In its ongoing commitment to producing resources for community engagement with the arts, the National Endowment for the Arts has published How to Do Creative Placemaking: An Action-Oriented Guide to Arts in Community Development. The book features 28 essays from thought leaders active in arts-based community development as well as 13 case studies of projects funded through the NEA’s creative placemaking program, Our Town.
How to Do Creative Placemaking is intended as a primer for those interested in bringing the arts to the community development table as a tool—along with housing, transportation, public health and other sectors—to advance revitalization efforts in an authentic way. Among the case studies featured are projects in Ajo and Phoenix.
“The book is meant to help people start working with the arts to make their place better,” says NEA Director of Design and Creative Placemaking Jason Schupbach, “We wanted to create something easy to use and full of options for communities to begin doing this work, or to improve what they have already started.”
Concurrent with the publication of How to Do Creative Placemaking, the NEA, Kresge Foundation, ArtPlace America, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Partners for Livable Communities, are gathering artists, community development experts, and policymakers together on Tuesday, December 6, 2016 to examine the role of the arts in shaping towns and cities. Key sessions of Creative Placemaking: The Role of Arts in Community Development will be livestreamed at the Wilson Center website. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter at #creativeplace. The full agenda with start times is available here.
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How to Do Creative Placemaking
How to Do Creative Placemaking is an action-oriented guide for making places better. This book includes instructional and thought-provoking case studies and essays from today’s leading thinkers in creative placemaking. It describes the diverse ways that arts organizations and artists can play an essential role in the success of communities across America.
National Endowment for the Arts, November 2016. 220 pp.
Banner photo: “Ground Cover,” by Ann Morton.
