Creative Placemaking in Transition Part 2
A Look Forward
Check out Part 1: A Look Back here.
Johanna K. Taylor and Andrew Zitcer
As the field of creative placemaking continues to evolve, we seek to make these transformations and extensions visible to practitioners and funders as they continue to do the work of community-based, justice-informed, and artist-centered equitable community development. This article is the second in a two-part series exploring the transitions in the field in 2020. The first article explores the context of the field’s core assumptions and connects it to new trajectories.
This article takes a future-oriented look at creative placemaking in transition, which is less focused on defining a suite of methods or collaboration practices and is more interested in the driving forces motivating practitioners. This analysis arises from our 21 interviewees who were influential in shaping the 2010-2020 creative placemaking field; in our 2023 research, we find them continuing to work in pursuit of democratic, justice-seeking principles. The driving forces shaping the field beyond creative placemaking explored here are cultural democracy, trust, and community power, and labor equity as foundational. We also share program and policy recommendations.4
Overarching Context: Federal Commitment to the Creative Placemaking Agenda
The federal government’s agenda has enabled unprecedented levels of federal funding for cross-sectoral projects that can include the arts, culture, and design as integral collaborators. The 2021 Infrastructure Bill revitalizes struggling systems in the built environment by connecting social programs to support communities and promote well-being. A 2022 Executive Order promotes the arts as strengthening the soul of our nation and as essential to American democracy. New federal programs such as the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grant program run by the US Department of Transportation encourage collaborating with artists and art methods. At the same time, the NEA’s Our Town grant program continues to operate and has expanded the eligible partners to include local governments as well as other quasi-government entities. Of the 45 initial Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grantees, 36 have previously received Our Town funding, demonstrating creative placemaking experience. In response, artists and organizations are actively expanding the potential of arts in equitable community development work to respond to this present moment, build new models of practice, and pursue new collaborations across sectors.
Cultural Democracy
Practitioners are motivated by democratic ideals of community well-being, equity, and social change. Referencing scholar Kevin Mulcahy, cultural democracy is a populist approach that amplifies activities that represent a broader, more pluralistic representation of culture.5 We identify the pursuit of cultural democracy through a renewed focus on embedding arts and design in non-arts spaces through cross-sector collaboration.
Arts in cross-sector collaboration takes multiple forms and builds on an extensive legacy of cross-sectoral collaboration as uniting people across resources and expertise to advance a shared societal goal through systems change.6 The 2024 NEA Our Town call for application encourages this work by emphasizing projects that focus on “health or well-being, transportation or infrastructure, or climate-related challenges within a community.” Partnerships that brought together different groups of stakeholders were part of creative placemaking practice from the beginning, making this a refinement, not a totally new trend.
Artist residencies in government agencies are one form of cross-sectoral collaboration. Programs are happening in rural contexts and big cities, as well as state-level agencies in Washington and Minnesota. In Boston, the Artists-in-Residence Program was launched in 2015 with NEA Our Town support and has continued to evolve with each iteration to place a cohort of artists across government agencies from environment to parks to planning. Director of Public Art Karin Goodfellow sees the program foundations as inspired by creative placemaking and artist residencies but emphasizes that the program is now focusing on connecting arts across other civic sectors, such as affordable housing and bringing in experts to support collaboration “that will lead to changes to policy, process, practice, and culture within the City of Boston organization, increased capacity for all participants, and better outcomes for those who receive services from the City.”
This work is also expanding beyond the traditional community development and city government collaboration of creative placemaking to support artists to work in non-arts organizations where they bring creative methods and promote innovation.7 Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) is supporting 300 artists with a set salary and benefits to work in community-based organizations across the state of New York for two years. CRNY is led by a cohort of former ArtPlace staff, including Sarah Calderon, Jamie Hand, and Maura Cuffie-Peterson. While “ArtPlace was born out of a cultural policy shift,” clarifies Hand, “CRNY was born out of the pandemic.” The Artist Employment Program responds to entrenched racial and economic inequities that became unavoidable during the pandemic by providing artists with fair salaries to expand the scope of work community organizations are advancing. Calderon and Hand shared that CRNY is an intentionally temporary three-year initiative that is designed to experiment with new models and produce knowledge about them to support and advance the field to build a future equitable arts ecosystem for all. While not a form of creative placemaking per se, the work of CRNY moves forward the democratic impetus that is embodied in much of the work of creative placemaking practitioners.
