Creativity is a powerful tool.
Within a practice of creative placemaking, the arts, culture, and design can be leveraged to spark dialogue, promote economic development, and catalyze the systemic changes social change our communities need to prosper. LISC and our partners at the NEA are continually inspired by the local leaders, artists, organizers, and practitioners who have harnessed the power of the arts as they undertake the difficult work of strengthening America’s communities. After more than a decade of funding and project management, we’ve learned that the best creative placemaking projects begin with deep understanding among community partners and are carried out with a commitment to highest levels of social responsibility and accountability.
Government officials, neighbors, artists, service providers, organizers, practitioners, citizens—these resources are for you.
Whether you’re just getting started or an established placemaker looking to hone your practice, this digital guide will give you the tools you need to wield the transformative power of the arts within your community ethically and efficiently to create sustainable change.
WATCH:
What is Creative Placemaking?
Creative placemaking serves as a process for a community to creatively and collaboratively achieve its goals and vision. In this video, Katherine Bray Simons of the National Endowment for the Arts will go into detail on how the endowment envisions the theory of change in creative placemaking.
What makes creative placemaking different from traditional arts and culture projects?
Creative placemaking explicitly works to solve problems or take on a sticky challenge in our communities. Working together, artists, residents, grasstops and grassroots organizations identify community needs and create innovative solutions to the issues at hand. These challenges may fall into multiple categories including: social cohesion, civic engagement, addressing problems in the physical environment, creating economic opportunity, bridging community relationships or impacting systems in communities. The worksheets below will help guide you in defining your community challenge.
DEFINING THE CHALLENGE
→ Download the worksheet
SKETCH YOUR CREATIVE PLACEMAKING CONCEPT
→ Download the Worksheet
Creative placemaking is an iterative process.
Many times the process delivers more important outcomes than the final project. These outcomes may include the strengthening of civic engagement, the development of long term partnerships and lasting systems change. It's important to understand the process of creative placemaking is just that, a process. The "design thinking" graphic below shows how your community might work together to move through the process.
WATCH:
What Does Creative Placemaking Mean To You?
Listen to our community of practitioners for this video series as they share what creative placemaking means to them!
Additional Resources
Curated for you by the LISC team, the resources below provide models of best practice, insights from our Resource Team, and other extras we hope will be useful to you as you navigate your creative placemaking projects.
WATCH:
The National Endowment for the Arts Welcome and Update
What is the latest on arts and community from the National Endowment for the Arts? Hear from the agency’s 2021 appointee for Chief of Staff, Ra Joy, all about the Biden administration’s priorities, NEA’s commitment to equity, and support for the broader cultural ecosystem with programs like this Our Town technical assistance, and more. After opening remarks and a welcome, Ra will join NEA’s Jen Hughes, director of Design and Creative Placemaking, in a short conversation about what’s new at the agency.
ENGAGE:
Public Art Network and Public Art Resource Center, Americans for the Arts
The Americans for the Arts’ Public Art Network is a professional network dedicated to advancing public art programs and projects through advocacy, policy, and information resources. Their robust online resources can be individually tailored to specific audiences including: public artists, public art administrators, field partners, and community stakeholders. Each stakeholder group can find resources on topics such as tools, resources, case studies, and open opportunities and there are many resources available for the project managers as well.
READ:
Creative Placemaking by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus
This classic white paper, written by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, was commissioned in 2010 by the Mayors' Institute on City Design, a leadership initiative of the NEA in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation. Integral to the establishment of the Our Town program at the NEA, Creative Placemaking is a must read for any practitioner.
WE-Making: How Arts & Culture Unite People to Work Toward Community Well-Being
Developed with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Kresge Foundation, and other funders, WE-Making breaks new ground by synthesizing research from different areas of study along with on-the-ground experiences of artists and researchers, practitioners in community development, and advocates for health equity. This ground breaking report distills that information into key terms and concepts that together demonstrate that social cohesion nurtures coordinated community organizing and can lead to increased community well-being.
How To Do Creative Placemaking, The National Endowment for the Arts
Published in 2016 by the NEA, this short volume includes case studies and essays from leading creative placemaking thinkers describing the diverse ways that arts organizations and artists can play an essential role in making places better across America.
The Saving Power of Community Creativity, Center for Community Progress
This report highlights the efforts of creative leaders in response to the pandemic and racial injustice and seeks to inspire others trying to address acute needs through art, culture, and creative placemaking responses. As communities begin shifting from COVID-19 response efforts to long-term recovery, the report shows the true value that arts, culture, and creative placemaking organizations bring to community revitalization.
This material emerged from a past Our Town Knowledge Building project. Through the Our Town Knowledge Building program, the NEA has invested in community development and arts membership organizations to build out knowledge on how to do creative placemaking.