Note: The text below is excerpted from an article in Fast Company. Read the original here.
Stephanie Lee and Ellen Shakespear met on a bus. At the time, both were graduate students at MIT; Lee was studying architecture and Shakespear was studying urban planning. Both were excited to be a part of their respective programs. But they were both frustrated by a campus culture they felt was “incredibly insular.”
The chance meeting led to an ongoing rapport, and a similar realized frustration about the evolution of urban space in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts, where MIT is based. For its part, the city of Cambridge has launched a “Vacant Storefront Initiative,” and an associated database and interactive map that catalogues empty storefronts in the municipality; the database currently lists 72 addresses of varying lease status. Cambridge isn’t alone; cities across the country have experienced increased vacancies in brick-and-mortar stores over the years. (In 2018, The Atlantic called the empty storefronts in New York “a dark omen for the future of cities,” citing rent hikes disproportionate to the growth of retail sales, the proliferation of online shopping, and the migration of businesses selling durable, nonperishable goods to the online sector.) “It was frustrating to see the city become muted,” says Lee. “We started to dream about what could be in an empty storefront.”
The duo workshopped solutions in class, and in its first iteration, developed a concept that would transform empty urban spaces (including and beyond storefronts) into places for creatives to meet up and share what they’re working on. Their professor encouraged them to stop thinking in hypotheticals. In 2018, Lee and Shakespear launched SpaceUs, a company that liaises with city officials, landlords, and prospective artists to broker the use of empty spaces for creative and community good, and host artist pop-ups, exhibitions, “cultural activations,” and more.
The company is now launching an online platform, designed by Brooklyn-based design agency School, to support their mission to “make spaces feel more specific and authentic, and make vacant spaces a destination.” In practical terms, the platform is designed to ease the artist barrier to finding space: Artists submit proposals online for free, then the SpaceUs team finds a space for approved concepts and helps oversee the project coming to life. Before the platform, the team accepted pitches in a variety of ways: through email, direct messages, an online form, and even verbally.
“We were excited to engage with people outside of our context and to see something more authentic to the community. Part of the platform is that we have a constantly open proposal—[artists can submit] any sort of project that they wanted to bring to life. People are constantly dreaming up ideas to bring to the public space,” says Lee. By taking advantage of previously underutilized or empty spaces, SpaceUs helps artists find a place to show their work. The landlord gets to activate an empty space, and the artist gets to show their work, no gallery required.
Read the rest of the article here.