Episode 10: The Artist Space Trust - Housing for the Artist Workforce

Arts for a Better Bay Area "State of the Art Summit” breakout session on Affordable Housing for our Creative Workforce

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"The interesting thing about a Land Trust is that it's a split title, we'll split the title and the land trust will own the land forever. And then we'll either sell or lease the housing or creative space on top of it to artists" - Meg Shiffler

Welcome to the final episode of our series on affordable housing for the creative workforce, a collaboration with Arts for a Better Bay Area, featured at the State of the Arts Summit. In this episode, we explore a groundbreaking initiative from the ABBA summit's breakout session “Housing for the Artist Workforce: Revisiting Artists’ Housing Solutions”: a pilot program utilizing the real estate trust model. This innovative approach enables artist property owners to preserve their estates for the artistic community posthumously.

Our guest, Meg Shiffler, Director of the Artist Space Trust, returns to provide deeper insights. Having previously introduced us to the topic at the ABBA summit, Meg will further illuminate the Artist Space Trust's origins, its role in helping property owners safeguard their artistic heritage, and the ways in which artists and creative professionals can collaborate with the Trust to secure future property acquisitions.

In addition to our conversation with Meg, we dive into captivating excerpts from our exclusive one-on-one interviews at the ABBA summit, thanks to our roving reporters, Isa Nakazawa and Eric Estrada, who brought us closer to the summit's influential figures.

We start with Kathryn Reasoner, highlighted earlier by Meg. Kathryn, the pioneering founder of both Vital Arts and the Artist Space Trust, has made significant contributions to the artistic community. We then turn to the esteemed poet Chu Yu, who opened the ABBA summit. As a co-founder of the Two Languages One Community project and an award-winning author, Chu Yu brings a unique perspective on the intersection of creativity and collaboration, embodying the spirit of the summit.

Meg Shiffler - Director, Artists Space Trust

In her role as inaugural Director of Artist Space Trust, Meg brings 17 years of service to the Bay Area’s diverse artists and communities. Her unique cross-sector background in government, and nonprofit and private organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and New York, includes envisioning and building organizations, inclusive engagement with varied stakeholders and communities, and managing complex budgets and contracts.. During 16 years as Director and Chief Curator of the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, Schiffler vastly increased the galleries’ scale, space, staff, and programming while commissioning new work from regional, national, and international artists. has taught, written, and lectured on artists, exhibition history, and curatorial practice. Most recently, she was the Head of Space and Operations at Swissnex, an international network of innovation hubs supporting entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, and artists working toward a more sustainable future.

Kathryn Reasoner - Executive Consultant,Vital Arts

In her role as Executive Consultant for Vital Arts, Kathryn Reasoner draws on deep experience in the fields of arts and cultural policy. She has won awards and recognition for her advocacy and leadership on behalf of artists and seminal art spaces in the Bay Area. She has directed institutions such as Headlands Center for the Arts, Richmond Art Center, and di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, among others. Reasoner has led cultural planning teams and played an active role in strategic arts planning for the California Arts Council, the City and County of San Francisco, and the County of Napa. Her background offers relevant user experience in the design, development, construction, and management of cultural spaces, along with international models from working and living abroad.

Chun Yu - Poet & Author, Two Language / One Community

Chun Yu, Ph.D. is the author of the multi-award-winning memoir Little Green (Simon & Schuster) and a historical graphic novel in progress (Macmillan) and more. Her work has been published in the award-winning anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, Open Doors, Boston Herald, MIT Tech Talk, etc. Her new bilingual poetry collection in English and Chinese and her graphic novel on Chinese immigration experience have won San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity and Individual Artist Grants. Her work merges science, art, and spirituality based on her experiences as an immigrant from an ancient culture undergoing a revolution to a new world of transformative science and technologies. She has won support from the Zellerbach Foundation and Poets & Writers etc. for her community work in poetry and writing. Chun holds a B.S. and M.S. from Peking University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers in chemistry and was a postdoctoral fellow at a Harvard-MIT joint program. Follow her work at her website You can find out more on their website Two Languages / One Community

Ian Winters - Director of Incubation & Special Projects at the Northern California Land Trust

Ian has served as Executive Director of the Northern California Land Trust (NCLT) since early 2002 and is a long-term CLT & coop resident. Professionally he has over 10 years experience in sustainable construction and architecture as well as community activism and organizational development. He trained as a photographer/filmmaker and art/architectural historian at Tufts University and the Boston Museum School and graduated architecture/design work at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture. Outside of the CLT world, he maintains an active life as a working artist.

