All posts tagged as creative placemaking

19Mar

Ann Markusen – How do we know Creative Placemaking is working? [VIDEO]

In The Art of Placemaking Conference Videos by Tim Blankenship / 2015/03/19 / No Comments

Ann Markusen is Director of the Arts Economy Initiative and the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and Principal of Markusen Economic Research. She is a researcher, frequent public speaker, and advisor to public agencies, policymakers, businesses, economic developers, and nonprofit organizations across the US, in Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and Brazil. Her expertise is in economic development at the state and local level, where she brings analytical skills to bear on the ways that industries and occupations shape possibilities for creating good work. Markusen is currently serving as research and writing consultant for the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Living Wage Jobs.

Her 2010 report Creative Placemaking, authored along with Anne Gadwa, is still considered the defining document of the creative placemaking movement. The report remains a key resource for mayors, arts organizations, the philanthropic sector, and others interested in understanding strategies for leveraging the arts to help shape and revitalize the physical, social, and economic character of place.

National Endowment for the Arts - Our Town

27Feb

NEA Update on Creative Placemaking Research and Programs – Part 1 [VIDEO]

In The Art of Placemaking Conference Videos by Tim Blankenship / 2015/02/27 / No Comments

Jason Schupbach became director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts in May 2010. In this position, he manages the NEA’s grantmaking for design and the NEA’s design initiatives, such as the Mayors’ Institute on City Design as well Our Town, which provides funding in recognition of the role that the arts can play in economic revitalization and in creating livable, sustainable communities.

Prior to coming to the NEA, Schupbach held the first-in-the-nation position of creative economy industry director for the Massachusetts Office of Business Development where his accomplishments included coordinating the growth of new industry cluster groups, such as the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA), and launching a Design Excellence initiative, an effort to improve procurement processes in Massachusetts in order to build more sustainable and longer-lasting buildings and communities, and increase the number of designers being offered contracts.

In December of 2014 Jason along with his colleague Jane Chu from the NEA published the paper Our Town: Supporting the Arts in Communities Throughout the United States which was included in the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Community Development Investment Review.

Why are a farm, a church, a museum, an arboretum, and a festival working together to create a new environmental arts center in rural Freeman, South Dakota? Why are a community loan fund and an office of economic and workforce development working with a local arts agency in San Francisco to secure permanent space for arts organizations? Why are a bank, an energy company, and a music organization collaborating on a series of pop-up performances in suburban Maize, Kansas? The answer: They are all working on projects funded by Our Town grants.

26Feb

30 Years of Creative Placemaking in Providence

In The Art of Placemaking Conference Videos by Tim Blankenship / 2015/02/26 / No Comments

Lynne McCormack - Providence Arts, Culture + Tourism

In this panel discussion Bert Crenca, artistic director and co-founder of AS220; Barnaby Evans, executive artistic director of WaterFire Providence; Clay Rockefeller, co-founder The Steel Yard and partner at The Dean Hotel; and Lynne McCormack, director of Art Culture + Tourism for the City of Providence share their experiences in building and supporting creative cultural institutions that helped redefine a city. This panel was moderated by Anne Gadwa Nicodemus.

Since its settlement in 1636, by Roger Williams, Providence has held a unique position as a City where free-thinking and creativity abound. Founded on the idea of individual liberty Providence has long been a haven for artist and creative thinkers. Home to both Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design the city has produced and nurtured creative groups and individuals. The modern creative renaissance that began here over thirty years ago was jump started and kept alive thanks in no small part to the players in this discussion.

15Jan

Putting Creativity to Work (video)

In The Art of Placemaking Conference Videos by Tim Blankenship / 2015/01/15 / No Comments

Creative Placemaking with People at the Center

Since 1975, writer, performer, director and activist Marty Pottenger has created multidisciplinary placemaking performances, plays, arts-based civic dialogues, and community arts projects throughout the United States.

In this captivating talk Marty Pottenger shares her experiences bringing the arts into lives the ordinary citizens who might not normally have opportunities to engage in creative placemaking.

“What if [the principles of creative placemaking were] applied to municipal practices? What if the Federal government starts freezing up? The state government starts freezing up? And the challenges only increase? Who’s going to be really on the dime to actually figure out what to do, and I came up with municipal governments to figure out how to incorporate and integrate arts making and arts projects to tackle non-arts problems.”

Her work with Art at Work in Portland, ME has taught her the importance evaluating how creative projects influence their audiences, “who brings their family, who talks about it, who talks to you about it, how are they experiencing the culture?” The Thin Blue Lines: Police Project was a national initiative to strengthen community resiliency and municipal government through arts projects and municipal staff, unions, politicians, the public and artists.

25Mar

Sponsorship Research for the Placemaking World (video)

In The Art of Placemaking Conference Videos, Videos by Peter A. Mello / 2014/03/25 / No Comments

Measuring What Matters in Sponsorship Research

While it’s great to attend a conference and hear from all the experts from within your field, it can be even more useful to hear from experts who work in other fields. At The Art of Placemaking conference we invited Jed Pearsall, founder and president of Performance Research, a global leader in marketing and sponsorship research for Fortune 50 brands, to share his experiences in working with companies that sponsor the Arts. Performance Research’s mission is to help clients capture and measure the value of sponsorship and experiential marketing and reveal the essential truth about the impact.

There was lots of great information in this session. Here’s the continuum of sponsorship research that increases in importance as you move along it from left to right.

Sponsorship research

Jed cited David D’Alessandro, CEO, John Hancock Insurance, and author of Brand Warfare, as being particularly applicable for placemakers:

“Arts & cultural sponsorships have two enormous advantages. First, they represent one of the last kinds of sponsorships where consumers give you credit for just showing up…Secondly, they allow you to be distinctive and win attention by doing something unexpected.”

Many audience members expressed surprise when Jed advised that in all their years of conducting sponsorship research on arts properties, visitors have never expressed concerns to Performance Research about over-commercialization despite this being the biggest fear of art organizations and a hurdle in keeping many from entering into valuable partnerships with corporations. Consumers understand and appreciate that many events and exhibitions would not take place without corporate sponsorship.Read more →