IRRIGATE

In the face of drastic infrastructural change, how can creative placemaking operate as a strategy for fostering community resilience?

Overview

Irrigate is an adaptable community enrichment initiative that calls for creative placemaking solutions to increase communities’ economic and social capital in the face of infrastructural challenges. Irrigate was piloted in St. Paul, MN by Springboard for the Arts, the City of St. Paul, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) as a response to the construction of the Green Line Light Rail through six St. Paul neighborhoods from 2010-2014. After three years, Irrigate created over 150 projects partnering 600 artists with local businesses and neighborhood groups to support the community during light rail construction.

The Vision

The Green Line, previously known as the Central Corridor, runs between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Construction of this corridor began in 2010. The six neighborhoods located at the heart of this infrastructural development already had a painful history of socio-economic neglect and community displacement after the construction of I-94 decades earlier, which cut through the historically Black Rondo Neighborhood.

After the announcement of the Green Line’s construction, Springboard for the Arts, a community arts organization based in the Twin Cities, envisioned creating a small-scale arts-based program that would support neighborhoods and businesses that would be impacted by the light rail construction. These creative placemaking initiatives would:

• Help businesses develop economic resilience

• Support and strengthen a sense of community identity through collaboration with businesses

• Change the narrative surrounding the short-term impacts of infrastructure projects

The Project

Created through a partnership between Springboard for the Arts and the City of St. Paul, Irrigate is both a project and a creative placemaking strategy. Utilizing the skills, ingenuity, and innovative approaches of local artists to foster meaningful solutions to highly localized challenges, over the course of its 3 years Irrigate developed over 150 projects in partnership with small businesses and neighborhood groups.

Artists attended a free eight-hour workshop to learn creative placemaking and collaboration techniques and to workshop a project idea, and then submitted an application for a small-scale project in their community. They were provided with up to $1000 to execute their project, and submitted a final report after their project was complete. The result was an ecosystem of arts-based interventions that contributed to a thriving corridor despite ongoing construction challenges.

Critical Success Factors

• Partner Support. Irrigate’s success was highly dependent on the dedication and support from all contributing partners.

• Social Media. The 50 million positive social media impressions that Irrigate received helped to shift the narrative of impacted neighborhoods away from the negative implications of construction and towards the power of the arts.

Roles and Partners

• Springboard for the Arts facilitated artist trainings and workshops.

• Local Initiatives Support Coalition provided technical and developmental support.

• ArtPlace America provided $750,000 of funding dispersed over the course of 17 months.

• The City of St. Paul district council staff co-facilitated the artist and community training workshops with Springboard, while also providing technical and logistical support.

• 600 artists worked to create over 150 projects and they facilitated interpersonal relationships with neighborhood residents. The artists’ roles were not only to create art, but to reassure residents and business owners that turning to the arts would help them survive the disruption of the light rail’s construction.

• Additional support from the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, F.R. Bigelow Foundation, Knight Foundation, Good Family Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Saint Paul Foundation, The McKnight Foundation and the Surdna Foundation

Impacts and Outcomes

• Short Term. Irrigate improved neighborhood vibrancy and livability. May Nguyen, owner of the restaurant Mai Village, experienced a huge uptick in patrons during two Irrigate initiatives called Jazz on the Line by Mira Kehoe and Happy Cabaret by Tyler Olsen, who both partnered with her restaurant. Many other projects, whether murals or public performances, provided residents with a method of celebrating and reinforcing community narrative and neighborhood cultural identities.

• Long Term. The narrative in these neighborhoods around construction of the light rail changed for the better. There was also an increase in social capital due to more points of interaction between community members. Finally, Irrigate ensured the economic success of small businesses that would have struggled without these arts-based interventions.

• Unexpected. Irrigate modeled new, lasting approaches for creative problem solving around disruptions due to infrastructure improvements. This can be seen in the creation of a comprehensive toolkit now included in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Resilient Cities Initiative. It includes resources for the creation of partnerships, methods of connecting with local artists, support for training workshops and evaluation, and templates for budgets and various project timelines.

Lessons Learned

• Facilitating finite moments of joy creates a joyous community

• Social media plays a critical role in shaping the narrative around creative placemaking initiatives

References

Central Corridor Light Rail Transit. Web Archive, Wayback Machine, 19 May 2011.

Irrigate. ArtPlace, ArtPlace, 29 Jan. 2020.

Irrigate: Artist Led Creative Placemaking. Springboard for the Arts, Springboard for the Arts, 3 Dec. 2019.

Mikkelson , Dawn, director. Planting Creativity: Artists, Place & Transit. Springboard for the Arts, Springboard for the Arts with Twin Cities Public Television, 8 Aug. 2014.