For this month’s ‘Odd Socs’, we cross the Atlantic to look at the work of Partners for Sacred Places (PSP), an organisation dedicated to finding creative ways to maintain America’s historic places of worship as civic spaces.
These buildings face the same pressures as their equivalents in the UK: costing more to maintain than they receive in income, with an ever-diminishing pool of people shouldering the hard work of keeping the buildings in community use. In the USA, a further challenge is the lack of listed status for many historic places of worship; some congregations oppose designation for fear of limiting their future options. Often that means the redevelopment of a valuable city-centre site following the demolition of the historic building.
PSP has found that stressing the heritage value of the buildings is not always the most effective way to persuade philanthropists to provide grants; rather, it is the use of the building as a base for good work that opens wallets. The organisation’s research shows that there is substantial economic value in the use of sacred spaces – and not just as homes for religious life and as places of beauty and inspiration that benefit people of all faiths, but also as community centres providing services for people in need, or as shared spaces for music, theatre, and dance, or for business enterprises with a social purpose.
Planning reforms