Throughout history, artists have been viewed either as maladjusted deadbeats, or as intrepid apostles of culture, essential to the spiritual life of any evolved society. However, in the modern context artists often play another, quite thankless function: to transform blighted industrial areas into trendy neighborhoods that attract the attention of greedy developers and high-income professionals lured by the promise of “artist-inspired urban living.” Inevitably, artists are then forced out of their homes and studios by skyrocketing rents and compelled to move elsewhere, doomed to repeat the same self-defeating process. But Welcome to Fort Point suggests that perhaps this chain of events is not inevitable after all. In a few cities in the USA, prescient artists have banded together to collectively purchase the decaying factory buildings where they live and work. The oldest such artists’ cooperative in Boston, Massachusetts is the 249 A Street Cooperative in the city’s historic Fort Point neighborhood. Like a street portraitist’s instant charcoal drawing, Welcome to Fort Point is a concise sketch of the community as viewed by a newcomer from the suburbs. Unfolding in a low-key, almost offhand style, the film chronicles a rare triumph of the creative spirit over crass commercialism.