they create, in community across generations.

While the anchor artists and audiences were distinct, central to both cultural space cafe panels was the acknowledgment of the impact on their families: disconnection and displacement from the individual to the collective. The panel discussed the ravages of colonization and racist systems on those they love, including biological and chosen family/community, and the artist’s voice as an enmeshed element in the story of affordable housing. The desire for authentic connection in the DNA of a multi-generational, diverse community is part of what seals the brick-and-mortar together into a home.

Because of artists’ inherent creative expression through many mediums, they are the tip of the iceberg for advocating for affordable housing for all. They speak the truth. They are one of many canaries in the mine that signal the warning.

We are changed post-pandemic and post-2024 elections. Americans are lonelier and more divided than ever. How can artists and cultural workers use their creative practice to inspire and reimagine beyond the brick-and-mortar, beyond the divides that separate and bind us?

For BIPOC communities, the concept of healing must be a foundational aspect to everything when considering affordable housing for artists and cultural workers.

What’s next for CAST?

Unconditionally, we will continue to educate and activate innovative, sustainable approaches to taking more real estate off the market for affordable artist spaces, including supporting pop-up events, short-term and long-term leasing, and acquiring and stewarding property.

Our team is pursuing multiple interconnected strategies to create change at the systems level, starting with working with local elected officials and housing and art advocates for artist housing set-asides and reclassification, which in turn will open more affordable artist housing possibilities.

We also launched our Space to Dream Initiative, a 10-year initiative to ensure long-term affordability for artists and arts organizations that aims to make affordable capital more readily available through a new form of social impact investment and loan vehicles.

Beyond the brick-and-mortar, we continue to listen, learn, and heal with the artists, cultural workers, and community members in our community with CAST across the Bay to move us all a step closer toward progress.