Bringing your creative placemaking practice to Main Street.
The lessons and activities in this toolkit can be used across communities of all sizes, locations, and demographic make-ups, but the teams at LISC and the NEA know that America's small towns and rural places face their own challenges, from the retention of Main Street business to challenges to digital access. Here at LISC, our Rural Team partners with 88 rural nonprofit community-based organizations in 45 states to help residents identify priorities and opportunities for growth—then delivers the most appropriate support to meet local needs. Placemaking is key to this work. By providing an scalable and personalized framework for ambitious community development projects, creative placemaking empowers rural communities to make changes and face challenges on their own terms.
"Two broken things together can be used creatively to make one thing that works."
—John Davis, Our Town Technical Assistance Resource Team Member
More to come!
Our team is working hard to get rural placemakers the resources they need to elevate their practice and uplift their communities. Check back in soon for more resources, activities, and lessons!
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.
READ:
Rural Voices: Cultivating Citizen-Led Design (Fall 2020, Vol. 24, No. 2)
The Housing Assistance Council’s quarterly magazine, Rural Voices, is a national publication focusing on the topics most of interest to rural communities, featuring the perspectives and expertise of rural placemakers and thought-leaders from around the country. In this issue, creative placemaking is front and center as authors share reflections from projects like Our Town grantee Cheyenne River Youth Project and Auburn University's Rural Studio.
WATCH:
Next Generation Digital Exchange, Rural Generation
Building on the success of Rural Generation’s Regional Networks in Iowa, Kentucky, and Minnesota, the Next Generation Digital Exchange is a web series that facilitates conversation across the regions, sectors, and philosophies of rural placemaking. Each of these one hour Digital Exchanges features voices from across the country, sharing the challenges and opportunities they collectively encounter in this work.
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.
Common Ground
How can arts and culture create space for collaboration and partnership in rural and small town settings? John Davis is a Bush Fellow and Senior Policy Fellow at the Rural Policy research Institute. He has over 30 years of experience in rural community engagement, economic development and creative placemaking; working with both non profit arts organizations, artists and local governments. During this session from the November 2020 Learning Lab for Our Town Grantees, he will share the importance of finding common ground, developing successful partnerships, designing community engagement and collaboration, and finding funding. We’ll see some examples from his rural arts and community developer perspective, including how to talk about the power of arts and culture in these initiatives.
Ending the Deferment of Audacious Dreams
What happens to a dream deferred? Ending the Deferment of Audacious Dreams is a 21st century take on Langston Hughes’ seminal question. This talk will look at the role of imagination in the development of the material world that we all deserve through sharing real life approaches to community cultural development in rural Utica, Mississippi. Followed by a conversation with Double Edge Theatre’s ensemble member/writer/director, Matthew Glassman, Carlton will share more about how Sipp supports community development from the ground up through cultural production focused on self-determination and agency designed by the community for the community. And how honoring growth, story, and imagination is an approach that can cultivate healthy and equitable places everywhere.