Giving Compass' Take:

• The National Endowment for the Arts and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) convened six teams from rural areas for the inaugural Local Leaders’ Institute on Creative Placemaking.

• The partners at this meeting discussed how creative placemaking can play a critical role in community growth.  Are there placemaking efforts in your community? If so, how are you supporting them? 

• Read about how creative placemaking can instigate systems change.

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 describe creative placemaking as a refocusing of the planning process, with artists and residents reimagining community planning and development. They stress the importance of recognizing and valuing the history and culture of people who live in a place when developing plans for the future, noting that developing a plan together can be as important as the resulting initiative.

To extend the reach of this strategy and develop the field of creative placemaking, National Endowment for the Arts and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) brought six teams of partners from small, medium, and rural places together for the inaugural Local Leaders’ Institute on Creative Placemaking.

At the two day convening in the summer of 2019, these local leaders shared community goals and ideas for implementation of creative placemaking projects designed to strengthen their local communities. The Arts Endowment and LISC organizers also invited creative placemaking experts from across the nation to offer tailored advice on a range of topics including partnership with artists, community engagement, project management, and sustaining creative placemaking work.

Read the full article about placemaking by Margy Waller at LISC.