A number of interviewees see cross-sectoral collaboration as democratic and advancing systems change. According to Michael Rohd from the University of Montana’s Co-Lab for Civic Imagination, the impacts of a collaboration are not based on the success of one single project but rather its ongoing influence on future work and its to advance greater structural change. Similarly, Goodfellow calls it doing systems change work to successfully advocate for Artists-in-Residence support to be included in the annual city budget, which includes funds for a full-time staff role. Each small shift is making another shift possible, whether within the same local ecosystem or becoming a reference exemplar to enable change elsewhere.
Trust & Community Power
In the wake of the 2020 racial justice movement, the funding community and the creative placemaking practitioner community aligned with equity and trust as core values. Today, as former ArtPlace director Jamie Bennett observes, awareness of art as a part of a suite of approaches continues to increase among funders as they aim to promote community power through trust-based models. According to Northern New Jersey Community Foundation’s Leonardo Vazquez, community foundations are becoming models of how to support community power work into the future. This shift recognizes the immediate, responsive work that community-based organizations do to meet the needs of local communities, from economic inequities to climate to housing. This model places power in community hands so that frontline leaders can support people making changes in their ecosystem.
The recently launched The Culture and Community Power Fund (C&CPF) was referenced by many interviewees as a model of trust-based philanthropy and equity as the central funding goal. Referred to as “ArtPlace 4.0” by one interviewee, this initiative is jointly supported by the Barr, Kresge, and William Penn Foundations to further clarify and demonstrate connections between creative placemaking strategies and equitable outcomes. According to co-directors Erik Takeshita and Aviva Kapust, the project aims to shift more investment toward art and culture efforts that intentionally help build community power in historically oppressed communities. The project recognizes art and culture as components of a larger and vital ecosystem that supports power building and believes that all components must be nurtured and connected in order for power to develop and endure. The C&CPF launched with unrestricted, multi-year support to grantees in six cities; these grantee-partners will also inform future investments and grantmaking strategies.
The C&CPF is a model of trust-based philanthropy that honors and enlists the expertise of front-line organizations, practitioners, and communities most impacted by structural oppression. According to the Trust Based Philanthropy Project, centers on “mutual accountability... [through which] philanthropic systems and structures reflect the needs and dreams of communities”. Similarly, participatory philanthropy also centers local values and leadership in grantmaking to shift power to communities by redesigning the traditional model. Kapust sees the C&CPF as a model for the future of the field by demonstrating that “you get to equity by building community power.”
“She envisions a future of “all art and culture (funders), especially those focused on supporting creative placemaking, to explicitly shift focus to community power building as both a strategy and an end goal.” ”
Other emerging funding models identified by interviewees include enterprise-level investing. Ellen Baxter of Broadway Housing Communities has found ongoing support from federal agencies such as HUD and new international partnerships. Donna Neuwirth from the Wormfarm Institute recognizes a trend for funders to work across sectors that may not typically include arts and culture, citing Builders Initiative Foundation and New Pluralists as examples.
Labor Equity as Foundational
A recognition of extreme economic inequities was born out of the pandemic that has led to labor organizing at arts and community organizations, as well as to a call for basic human rights for artists in the form of equitable pay, healthcare, and working conditions. This has spurred a cultural policy shift, launching national conversations to advance a more equitable arts ecosystem, such as the Creative Change Coalition launched by Springboard for the Arts in fall 2023.
While interviewees do not identify labor equity as a specific creative placemaking practice, economic precarity was continually discussed as a foundational concern for artists, community organizers, and others. In order to advance a specific cross-sectoral collaboration project or develop a new funding initiative, practitioners are first concerned with building equitable foundations that ensure a just daily existence for everyone. Therefore, we identify labor equity as a foundational driving force in the expanded field of creative placemaking, although it does not define the field’s specific methods and practices.
One manifestation of these justice-seeking, democratic principles is the emergence of guaranteed basic income models that focus on enabling the foundations for artists to do their work through unconditional payment made to individuals on a regular basis. Arts-based guaranteed basic income programs pilots include Maniobra in Puerto Rico and Springboard for the Arts’ Guaranteed Minimum Income for Artists program in Minnesota. Advocates are finding support from national groups such as Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.
Interviewees are now involved in this work as well as a practice of actively building equitable futures for artists. CRNY’s Guaranteed Income for Artists program is providing regular payments to 2,400 artists for 18 months. The work is led by former ArtPlace staff member Maura Cuffie-Peterson, who sees this as critical “safety-net work” and “anti-poverty work” for artists, enabling their creative practice but, more importantly, their foundational, daily existence. According to Cuffie-Peterson, one challenge is to show that artists are not special and are just like every other worker or parent working to cover the basic needs to support their daily lives.
According to Sarah Calderon and Jamie Hand, administering CRNY’s programs is not typical arts administration work. By providing salaries and benefits, staff are enmeshed in the complexities of people's lives beyond the scope of a particular project and they have brought in support from social service organizations to navigate this.
Labor equity for administrators and organizers is also being discussed as organizations struggle to fully support staff who are often alone in leading art and culture work in that non-arts organization. Lyz Crane recognized this as a trend and a tension, suggesting that the organizations and the field both need to support these administrators with a network to share resources and build community. Erica Rawles of the US Water Alliance says that an outside network is not enough to support isolated arts staff, suggesting that “organizations need to consider investing in more robust arts and cultural strategies positions and programs like they might do for other initiatives that fulfill their organization's mission in addition to supporting administrators with a network and community building opportunities.”
Policy and Program Recommendations
We are researchers who are surveying the landscape to assess what artists, funders, and organizers are doing now. In these articles, we have elevated the trends, passions, and tensions that people are feeling today in the broader field of creative placemaking. We now leave it to you to reflect on whether you align with these findings and to decide how you want to carry your work forward in potentially building new alliances or communities of support. As you consider your next move, we share a set of program and policy recommendations.
Identify an organization or group to serve in a field unifying capacity and build a network.
Support federal incentives for embedding the arts and artists across sectors (such as HUD, CDFI grants, CD block grants, etc.).
Continue experimentation with funding models that promote community power, such as enterprise-level investing, trust-based philanthropy, and participatory philanthropy.
Value artists’ labor through UBI, equity, and benefits.
Consider empowering an entity to organize the future of cross-sector field building and unify practitioners to share resources and navigate collaboration challenges.
Educate artists and community developers about the power of artist-centered equitable community development.
Fund racial justice and solidarity economy work.
We found great enthusiasm among our interviewees for the future of arts-based, collaborative work to build equitable futures in communities. Despite mixed feelings of uncertainty around funding, aligned terminology, or networks uniting the field, we see practitioners actively building new models of work. We are inspired by CRNY’s work for the future of the field, Springboard’s Creative Change Coalition, and the Culture and Community Power Fund. We encourage people to continue to develop their justice-informed, place-based practices. This work still matters no matter what we call it and no matter who is doing the convening.
4 The authors thank the interviewees for their time in participating in the research and for reviewing drafts of these articles. They also thank Jason Schupbach for his time and expertise in offering productive editorial and content feedback.
5 Mulcahy, K. (2006). Cultural Policy: Definitions and Theoretical Approaches. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 35(4), 319–330. https://doi.org/10.3200/JAML.35.4.319-330.6 Becker, J. & Smith, D. B. (Winter 2018). The Need for Cross-Sector Collaboration. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_need_for_cross_sector_collaboration.
7 Taylor, J. K. (2021). Art Practice as Policy Practice: Framing the Work of Artists Embedded in Government, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 51:4, 224-237, DOI: 10.1080/10632921.2021.1925193
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Andrew Zitcer is an associate professor at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, where he teaches Arts Administration & Museum Leadership and directs the Urban Strategy graduate program. His research interests explore economic and cultural democracy. His first book, Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism, was recently published by University of Minnesota press. A forthcoming volume, Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life (co-edited with Tom Borrup) will appear in 2024 from Routledge.
Johanna K. Taylor is Associate Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her work is grounded in a core value of art as catalyzing force in advancing justice in daily life. Taylor’s research explores questions of cultural equity through the intersection of art, community, policy, and place including in her book The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement. Taylor is co-founder of CAIR (Cross Sector Artists in Residence) Lab, a creative collective dedicated to building more just places through arts-led, cross-sectoral collaboration. Before turning to academia, she spent over a decade working as an arts administrator.
