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As local leaders embrace creative placemaking as a tool to strengthen and transform communities across the country, the Creative Placemaking team at LISC has worked to create the resources and peer networks needed to empower practitioners across this unique field. With the support and partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Design & Creative Placemaking team, LISC established the Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance (CPTA) Program to assess and respond to the unique needs of Our Town Grantees. Now accessible to the general public, the videos, toolkit, and resources hosted here promise to bring these critical opportunities for skill building, reflection, and professional connection to placemakers on a national scale, as they collaborate with residents to develop arts, culture, and design projects that aim to strengthen communities.
As we work to aid and elevate the work of local creative placemakers, we envision a field with the depth of experience and broad support needed to make a lasting impact. Through targeted funding and technical assistance, LISC and the NEA spur government agencies, community organizations, and other stakeholders to incorporate creative approaches into their community development projects from the very beginning—complementing the work of the many partners and friends who appear within this online resource.
Ultimately, the goal of these projects—and this this new resource—is to lay the groundwork for systems change.
Systems changes are shifts in local policies and practices that sustain the increased integration of art, culture, and design activities in community development through the work of diverse, cross-sector partners.
Creative placemaking projects can manifest systems change in diverse ways, for example, establishment of new and sustained cross-sector partnerships; shifts in institutional structure, practices or policies; replication or scaling of innovative project models; establishment of training programs; or dissemination of informational resources to support the creative placemaking field.
Individually, creative placemaking projects present innovative solutions for local challenges; together, they chart a course for a future where art, culture, and design are at the heart of every community. Join us as we work to make it happen
Click here to learn more about our past work in Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance.
The National Endowment for the Arts supports exemplary arts projects in communities nationwide through grantmaking, initiatives, partnerships and events.
Creative Placemaking Toolkit
Intended to be a guide for anyone interested in beginning a creative placemaking initiative, this digital toolkit can be used flexibly—in whatever way best suits the needs of you and your team. Wherever you’re coming from, the webinars, worksheets, and activities in this resource are designed to help you recenter artists and residents within creative placemaking projects from the very beginning, offering practical and tactical advice on topics like partnership, community engagement, and evaluation.
Programs for Our Town Grantees
This unique program creates and disseminates technical assistance resources (TA) and training experiences for the creative placemaking field, and particularly for grantees and prospective applicants to Our Town, the Arts Endowments’ flagship creative placemaking grant program. Our Town, TA resources are meant to expand communities’ capacity to harness the powerful potential of arts, culture, and design when intentionally incorporated into community development strategies. While the resources here are designed specifically for current Our Town grantees, the webinars and resources listed are available for general use for all creative placemaking practitioners.