How Do We Know It’s Creative Placemaking?

Creating a strong, resilient, and sustainable field of practice requires broad agreement and a common understanding of the reasons for doing the work.

After a year of testing and gathering input from people new to creative placemaking and others with deep experience in the field, we are releasing a discussion guide designed for creative placemaking initiative partners to surface and develop agreement on a shared understanding of the underlying values in their work.

For the last two years, four major organizations have worked together to collaborate on their investment into the creation of a strong and sustainable national field of practice in which community residents intentionally use arts, culture, and design strategies in local partnerships for equitable, healthy, and sustainable outcomes.

Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, ArtPlace America, The Kresge Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts meet regularly and share information about their grantmaking, research, and planning. Together, in 2018, they asked the Bridgespan group to help them assess the strength and needs of the field of creative placemaking using the Strong Field Framework.

We learned that articulating and clarifying the purpose and values of creative placemaking was a need for the field.

Read more about the process on the ArtPlace website and download your copy of the guide. It’s our hope that partners in creative placemaking will use the guide in their work together.

Cover Photo: Scott Beseler