• Community/Neighborhood Development/Redevelopment is planned and architecture, design standards, the arts and culture are incorporated into and linked to the planning and serve as a catalyst for implementation.

• Increased unemployment
• Migration of people out of the neighborhoods
• Lack of time due to constraints of raising family, meeting basic needs
• Disinvestment
• Deterioration
• Increasing poverty
• People not viewing art as a way of life, part of their quality of life
• Deterioration of schools as a place for experiencing art
• Increased participation of folks in neighborhoods outside of their own homes
• New focus on the importance of neighborhoods and neighborhood groups as important to the future of Flint
• Increased sense of entrepreneurship—neighborhood people finding alternatives to maintaining and improving the neighborhood, circumventing government shortfalls
• Asset-based approach to community improvement
• Neighborhoods are recognizing the value and ease of improving the neighborhood aesthetics and beautification through community gardening projects—working on their own without local government
• Neighborhood initiatives by themselves don’t have same status as “institutions” and so are seeking out partnerships to gain status and opportunities
• Strength of neighborhood organizations (strong example is College and Cultural Neighborhood) - recognized as Centers of Strength; leads to partnerships and strong organizational structure
• Establishment and capacity growth of non-profit CDC’s (community development corporations) working in partnership with neighborhood organizations and acting as sponsors of initiatives, accessing resources
• Increased focus on planning in our community—getting its due that has not been case in the past—creates receptiveness to ideas
• Schools closing (can be opportunity, due to availability of space)
• Disconnectedness of renters to a neighborhood; lack of respect by visitors to neighborhoods (dumpers and casual)
• Focal point of neighborhoods is shifting (schools closing, businesses and institutions changing, parks, churches)
• Uncertainty of political circumstances/government
• Decreased home ownership, increased slum rentals, accelerated rate of tax foreclosures and increased quantity of bank foreclosures (residential and commercial)—all trends in our community
• Decreased government services
• Increased deterioration of commercial corridors and parks, decreased investment
• Some of local arts resources/artists goes underground or outside the community in times of drought (in face of all these problems)—remains unidentified
• Perception of crime
• Decreasing identification with a cultural group (heritage)

• Limited funding/distribution of funding/access to funding
• Infrastructure to access/spend dollars
• Attitudes of funders
• Capacity building needs of small organizations
• Lack of awareness of how place/aesthetics improves quality of life
• Lack of feeling that arts are central to improving quality of life (expendable, a frill)
• Lack of art teachers in schools
• Availability of time
• Power structure/gatekeepers in our community
• People’s identities are focused outside the local (will pay for a movie but not a local play)
• Priority of addressing basic needs and deteriorating communities
• Lack of reach of information/communication/networking into the neighborhoods
• Overemphasis of sports

• Current projects are building networks of artists and community members as well as awareness (such as Color Line Project)
• Local talent and art institutions
• Increased vacant space
• Local funders who support the arts and neighborhood initiatives
• Increased perception that the arts add value to the community
• Use of Neighborhood Violence Prevention Collaborative as a model for disbursing funds to neighborhoods
• Sloan Front Porch Project as means of involving community in Sesquicentenial
• Positive community response to public and community art projects
• Rising tide of arts and culture and focus on cultural diversity has increased attention on local arts and culture (national trend of art as cool)
• Opportunity to remarket (reposition) Flint as arts place—create a new identity
• Emerging and transitional arts scene in several neighborhoods (can act as models)

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