Asset mapping
The Creative Aging Pinellas database is used to map local arts and aging assets as well as provide a service to both professionals and seniors. There is a growing research literature that both supports and critiques the concept of asset mapping. Quotes from these studies are excerpted below. Some links are to databases that provide a free abstract but charge for copies. Ask your local librarian to request the article through Interlibrary loan.
Defining asset mapping
"Asset mapping is an inventory of the businesses, organizations, and institutions that help create a community. The asset mapping process identifies local resources that have the potential to provide programs, services, funds, or in-kind gifts to a center" (p. 3).
US Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Multifamily Housing Programs. Connecting to Success: Neighborhod Networks Asset Mapping Guide.
"The alternative path...leads toward the development of policies and activities based on the capacities, skills, and assets of lower income people and their neighborhoods" (p. 3)
Kretzmann, J.P and McKnight, J.L. (1993) Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets. Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research.
[There are] "four fundamental characteristics of community capacity: (1) a sense of community, (2) a level of commitment among community members, (3) the ability to solve problems, and (4) access to resources" (p. 296).
Chaskin, R.J. (2001). Building community capacity: A definitional framework and case studies from a comprehensive community initiative. Urban Affairs Review 36, 291-323.
Outcomes of asset mapping and the arts
"Twenty-five years ago, advocates for community arts used words like beautification, quality of life and community animation...These days, it is not uncommon to hear terms like conflict resolution, public safety, economic development, and community revitalization... Artists doing community work often find themselves contending with a greatly expanded range of scrutiny and judgment...the greatest expansion...is in...youth arts...Many of the field's best 'think tanks' are small, community-based and locally accountable...[that] emerge when artists and art organizations forge partnerships with local non-arts organizations, and constituencies based on mutual self-interest" (pp. 9-10).
"The most successful programs have been developed by artists making art, not artists doing something else...[they] have created art programs...they do the most good by...empowering qualities of the creative processes and not on the diagnosis or treatment of what is 'wrong'" (pp 10-11).
Cleveland, W. (2002). Mapping the Field: Arts-Based Community Development [ABCD]. Minneapolis, MN: Center for the Study of Art and Community.
Outcomes of asset mapping and aging services
"Capacity implies sustainability--the organization now has the means, resources, know-how, contacts, and determination to keep its multifaceted intergenerational program thriving. It is clear that this initiative is not dependent on any individual partner..." (p. 421)
Kaplan, M., Shih-Tsen, L.N., and Hannon, P. (2006). Intergenerational engagement in retirement communities: A case study of a community capacity-building model. Journal of Applied Gerontology 25, 406-426.
Critique of asset mapping
Community capacity building "can be seen as none other than our old friend community development...it is about power and ideology and how they are mediated through structures and processes...[it] is used to hide a false consensus about goals and interests...And, as with these earlier terms, [it] has been manipulated by governments to give a false sense of community ownership." (p. 354)
Craig, G. (2007). Community capacity building: Something old, something new...? Critical Social Policy 27, 335-359.
