Healthy City
In an effort to address health issues in some underserved neighborhoods, a private health foundation worked with the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) to develop profiles of cultural treasures for four communities. This resulted in a series of maps of cultural treasures on a web portal that also includes information about local services, Healthy […]
Willowbrooke Is/Es
In response to investments being made by Los Angeles County in the unincorporated south LA community of Willowbrook, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission developed a project to illuminate the neighborhood’s creative assets for planners, designers, and policymakers. The challenge In 2011, Willowbrook was in the midst of a more than $600 million dollar redevelopment […]
Culture Blocks
CultureBlocks was a free online tool developed for the City of Philadelphia that mapped nonprofit arts and culture groups, “cultural businesses,” public art, galleries, and cultural events. While no longer in operation, for years this tool allowed individuals and organizations to locate activities in their own backyard, while researchers used the aggregate data to identify […]
Irrigate
Though the new Green Line light rail line would finally connect the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with rail transit, business owners, local leaders, and advocates raised red flags about construction disrupting the corridor’s businesses as well as immigrant and communities of color. To mitigate these negative effects, Springboard for the Arts and […]
Atlanta Regional Council
Since the early 1990s, the Atlanta Regional Council (ARC), the region’s metropolitan planning organization (MPO), has increased its understanding of the importance of arts, culture and creative industries to regional prosperity. In the early 2000s it partnered with the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition (MACC)—a decade-old entity that had been the leading voice for […]
Mariposa Creek Parkway
Partnering with the Mariposa Arts Council to form a Creative Placemaking Advisory Council, the Mariposa County Planning Department created an artist-led plan to develop a new multi-use trail that celebrates the community’s cultures and ecology. The challenge Mariposa County occupies 1,463 square miles of the Sierra Nevada foothills, sitting at the western gateway to Yosemite […]
Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk
Started by artist Marcus Young 楊墨 in 2008, Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk is a program by the City of Saint Paul that uses the city’s existing sidewalk maintenance program as an opportunity to stamp—and publish—residents’ poetry into its sidewalk network. The challenge The City of St. Paul’s City Artist program started in 2005 as […]
Envision Nolensville Pike
Alongside Nolensville Pike—a congested, auto-oriented, typical arterial highway in South Nashville—lives a thriving community of immigrants and refugees primarily composed of Latinx, Kurdish, Somali and Sudanese populations. In the past decade, trusted community organization Conexión Américas has worked in partnership with community members, government agencies, and artists to make a number of safety improvements to […]
Jade-Midway Placemaking Projects
To ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit line would serve the residents of ethnically diverse, low-income districts in the eastern part of Portland, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance used arts-based engagement to help build a positive dialogue between local agencies and the community. The challenge When roughly […]
Broad Avenue Arts District
A stretch of New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park, MD just outside Washington, DC was a typical auto-oriented street designed to move commuters through a place quickly, making walking, rolling, and biking for residents not just difficult but unsafe. With an invite from the city, a dance group harnessed the power of arts and culture to shift the narrative of a place defined by its transportation challenges.