Artist-Led Regeneration: Definition, Standards and the Case for Stewardship

Earlier this week I shared two blog posts I wrote for Big Car Collaborative, reflecting on its SPARK initiative following my visit to Indianapolis in November 2025. That return visit created the space to pause, take stock, and think more carefully about what Big Car has become over time, and what that evolution means for wider debates about culture, place, and power.

Out of that period of reflection has come a longer piece of work, which I am sharing now: Artist-Led Regeneration: Definition, Standards and the Case for Stewardship. The paper builds directly on the thinking prompted by that visit, and in particular on observing Big Car not as a moment of innovation, but as a mature, artist-led civic presence operating at neighbourhood and institutional scale.

In many ways, this paper is an update to my chapter on Big Car in Arts in Place (2019). At that point, Big Car was already demonstrating the potential of artist-led approaches to regeneration, but much of the work was still unfolding, not least through its starting of the Tube factory, into what has now become a whole campus, and which will see the opening of The Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi).

A decade on, with asset ownership, long-term governance, affordable housing, and CAMi firmly in view, the case demands a wider and more structurally grounded reading.

The paper revisits earlier arguments and extends them, proposing artist-led regeneration as a distinct field defined by ownership, governance, stewardship, and accountability over time. It is written for cultural leaders, funders, policymakers, and practitioners who are grappling with how culture can move beyond temporary activation and take on long-term civic responsibility.

Find the paper on my website here.