Introducing Space to Dream
The Space to Dream Initiative is a 10-year, CAST-led initiative designed to ensure long-term affordability for artists and arts organizations in the Bay Area.
The Bay Area is at a turning point, and our cities have transformed with commercial real estate vacancies at all time highs, and buildings selling for historically low prices. This is an unprecedented market window, one that won’t last long, and we have a bold vision to create systems level change.
Affordable Capital is Essential
This initiative will address the root of artist displacement by making affordable capital available to finance space acquisitions for artists and arts organizations.
Millions of dollars of philanthropic operating support end up subsidizing rent in increasingly unaffordable cities.
This new stack of social impact investment and loan vehicles is designed to address different elements of the problem in unique ways to create a more sustainable solution for acquiring space.
While these are not sources for working capital, these funds offer new pathways for arts organizations and individual artists/collectives, who are often overlooked in traditional banking, to access affordable capital so they, too, can take advantage of the market’s discounted properties that are primed for arts activation. Click for more on what affordable capital could enable and the impacts of scale.
Each offering is connected to a broader set of multiple interconnected strategies: affordable capital, policy change, and capacity building. Assembling these puzzle pieces enables us to build an engine for long-term affordability. This will change the equation for artists, cultural workers, and arts organizations. When they spend less of their budget on rent, they can invest more towards creative pursuits and innovation.
