About
Interactive map of Massachusetts Cultural Districts
- C. Ryan
Anywhere you go downtown, Gloucester meets the sea
Gloucester's downtown Cultural District is the hub and center of the oldest seaport in New England teeming with residents and neighbors, stores, industry, restaurants, and local culture. The harbor and its work have inspired all manner of creative artists, iconoclasts and innovators for centuries and continues to draw locals and visitors. Gloucester's downtown cultural district boasts a staggering array of cultural assets, businesses, and year-round creative arts and entertainment activities. Dozens of festivals celebrate the city’s diverse ethnic heritage, fishing traditions, literary giants, and contemporary arts and culture. This downtown district counts more than 35 restaurants, many of which host live music at night and feature changing art exhibits. The Cape Ann Museum is lauded as one of the finest small museums in the country. Downtown Gloucester also features the HarborWalk – an interactive public path featuring stories and images of the district’s annual St. Peter’s Fiesta, heroic fisherman Howard Blackburn, artists such as Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, poets Charles Olson and T.S. Eliot, writers Sebastian Junger and Virginia Lee Burton, along with inventors and waterfront workers. The Walk loops by a working waterfront, past sea captain mansions, across from the Crow's Newt, pocket parks, the seven gabled Fitz Henry Lane house, museums, Stacy Boulevard and Stage Fort Park.
Downtown Gloucester has always been a thriving naturally occurring cultural district.
The Massachusetts Cultural Council voted unanimously to approve downtown Gloucester as "Gloucester's Harbortown Cultural District" on March 29, 2013, but will change it to Gloucester's Downtown Cultural District as soon as possible. What does that mean?
The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) is a state agency that promotes, educates, and advocates for arts and culture resources. Since the 1980s, more and more local and state governments, some with arts agencies like the MCC, have led the way in establishing policy that fosters economic growth and sense of place through cultural districts. Generally, cultural districts are special areas within municipalities and focal points of pride and collaboration. They possess an absolute "it" quality for arts & culture and sense of place. Cultural districts, state certified or not, can vary greatly. Planning policy, vitality and cultural support is called many names over the past decades. Historic planning antecedents include 19th century municipal arts, amenity and City Beautiful goals; Depression era New Deal projects; community arts councils; federal cultural funding agencies established in the 1960s; Jane Jacobs maxims; city defensible philosophies of the 1970s; and trending terms like placemaking, smart growth, innovation, and sustainable.
In 2010, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Cultural District Initiative, which launched in 2011. By June of 2011, Gloucester began a quest seeking designation for its already naturally vibrant downtown. With such a winning combination of talented partners, the model of Rocky Neck, and with the full support and lead partnership from the City of Gloucester through the City Council and the Office of the Mayor, at the time Carolyn Kirk and continued by Mayor Romeo Theken, we did it! As of March 2017, there are 35 cultural districts across Massachusetts with 40 possible by the end of June. The designation lasts for five years. Gloucester has two districts (downtown and Rocky Neck) as does Barnstable and Boston. (See the interactive Massachusetts Cultural District Google map.)
The MCC receives funding from the MA state legislature and from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Bank of America, and others. The MCC in turn funds programs across the Commonwealth including much in Gloucester. There is no funding for the Cultural Districts. The local Gloucester Cultural Council (GCC) in recent years has received annual funding from the MCC, between $5000-$7600.
There are 4 Cultural Districts on Cape Ann and 6 on the North Shore: Gloucester's downtown and Rocky Neck Cultural Districts; Rockport; Essex; Newburyport, and Lynn.
North of Boston includes Concord, Haverhill and Lowell.
