UPDATE on Partners:
Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places
Since its launch in 2011, Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred
Places has focused on cultivating long-term, sustainable, and
mutually beneficial relationships between congregations
and artists. Relationships fostered through the program
transcend traditional landlord-tenant relationships; they
are true collaborations.
Artists and arts organizations bring new stakeholders, new
energy, new hope – and new dollars - to congregations
and their houses of worship. Rent is not the only form of
“new dollars” that these space-sharing partners offer. As
relationships between several of our AiSP matches have
evolved and deepened since the program began, several are
now exploring collaborative fundraising on annual appeals,
grants, and capital campaigns.
In Chicago, North Shore Baptist is launching a capital
campaign to retrofit a worship space to do double duty
as a theater venue. The congregation is in Chicago’s
Andersonville neighborhood, home to many emerging
theater companies. Its members worship in English,
Spanish, Japanese, and Karen, a language spoken in
Myanmar. This diversity has inspired the creation of four
As AiSP grows, so will the
opportunities to explore collaborative
fundraising and capital campaign
opportunities. As new matches are
made across the country, new best
practices for sharing donors and
sharing dollars will emerge.
distinct worship spaces that represent and celebrate the
culture and heritage of each language group.
When it came time to renovate the space North Shore uses
for Spanish-language fellowship, Pastor Doug Harris saw
an opportunity to redo it in a way that would be multipurpose, serving the needs of both the congregation as well
as their space-sharing partners. For years, the congregation
has cultivated relationships with local theater companies
in need of audition and rehearsal space. Retrofitting this
worship space so that it could also
serve as performance space for local
companies was not only a way to utilize
every square foot, but also meet the
needs of the local network of artists
and arts organizations for an affordable
venue. The church hired Bailey Edward
Architecture to draw up plans that
would allow the space to serve this dual
role. The congregation is launching a
capital campaign, with support of local
artists and other external stakeholders,
to make this dream a reality.
North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago, IL, hired Bailey Edward Architecture to draw up
plans for retrofitting a worship space to do double duty as a theater venue.
7 • Sacred Places • www.sacredplaces.org • Summer 2014
Thirty blocks south of North Shore
Baptist, dreams are becoming a reality
at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan
Square. Under the leadership of Pastor
Erik Christensen, the congregation
is fostering collaborations with local
artists across several media – dance,
visual arts, music and art therapy,
arts education, and theater. Last year,
Partners helped to connect St. Luke’s
with Theatre Y, which was searching for