NXTHVN

Titus Kaphar, Jonthan Brand, and Jason Price founded an organization, NXTHVN, to take an old factory building in a rundown neighborhood in New Haven and reconfigure the space into an art incubator, artists’ studios, and a community center. They enlisted Dean of Yale’s School of Architecture, Deborah Berke, to design a plan for building the new space.

The project morphed into two interrelated initiatives that would be housed together in the rehabilitated factory building. The first was an incubator for early-career artists. The program would include a yearlong fellowship that included studio space, a stipend, and a curriculum of workshops to help the artists navigate the realities of making a life in the art world.

The second initiative was a community workspace that would offer low-cost spaces such as studios, coworking offices, and a theater. NXTHVN hoped to attract a diverse group of people to this space, charging them less than they would otherwise have to pay.

The initiatives faced the challenges of all social enterprises. Price and Kaphar had to set-up governance mechanisms, find a communications strategy, and decide on a revenue model. By July 2019, construction was moving toward its conclusion and the first group of emerging artists was working in the studios.

With their newly hired Executive Director, they could begin to examine more questions: How could the programs interact with their neighbors? Could they help revitalize the existing community without displacing its residents and becoming agents of gentrification? And later, even larger questions would arise: Was this model replicable in other locales? Could art become a vehicle for redevelopment of urban neighborhoods?