Creating a strong, resilient, and sustainable field of practice requires broad agreement and a common understanding of the reasons for doing the work. After a year of testing and gathering input from people new to creative placemaking and others with deep experience in the field, we are releasing a discussion guide designed for creative placemaking initiative partners to … [Read more...] about How Do We Know It’s Creative Placemaking?
creative placemaking
AN INAUGURAL LOCAL LEADERS’ INSTITUTE FOCUSES ON CREATIVE PLACEMAKING
Local government officials and cultural leaders are increasingly embracing creative placemaking as a tool to strengthen communities. In urban and rural places across the country, they are collaborating with residents to develop arts, culture, and design projects that help transform the economic, social and physical landscape in tangible—and equitable—ways. Some local leaders … [Read more...] about AN INAUGURAL LOCAL LEADERS’ INSTITUTE FOCUSES ON CREATIVE PLACEMAKING
What We Liked in 2017
When Doug McLennan asked me to write a description for my blog that ArtsJournal would begin hosting in 2017, I thought about the topics which move me to spend time writing—the things that I feel sufficient passion to write about without compensation. There’s no employer, no client, no contract, and no deadline. Looking at the writing I’d been doing for my own blog at … [Read more...] about What We Liked in 2017
Pre-Enacting: Performing the Future We Want
Anticipating new investment in the Monon 16 neighborhood in Indianapolis, neighbors and artists got together to create a vision for their community. Like residents in many mid-size cities, they welcome new businesses and more housing filling in the vacant lots at this intersection of the Monon Trail and 16th Street, but worry about the impact of development on the … [Read more...] about Pre-Enacting: Performing the Future We Want
Artists as Researchers: Equity in Changing Places
Neighborhoods across the nation are facing questions about changes that lead to displacement or feelings of division. In Cincinnati, Walnut Hills’ residents are talking about new housing, new restaurants, and plans for renovation of historic buildings. This is exciting—yet it leaves some people with feeling wary about rising rents and the loss of neighborhood culture. The … [Read more...] about Artists as Researchers: Equity in Changing Places
My Mother’s Art of Places
All my life, my mother has been showing me the power of art to create the places where we love to go, the places that stick with us, the places that create memories. She’s an artist, a violinist who played in the National Symphony and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and was concertmaster of the Carmel Bach Festival in the summers. Music was part of my life … [Read more...] about My Mother’s Art of Places
Welcome to the Ride
Waaaaaay back in 2011, as communications and research VP of a newly re-launched arts funding organization old enough to be an antique, I devised (with friends and colleagues) a bike ride that we named The BRIGHT Ride. The idea was to bring people together with a free, fun, flat, slow ride that would create a surprising, moving spectacle of shiny, sparkling people … [Read more...] about Welcome to the Ride