Cultivating Creativity: Exploring Arts & Culture in Community Food Systems Transformation

“Cultivating Creativity” examines the potential for the arts to contribute to food systems and agriculture activity and change. The report finds that art can be used in food systems interventions to honor identity and heritage, address and heal community conflict, transform community spaces, drive equitable food development, preserve and reclaim food and farming traditions, and help facilitate community-led processes.

Creating Healthy Communities Through Cross-Sector Collaboration

This field scan focuses on the intersection of creative placemaking and public health. It outlines the direct and indirect benefits that arts and culture can have on public health, which can be helpful for convincing municipal leaders to take on a similar project.

Advancing One Water Through Arts and Culture

This field scan shows how water leaders (utility managers, public officials, farmers, river keepers, business leaders, manufacturers, community leaders, philanthropy, etc) have turned to artists and cultural leaders to achieve their goals in creative and potent ways. It provides recommendations, case studies, and potential outcomes for working at this intersection, which can be helpful for convincing municipal leaders to take on a similar project.

6 Reasons Why Artists Should Collaborate with Government

This approachable narrative outlines the reasons why artists and government need to work together. It is a great resource to help state the case for these partnerships within any government department.

Do You See Yourself in Upham’s Corner?

This case study in Boston, MA is a small-scale creative placemaking project that opened up a larger discussion about the “aesthetics of belonging.” It approaches creative placemaking with a goal of revitalization without displacement, grounded in equity. This report shares the context of the neighborhood as well as successes and lessons learned from creative placemaking initiatives.

Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-belonging

Roberto Bedoya impacted the direction of the field with this article, which is critical of what he sees as creative placemaking’s emphasis on neighborhood revitalization and economic development. He points out that without honoring equity, race, and justice at the center of creative placemaking, arts-based practice can easily be misapplied to reinforce existing barriers to opportunity and sense of belonging for marginalized people. He advocates for using creative placemaking to foster belonging and to achieve “strength and prosperity through equity and civility.”

The CAP Report

This report identifies 30 policy ideas that can help cities better support their cultural spaces. These ideas include cultural space certification, building code, permitting, technical assistance, and financial assistance. Rising rents in Seattle threaten to displace vulnerable communities, despite the contributions these communities make to creating vibrant cultural spaces. This report provides policy solutions to mitigate this displacement.

Building A Cultural Equity Plan

This tool demonstrates the equity components that can be applied to the development of a Cultural Equity Plan. Cultural equity explicitly values the unique and collective cultures of diverse communities and supports their existence in physical spaces, in public policies and investment, and in expression in civic and spiritual life.

Native American Creative Placemaking

In this report for the Housing Assistance Council, Immonen points out that placemaking has been a part of indigenous experience for hundreds and thousands of years. She notes that the integration of the arts into whole community lives and activities that creative placemaking represents aligns with indigenous ways of knowing and sense of belonging. The report illuminates a great need for focused funding for creative placemaking for tribal organizations, and increased sensitivity to specific needs and ways of being of indigenous peoples.

Rural Placemaking

Creative placemaking is not just an urban activity. Many leaders and practitioners in rural social and economic development have also embraced the practice. The Housing Assistance Council collaborated with the National Endowment for the Arts and buildingcommunityWORKSHOP to bring resources to support creative placemaking to rural partners. Creative placemaking in rural communities has been used to amplify a sense of home and heritage, to engage marginalized community members, and as a tool for economic development.

Creative Placemaking: Knowledgebase Collection

This Knowledge Center portal from the American Planning Association allows you to search for resources that provide background and policy guidance on creative placemaking. You can also filter search results by various graphic and demographic characteristics.

How to Do Creative Placemaking

This guide provides practical strategies, precedent, and best practices for municipal and community leaders to use creative placemaking for equitable social and economic development, celebrating community identity, governance, and physical design. Each chapter contains articles and case studies written by different practitioners around the US.