Sugar Hill

Funding for impact and sustainability

Monday, October 22, 3:45pm – 4:45pm

Oakland Center: Merritt I (1000 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94607)I

Organized by Michelle Johnson, program officer, Arts & Culture, The Kresge Foundation; and Regina Smith, managing director, Arts & Culture, The Kresge Foundation.

Moderated by Regina Smith, managing director, Arts & Culture, The Kresge Foundation. Presented by Blair M. Duncan, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone; Jamie Bennet, executive director, ArtPlace America; and Ellen Baxter, founder and executive director, Broadway Housing Communities.

Broadway Housing Communities’ Sugar Hill Project, a mixed-use development designed by David Adjaye, pairs a children’s museum of art and storytelling with 124 units of affordable housing and an early childhood center to generate transformational change in a high poverty, largely immigrant urban community.

The session will consist of a discussion between three leading funders committed to realizing the full potential of creative placemaking at Sugar Hill, and the practitioner whose work was supported by philanthropic investments at three distinct stages of the project’s development:

ArtPlace’s early support which affirmed BHC’s bold decision to pair a children’s museum with affordable housing and early education at a single site in a high-needs community;
Kresge’s multi-year investment in strengthening and amplifying the impact of this replicable multi-sector programming model; and
UMEZ’s multi-year grant made directly to the museum, signaling the museum’s emergence as a full partner in BHC’s creative placemaking mission, and the long-term sustainability of this ambitious initiative working at the intersection of housing, education, and art.