PEABODY ― Community-building nonprofit CultureHouse has released an impact report analyzing the successes and challenges, community engagement and economic revitalization of its month-long, pop-up event space in the city.
The report reflects on the successes and challenges faced by city planners, business owners, and community organizations as they used the pop-up space to improve their downtown main streets and revitalize the community.
Events at the pop-up CultureHouse space changed on a daily basis, oftentimes contracting with local businesses, including restaurants, to put on community arts-and-culture events.
The report contains observations on how the popup connected with the town’s downtown streetscape, transportation network, public spaces, demographics, and social infrastructure, all while providing context to the origins of the project as well as its impact on the community.
The impact report also showed that 95 percent of visitors stayed at events for longer than one hour, favorable opinions of the area increased from 17 percent to 77 percent after visiting the popup, and 48 percent of visitors heard about the popup through an event or program the space was hosting.
In addition to data-driven insights, the report discusses successes, including that it provided a hub for businesses and entrepreneurs to gather and collaborate, supported local artists, and empowered teens to utilize the space.
It also includes the challenges the space overcame, saying it reached a wider audience, created a multilingual-accessible space, and attracted visitors to less popular programs.
Aaron Greiner, director at CultureHouse, said it’s important to share these insights in a report that continues the momentum of this project.
“Over the five short weeks we were open to the public, we observed how the space was used, opened minds to new ways of using storefronts to foster community engagement, and gained valuable insight into potential opportunities to revitalize downtown main streets in Peabody,” Greiner said. “And while we hope that our findings analyzed in this report will build on current successes in the city of Peabody, there are also insights in this report that could help other towns in Massachusetts and beyond become livelier and more vibrant.”
Some of the recommendations from the impact report are already being implemented by businesses that neighbored the pop-up space.
Create & Escape, a DIY creative workshops studio, has implemented some of the street-level activations such as sidewalk signage.
They also added new community-oriented programs to their calendar, including open mic nights and meet-the-artist events to attract residents to the location, inspired by the community engagement they witnessed across the street from the popup.
CultureHouse will be meeting with members of the city’s advisory group, the City of Peabody, Peabody Main Streets, and local businesses to share the details of the impact report and additional suggestions for increasing economic vitality in the downtown Main Street area. CultureHouse said they hope the impact report will inspire local leaders to take meaningful steps to establish a healthy, vibrant, and lively city through relevant and engaging community services.
To read the report, visit http://culturehouse.cc/peabody.