Case Study

Houston Cultural districts

Elevating Arts & Culture in America’s Most-Diverse Big City

The seven Cultural Districts in Houston collectively represent a cross-section of the diverse neighborhoods and arts experiences that make the city unique. In a first-of-its time collaboration, the districts came together to create a vision for increasing the visibility of arts and culture in Houston locally, regionally, and nationally. With the support of the Houston Endowment, the districts engaged Trepwise to help lift up community needs and define a collective strategy.

Product:

Systems Coordination

Sector:

Non-Profit

Solution

Our team led an inclusive and expansive year-long discovery and planning process that yielded two core outputs: 1) a Vision and Plan for the districts to build awareness of the Houston arts sector’s unique diversity, variety, impact, and potential, and 2) an Evaluation Report: a framework for measuring and articulating the network’s impact.

The resulting plan – Creative Connections – focuses on how seven Cultural Districts In Houston — wide-ranging in their variety and history, but all concentrated within a 10 minute commute from the downtown area – can work together to build awareness of the arts and culture scene in Houston.

Results

The report secured initial seed funding to advance the priorities laid out in the plan. Trepwise is now supporting the launch of HouArts in Action, a regional effort to grow a network of arts and culture champions through building advocacy capacity and developing partnerships beyond the arts & culture sector. That project can be followed along with at HouArts.org.