CAPITAL B
CAPITAL B
Community Development & Coalition Building
Chez Bushwick is a 2009-2010 recipient of a Rockefeller New York City Cultural Innovation Fund award, toward the goal of launching CAPITAL B: Coalition of Art & Performance Initiatives Towards A Livable Bushwick. This group of artists, local residents, nonprofit organizations & small businesses in this area of Brooklyn, is united and committed to arts-based economic development and urban revitalization.
CAPITAL B Mission:
To establish a more engaged network of cultural alliances between arts venues and local communities, by pooling resources to help stimulate greater civic participation, and strengthen neighborhood sustainability in North Brooklyn. (Region: Bushwick)
Project Description:
Northern Brooklyn offers a vibrant array of arts organizations and independent businesses, with the potential to become a superlative nucleus of economic development, urban revitalization, and cultural programming of outstanding artistic quality. However, little infrastructure or strategy exists to sustain the rapid rate of development in this area. With recent gentrification in Brooklyn, artists, local residents, nonprofits, and small businesses have emerged within a climate of risk: the displacement of these groups is a shared phenomenon, reflecting a crisis at the municipal level. CAPITAL B mobilizes twenty diverse organizations to stabilize this region as a sustainable purveyor of artistic and economic development.
The Bushwick vicinity of North Brooklyn is home to an impressive array of arts and cultural organizations, including Chez Bushwick, and an associated coalition of twenty organizations that reflect a broad assortment of nonprofit, commercial, and private corporations. These businesses, organizations, and other cultural institutions have catalyzed the development of North Brooklyn, and continue to sustain growth for the considerable future, promising economic development and renewed cultural vitality in the following areas: East Williamsburg Industrial Park, Bushwick, Ridgewood, and throughout the Industrial Business Zone of North Brooklyn.