We brought you this story over one month ago, but it’s nice to see the trend of artists recolonizing foresaken Rust Belt neighborhoods is garnering some national attention.

The Wall Street journal reports today on a New York couple who purchased a home in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood, converting it into a home/studio/band space.

Cleveland's Michael Di Liberto and Sunia Boneham.

Cheap rents have a strong allure for creative types, The Journal reports. Plus, artists like the idea of building a new community out of ruin.

In St. Louis, artists are moving into vacant retail spaces in a shopping mall. In Buffalo, an empty car factory was converted in 60 artists lofts.

“Artists have become the occupiers of last resort,” said Robert McNulty, president of Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. “The worse things get, the more creative you have to become.”

Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood

Many thanks to Greg Ruffing, photographer/soccer player extraordinaire for donating the photos.

One of the coolest features of this article is a sidebar that lists upcoming arts tours and exhibits in Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo.

Learn about the car factory-turned artists’ lofts here. Collinwood’s annual arts festival here. Or Cleveland’s Ingenuity Fest, which brings performance artists to empty storefronts.

View from a gallery in Collinwood

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