Frequently asked questions

What kind of spaces are included?

Any buildings or spaces where arts and culture is happening — daily, on the weekends, once a month. This can include arts-specific spaces, but also public spaces, retail, food and drink or faith-based spaces that are sites for cultural activity.

What's not included?

Public art: although important to the cultural life of the city, this Space Census is not looking to map public artworks. MOAC already has an extensive inventory of public artworks in the City and related commissioning processes, which you can find out about here. If public artworks are located in a public space that also hosts arts and cultural activity or gatherings, please add the public space to the map, not the artwork.

Private homes: While we understand that many people create in their homes, in order to protect people's privacy we do not want to publicly identify individual homes and addresses on this map.

What about spaces that have closed?

As well as existing spaces, this map also captures cultural spaces that have closed over the past 15 years. Please add any closed spaces that are missing.

Where does the information on the map come from?

The map you see reflects information that the City of Boston and some key partners already have, gathered from previous cultural space and neighborhood planning efforts. This map has been put together using the following sources:

• Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, City of Boston
• MAPC's Making Space for Art project, including information from the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston's SpaceFinder tool (no longer active) and Mass Cultural Council's Cultural Facilities Fund (pre-2021 data)
• Squares + Streets resident engagement, Planning Department, City of Boston
• Allston-Brighton Community Plan engagement, Planning Department, City of Boston
• Waterfront Civic/Cultural Space Planning Study, Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, City of Boston
• Citywide Needs Assessment — Community Cultural Infrastructure dataset, City of Boston

Single unit vs. the whole space?

If there are many individual units in a building but they are part of a larger cultural space — we want to know about the whole space, not the individual unit. For example, if you practice in a rehearsal space but there are 20 other rehearsal rooms in the building, please add information to the map about the whole rehearsal space, not just your studio. Same goes for offices, studios or any other sub-divided spaces that are part of a bigger cultural space — we want to make sure we're capturing the whole space so please add to the map that way.

If there are many individual units in a building, but only some are used for cultural activity, please only add those that are home to cultural uses. For example, if you rent a workshop space for photography but the other workshop spaces in the same building are used for non-cultural activities, please only add the photography workshop space to the map. You can put the floor and unit/studio number in the address line when you add to the map so it's clear which part of the building you are adding.

How this information will be used

Information you submit about spaces via this map will be public and appear on the map. Personal information like contact details will not be made public.

The information you provide will be used by staff from the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture to guide funding, planning, and policy decisions to protect and grow the City's cultural infrastructure.

What if I need a space?

If you are looking for space, fill out the MOAC Cultural Space Needs Register.