Arlington To Get Designated Cultural District

ARLINGTON, MA — After a couple of years of working on this, Arlington will officially have a designated Cultural District, the Mass Cultural Council voted unanimously Tuesday.

The designation effectively puts Arlington on the state's cultural map, and brings resources and a potential boost in business - while highlighting the community's artistic, cultural, business, tourism and property interests, and eye for historic preservation and cultural impact. And it helps bring the many arts and culture groups together with the town together in one room working together.

The town has been working toward getting on the state's cultural map in earnest since at least 2016, though there have been efforts to corral the arts and culture scene in town for many more years.

The Massachusetts Cultural Council requires applicants form a cultural district partnership, so that year in April a who's who list of groups from Arlington's cultural world set up a partnership, including Arlington libraries, the Arlington Center for the Arts, the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum, the St. John’s Coffeehouse, the Arlington Friends of the Drama, the Arlington Center Merchants’ Association, the Capitol Square Business Association and the Arlington Historical Society.

Last June, the Arlington Board of Selectmen approved a 12 person managing partnership for the town’s proposed cultural district. About a dozen people sat on the working committee for the effort including representatives from Arlington’s government, business and arts and culture sectors.

The town submitted an application early last summer to Massachusetts Cultural Council Cultural Districts Initiative, but it was sent back for revisions in July.

A cultural district is a specific geographical area in a municipality that has a concentration of cultural facilities, activities, and assets, according to the Massachusetts Cultural Council. They must be walkable, and easily identifiable and serve as a center of cultural, artistic and economic activity.

So what's next? The town will set to purchasing signs from from the cultural council to designate the area and then take to online market the district. And then let the magic begin. Think: art markets and festivals and displays, historical bar crawls, sidewalk poetry.

The community took to social media announcing the news, full of exclamation points:

And this

The District spans a walkable stretch along Massachusetts Avenue from East Arlington’s Capitol Square to the Civic Block in Arlington Center.

"East Arlington is a diverse, dense neighborhood with art galleries, a movie theatre, and unique shops nestled alongside generous open space at nearby Spy Pond. Arlington Center boasts a wide array of cultural assets like the Arlington Center for the Arts, the Cyrus Dallin Museum, the Old Burying Ground, Uncle Sam Plaza and the historic Jason Russell House," reads the town website.

The Cultural District supports year-round creative arts and entertainment activities along the lines of Porchfest, Romancing the Square, Feast of the East, Arlington Alive Arts Festival, Arlington Town Day, Taste of Arlington and many more. Bound together by both Mass Ave and the Minuteman Bikeway.

Photos by Jenna Fisher/ Patch