Empowering Young People to Make Their Place

This report is a case study of a project in Brooklyn that works at the intersection of creative placemaking and public safety. In this project, young people from the community-led most of the planning and implementation processes, which ensured that communication with the community would result in something that they were actually interested in.

Social-Practice Residencies Toolkit

This online toolkit connects to a network of resources about social practice artist residency programs. The links to case studies are particularly useful as a way to learn from other projects, and reflections by artists who have participated in social practice residencies are also great learning tools as well as inspiration for why this work matters and can make a difference.

Planning & Designing Arts-Based Civic Engagement Projects

This toolkit provides a framework for thinking through a plan for arts-based civic engagement and dialogue projects. It guides artists and community organizers through a series of questions and is most helpful for early in the project development phase when going from an idea or a need to a real project.

Mapping the Landscape of Socially Engaged Artistic Practice

This report gives an overview and some examples of the role of a socially-engaged and community-based artist, differentiating them from a studio artist, for example. A social practice artist uses art, activism, and community engagement to work towards community and/or local government goals.

Artists Working In and Within Municipal Governments

This resource explores some of the ways that artists can be embedded within local government structures and processes through case studies of municipal artists.

An Artist’s Way of Seeing: Community Engagement in Creative Placemaking

This highly approachable article from Shelterforce tackles the misconception of the artist as an individualist by sharing stories of community-engaged artists.

Irrigate

Irrigate is a practical guide for how to create community-driven development, specifically with community artists. It outlines the steps and tools necessary, and also why community-driven processes are meaningful.

Municipal-Artist Partnerships

This online resource is a great guide to the “nuts and bolts” of creating and sustaining partnerships between artists and local government.

Find an Artist: A Practical Toolkit for Calls, RFPs, and Artist Selection

This toolkit is a practical guide for non-profits, businesses, or municipalities to create formal partnerships with artists. Springboard for the Arts recognizes the importance of cross-sector collaborations and reciprocal relationships with artists in this guide.

Lessons from the Field: Reflections on Rural Placemaking

This report contains some brief case studies of rural placemaking projects across the US, particularly related to housing.

Guide for Business Districts to Work with Local Artists

This guide provides strategies for partnerships between artists and business districts to address a wide variety of goals. It outlines the typical steps in creative placemaking project planning and implementation but geared specifically to potential ROIs for business districts.

Field Guide for Creative Placemaking in Parks

This resource answers the question “How does creative placemaking make for better parks?” through interviews and real-world examples. It provides a loose framework for planning and implementing these types of projects.

Creative Placemaking Toolkit for Counties

As public funding becomes increasingly strained, counties must search for and employ new strategies to improve their communities and local economies. NACo, in partnership with Americans for the Arts launched the Creative Counties Placemaking Initiative to support counties as they work to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges. The Creative Placemaking Toolkit for Counties is a web resource with recorded webinars and conference sessions as well as links to useful tools for counties, particularly related to the impact of arts and culture on local economies and potential funding opportunities. It is most helpful to county governments and rural governments who know a little bit about creative placemaking already and are looking to expand their local economies through the arts.

Creating Change though Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development

This report outlines how two movements – equitable development and community-centered arts and culture – are working to strengthen each other. It is a survey of both fields through interviews, case studies, and policy studies, going sector by sector, and focuses on the policies and funding opportunities that can help expand both fields.

Bridging Policy and Placemaking to Activate Vacant Properties

This report outlines the lessons learned from two case studies in St. Paul: Frogtown Green and Urban Flower Field. It goes through a lot of the nuts and bolts of creative placemaking projects in vacant spaces.

Art Beyond Bars

This is a case study of a program that combines social services with cathartic arts activities to enhance re-entry conditions in Philadelphia, with the goals of improving quality of life and public safety. It is one example of the link between creative placemaking and public safety. This report shares project successes and lessons learned.

Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan

This report identifies seven ways that creative placemaking contributes to equitable transportation development: generating creative solutions for entrenched transportation problems, making streets safer for all users, organizing transportation advocates, engaging multiple stakeholders for an inclusive process, fostering local ownership, alleviating the disruptive effects of construction, and healing wounds and divisions.

Exploring the Ways Arts and Culture Intersect with Public Safety: Identifying Current Practice and Opportunities for Further Inquiry

This scan considers the positive impact of place-based creative activity on public safety. They find that arts-based projects can enhance public safety efforts by promoting empathy and understanding, influencing law and policy, providing career opportunities, supporting community well-being, and contributing to quality of life.

Exploring the Ways Arts and Culture Intersects with Housing: Emerging Practice and Implications for Further Action

This case study explores how creative placemaking activities contribute to the housing sector of community development. The report finds that arts activity can help articulate invisible housing challenges, nourish those who have experienced housing-related trauma, contribute to organizing housing campaigns, create bridges between residents, stabilize vulnerable communities, and generate economic development opportunities.

Farther, Faster, Together: How Arts and Culture Can Accelerate Environmental Progress

This report explores the potential for arts and cultural activity to contribute to community sustainability and resilience, in climate adaptability, energy, water, land, waste, and toxic pollution. The report finds that arts-based activities can help spark public demand by making environmental issues feel personal and real, build community capacity and agency, connected large-scale, abstract issues to personal experience, enrich and activate the built environment, and nurture sustainable economies.