Sacred Places Summer 2014 | Page 8

UPDATE on Partners: Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places Since its launch in 2011, Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places has focused on cultivating long-term, sustainable, and mutually beneficial relationships between congregations and artists. Relationships fostered through the program transcend traditional landlord-tenant relationships; they are true collaborations. Artists and arts organizations bring new stakeholders, new energy, new hope – and new dollars - to congregations and their houses of worship. Rent is not the only form of “new dollars” that these space-sharing partners offer. As relationships between several of our AiSP matches have evolved and deepened since the program began, several are now exploring collaborative fundraising on annual appeals, grants, and capital campaigns. In Chicago, North Shore Baptist is launching a capital campaign to retrofit a worship space to do double duty as a theater venue. The congregation is in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, home to many emerging theater companies. Its members worship in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Karen, a language spoken in Myanmar. This diversity has inspired the creation of four As AiSP grows, so will the opportunities to explore collaborative fundraising and capital campaign opportunities. As new matches are made across the country, new best practices for sharing donors and sharing dollars will emerge. distinct worship spaces that represent and celebrate the culture and heritage of each language group. When it came time to renovate the space North Shore uses for Spanish-language fellowship, Pastor Doug Harris saw an opportunity to redo it in a way that would be multipurpose, serving the needs of both the congregation as well as their space-sharing partners. For years, the congregation has cultivated relationships with local theater companies in need of audition and rehearsal space. Retrofitting this worship space so that it could also serve as performance space for local companies was not only a way to utilize every square foot, but also meet the needs of the local network of artists and arts organizations for an affordable venue. The church hired Bailey Edward Architecture to draw up plans that would allow the space to serve this dual role. The congregation is launching a capital campaign, with support of local artists and other external stakeholders, to make this dream a reality. North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago, IL, hired Bailey Edward Architecture to draw up plans for retrofitting a worship space to do double duty as a theater venue. 7 • Sacred Places • www.sacredplaces.org • Summer 2014 Thirty blocks south of North Shore Baptist, dreams are becoming a reality at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square. Under the leadership of Pastor Erik Christensen, the congregation is fostering collaborations with local artists across several media – dance, visual arts, music and art therapy, arts education, and theater. Last year, Partners helped to connect St. Luke’s with Theatre Y, which was searching for