Vital Arts

Our Story
Soaring rents and costs are displacing Bay Area artists and forcing them to live and gather for events in deathtraps like the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse, threatening the continuation of innovative arts and culture in the Bay Area, long recognized as a fertile place for creativity.
Edwin Bernbaum, whose son Jonathan died in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire, started Vital Arts alongside friends Beth Jay and Tom Dolan to address these problems and to honor those lost in the fire by working to ensure that no artists or art lovers have to pay for their passion with their lives. Vital Arts envision a world in which groundbreaking arts and culture that are essential for the continued health and vitality of society at large are recognized and cultivated. We seek to bring this about by implementing projects to meet the needs of low and moderate-income artists in the Bay Area. We believe that if we are successful, our efforts to preserve and support a strong innovative creative arts community can provide models and seeds that can be replicated nationally and internationally. You can find out more about Vital Arts Approach and the work they are doing in the community along with their projects and partners along with supporting their work.

Two Languages / One Community

Two Languages / One Community began as a workshop that uses writing and translation to exchange culture and life experiences between African Americans and Chinese speakers. These communities are often culturally isolated from each other, even though they live in the same neighborhood or work together. We believe that sharing stories and language facilitates understanding, connection, and support.

With our partnering organizations, the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, we have presented public readings of poetry and prose created in our bilingual workshops. The writing is published in English and Chinese online and in our book series Catching Memory.

We are proud of the agility and openness of the project. It can be tailored to fit all ages, novice and seasoned writers, and languages other than English and Chinese. We look forward to taking the project to other communities in the Bay Area and beyond. If you are interested in bringing the project to your community, reach out to us at https://twolanguagesonecommunity.com/connect.

The Two Languages / One Community project has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program, Poets & Writers, and Ashley Bullitt.

兩種語言/一個社群項目開始於一個以寫作和翻譯促進非裔和華裔之間文化與生活經歷交流的工作坊。這兩個族裔常常在同一個社區環境中一起生活工作卻在文化上互相隔離。我們相信這樣的交流能够促進社區之間的相互理解、連接、和支持。

我們與合作機構舊金山中華文化中心和奧克蘭亞洲文化中心舉辦了公眾朗誦會，展現來自我們雙語工作坊的詩歌和散文作品。這些作品發表在我們的《追尋記憶》系列中。

我們為這個項目的靈活性和開放性感到自豪。它適合所有年齡段，新手和經驗豐富的寫作者，以及英語和中文之外的其它語言。我們希望能夠將這個項目帶入灣區的其它社群。如果您有興趣將這個項目帶入您的社群，請與我們聯繫。

兩種語言/一個社群項目得到了Zellerbach家庭基金會、奧克蘭市文化資助計劃、非營利組織詩人與作家、和Ashley Bullitt的支持。

Chun Yu and Michael Warr are available as a dynamic duo or as dynamic individuals for workshops, panels, presentations, and readings. For more information contact us at info@twolanguagesonecommunity.com. We can be contacted individually at:
Michael Warr: warrzone6666@gmail.com
Chun Yu: info@chunyu.org For Chun Yu's event booking for Little Green please see her website: chunyu.org/events/event-booking

Northern California Land Trust

Mission Statement
NCLT is a Community Land Trust (CLT) that incubates and nurtures permanently affordable communities. NCLT uses community ownership and control of the land in order to provide affordable homes and community facilities in perpetuity. Founded in 1973, we have led the development of many innovations and developments in cooperative and community ownership models. We believe that community-based ownership and co-stewardship of land and homes in the Bay Area help transform housing from a commodity to a building block of local community autonomy and agency. NCLT envisions a world where everyone has secure, sustainable, healthy, and affordable places to live and the opportunity to thrive. Find out more about NCLT’s services, housing openings, and resources along with their incubation of new housing opportunities and support their mission.

Artists Space Trust

Artist Space Trust (AST) is an innovative national model for equitably securing permanently affordable artist housing and creative space. Utilizing methods developed by the community land trust movement, AST will facilitate an inter-generational transfer of property to prevent losses for future generations locked out by market forces. Artist Space Trust grew from the shared commitment of Vital Arts and the Northern California Community Land Trust (NCLT) to stem the displacement of artists economically vulnerable to rising real estate costs. We believe that community control and ownership are necessary to ensure that local artists have access to safe, affordable spaces to live, create, and share their work. Find out more about what AST does, and how, to get engaged and support their efforts.

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“Our policy work is really going to be in partnership with our, our housing work. You know, this is about housing justice. This is about looking at populations that have been redlined out of building equity over generations. This is about the preservation of communities, cultural and racial communities that become smaller and smaller because of the lack of affordability in the Bay Area.”

— Meg Schiffler,Director,The Artist Space Trust

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