Cultural Blueprint for Healthy Communities

The Cast of Making Gowanus & Theater of the Liberated: Soft held a Cultural Blueprint for Healthy Communities session to help inform the PLACES: Gowanus Neighborhood Study. Illustration: Hester Street

The Cultural Blueprint for Healthy Communities is a collaborative project developed by El Puente, Arts & Democracy, Hester Street, and NOCD-NY to ensure the planning and sustainability of culturally healthy communities in New York City and beyond. Community groups can use the Cultural Blueprint to understand what their neighbors want to see brought back, preserved, and created in their neighborhoods. The toolkit includes an engagement worksheet and facilitator guide and a summary poster.

The Cultural Blueprint was refined through pilot engagements in Bushwick and Gowanus, Brooklyn, informing the Bushwick Community Plan and elevating local priorities for the PLACES: Gowanus Neighborhood Study and Draft Zoning Proposal.

Collaborators continue to scale up its use in additional New York City communities. In January 2018, NOCD-NY and the Cultural Blueprint team convened for a Peer Learning Exchange: Planning and Rezoning, where El Barrio (East Harlem), East New York, and Gowanus participants shared their rezoning experiences with a citywide audience of artists, community leaders, cultural workers and advocates. See a video of the exchange here: