Creative placemaking workshops explore crowdmapping, muraling, team building, financing and more

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PPleo@artsbuildcommunities.com

Upcoming workshops by The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking can help you become a more effective creative placemaker.  You can learn:

• Better ways to identify and map creative assets in your community (Why?  Because to choose where you want to go, you should know what you have)
• How to create community murals
• Strategies for funding creative placemaking initiatives 
• Ways to build teams and public support for creative placemaking

Workshop instructors are experts in the growing field of creative placemaking:  Kadie Dempsey, Director of Creative Placemaking for Morris Arts and co-owner, CORE Creative Placemaking; Dan Fenelon, a muralist and public art sculptor, who is also co-owner, CORE Creative Placemaking; and Leonardo Vazquez, Executive Director, The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.

Four workshops will be held between October 2016 and January 2017 at ArtPride New Jersey and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.  Each workshop is either a half-day or a full-day.Fees range from $65 to $150 per workshop.  Members of ArtPride and NCCP and Dodge grantees receive discounts of 25%. Members of Creative Teams that have received Community Coaching from NCCP receive discounts of 50%.

Learn more about or register for these workshops.

NCCP is looking for partners outside of New Jersey to host these and other creative placemaking workshops.  Partners receive a share of the net income from the workshops and receive discounts to the workshops and other NCCP events.  If you're organization is interested in hosting workshops, please contact Leonardo Vazquez by email or phone.

Creative Glassboro formed; welcoming volunteers for knitting and yarn-bombing initiative

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The small but fast growing South Jersey town of Glassboro now has a group of leaders working to make it a better place through and for creativity.

Creative Glassboro's mission is to "integrate arts and culture into the fabric of downtown Glassboro as an economic development tool that will enhance our quality of life, provide better creative experiences, and promote new opportunities for the benefit of all our citizens.Through arts and culture, Glassboro, from the east and High Street Arts District towards the west to Rowan University, becomes an increasingly inviting place where artists, business owners, professionals, educators, and private citizens of all ages want to live, work and thrive.Our guiding principles towards this vision are to be inclusive and embrace the diversity that exists in our community; encourage a balance of commercial development with green conservation; promote and preserve our historically rich cultural heritage; and promote and support a diverse mix of private, commercial, and non-profit-led arts and culture initiatives and programs."

To that end, Creative Glassboro is partnering with the Rowan University Art Gallery on its first community initiative:  Yarn It.  This is a series of events, including community knitting, yarn-bombing, and  event to bring together residents and visitors and highlight the downtown area.  It will be held September 24 and October 15.

Creative Glassboro is a diverse team of town residents, merchants, public officials and other who were brought together through NCCP's Community Coaching initiative.  The team developed a vision plan for enhancing quality of life, economic opportunity and the creative environment through creative placemaking.  Yarn It is the first initiative developed through the plan. 

For more, please visit Creative Glassboro's website creativeglassboro.com

Call for session proposals for Creative Placemaking Knowledge Exchange

Call for Proposals: The Art of Healthy Communities, November 11, 2016, NJIT, Newark, NJ

Deadline: September 10 (Note new date)

Submit proposals to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/cpke16

To learn more about or register for the conference: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/creative-placemaking-knowledge-exchange-16-the-art-of-healthy-communities-tickets-26859022058

Session proposals are being accepted for the second annual Creative Placemaking Knowledge Exchange, to be held November 11, 2016 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ.  

The theme of this year's conference is "The Art of Healthy Communities".  The conference is produced by The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking through support from New Jersey Health Initiatives, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town program.

We invite you to submit proposals for presentations on innovative or unusual research, thinking or practice in creative placemaking.  Preference will go to presentations that focus on the theme of the connection between public health and creative placemaking.  However, we are open to any presentations that demonstrate new knowledge or practice in the field.

The Knowledge Exchange is itself an unusual type of 'big ideas' conference.  Each speaker will have 5 to 7 minutes to present, and then will engage in conversation with audience members.  In the afternoon, all participants will engage in peer exchanges in which they collectively determine the topics they want to discuss.

Questions? Contact Leonardo Vazquez at leo@artsbuildcommunities.com  or 973-763-6352

Conference sponsors and supporters: