Thursday, August 30, 2018

National Summit Draws from Wide Area

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Community Director
The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

   Clara Pinsky plans to travel across the country to learn how others are wrestling with arts and displacement. She is senior program manager with a non-profit arts organization in San Fransisco that works with formerly homeless people. 
   Pinsky will be joining more than 300 people from around the country at the National Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit 
October 5-7 at the University of Maryland, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in College Park, MD. They'll be discussing, sharing and learning how arts and cultural programming improves places. 
    "I'm really excited that one of the themes is displacement and gentrification," Pinsky said. Her organization, ABD Productions, works with low-income residents to create performance and visual art. San Fransisco is famously a high-cost-of-living city and home to some of the world's tech giants. It is also home to desperate poverty, Pinsky said. "We have this really stark wealth disparity happening," she said. 
     ABD's signature program, Skywatchers, which is in the second year of an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, produces art through and by residents. "We work with community organizers. We're the artists in the room as they strategize to fight back against gentrification," Pinsky said.  
     The summit is attracting a mix of people from various fields. As one might expect, representatives from at least a dozen arts organizations will bring their creative spirit. Arts funders from the NEA, ArtPlace America and the Levitt Foundation, will also be on hand. Representatives from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office in California will not only attend, but instruct a session on creative placemaking and law enforcement. The National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations will represent along with people from Grantmakers in Health. 
      An employee of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which champions civil rights by facilitating dialogue in Alabama, will attend the summit along with representatives from the Local Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth & Reconciliation. The Edgecombe Group, Inc., an architectural, preservation and urban planning firm based in Maryland will also be present. 
       Americans for the Arts is a partner with co-producers, ArtPlace America and the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking. Patricia Walsh, Public Art and Civic Design Program Manager for Americans for the Arts, said that studies show that 72 percent of Americans understand that the arts have the power to unify across race, age and ethnicity. "Communities across the country gain, and in some cases regain, connectivity and attachment to each other and their spaces when the arts are a part of community development," she wrote.
       Employees at the following arts organizations will be at the summit: St. Louis ArtWorks, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, the William King Museum of Art, the Washington County Arts Council, the Zeitgeist Center for Arts and Community, the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, the Coleman Center for the Arts, Public Art Reston, the Caroline County Council of Arts, Inc., the Appalachian Artisan Center, the Cultural Planning Group, GoodSpace Murals and ArtsRevive. 
       Participants are coming from many states. People from nearby states, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, will be joined by folks from Arizona, Nevada, New York State, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, West Virginia, Michigan, Alabama.      



        

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Certificate in Creative Placemaking Program is Bigger and More Diverse than Ever

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
     Communications Manager
     The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

     A dancer, a realtor, an architect, a planner and an theater director walk into a room. It's not a joke. People in these professions will gather in a classroom as part of this year's incoming class of the Certificate in Creative Placemaking program. They hail from 11 states and represent most regions of the country. They are recent college graduates, mid-career professionals and seasoned experts.
    "There's a palpable energy and excitement," said Chris Archer, who co-produces the program for the New Hampshire Institute of Art in collaboration with The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking. "We again are seeing a wide range of professional sectors being represented. This year's group seems to really understand that creative placemaking is not just a trendy term from Wikipedia. It's a craft and a craft that needs to be learned."
     Archer is Associate Dean of Community Education at NHIA. This is the second year of the partnership between NHIA and NCCP. The certificate program was created by NCCP Executive Director, Leonardo Vazquez, PP, and was offered before by Rutgers University and Ohio State University.
     The program is designed for busy people. Students begin with three days of hands-on workshops in New Hampshire. That portion is followed by online instruction and coaching and culminates in the production of a capstone project by each student, a real-world application of creative placemaking strategies.  
      Students will arrive at NHIA in September from Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Wisconsin, West Virginia, California, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia. Their job titles include the following: director of dance at a state university; executive and artistic director of a theater company;  a senior planner of a mid-sized city; a destination branding consultant; a project coordinator of a large metropolitan transit authority; and a studio artist. 
      The New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority is providing five scholarships for New Hampshire residents this year. "We have seen first-hand that integrating arts and culture in our communities can be transformational," wrote Executive Director, Katy Easterly Martey. "We are excited to host a new and impressive class of fellows and look forward to seeing how the program enables them to lead inspiring work that will make a difference in New Hampshire." 
      In fact, many of the students are being sponsored by their employers; municipalities and other organizations, said Archer. "It's impressive to see that these organizations see this as an investment," Archer said.
     This year's class is almost twice as large as last year's class of 14. That cohort included
John Sullivan, a Montclair, NJ resident, high school science teacher, and vice president of Bike and Walk Montclair. Sullivan's capstone project will change the character of Montclair's bustling downtown, when two parklets will temporarily replace parking spaces and serve as a spot to gather, perform, and make art until the cooler weather arrives. He wrote in his final paper that he valued what he learned about group facilitation, communication and dynamic and community-driven process. 
      "It was the skills I learned ... that are most directly responsible for me being able to take my tactical urbanism work to the next level!" wrote Sullivan.
      Five seats remain in the program as of this writing. 
   
   

Friday, July 6, 2018

Strategy Lab Leads to Mural Art Project in Hackensack

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager
National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

     What started off as an idea in an NCCP-led Strategy Lab in Hackensack will soon become a reality. ArtsBergen seeks to transform a blank wall in the downtown into a visual delight for pedestrians as they travel to and from the Hackensack Performing Arts Center (HACPAC). 
     ArtsBergen is an initiative of the The Northern New Jersey Community Foundation (NNJCF), which works to build better communities through the arts. The mural project is a collaboration between NNJCF's ArtsBergen, the Hackensack Main Street Alliance, and its Creative Arts Team. The idea for the project was conceived as part of the Hackensack Strategy Lab, a joint initiative of NCCP and ArtsBergen. 
      "The Strategy Lab was a great way to get local residents and businesses interested in the project," wrote Albert Dib, Director of Redevelopment for the City of Hackensack. "We received tons of great feedback, which we can now incorporate into a final product. NCCP was key to organizing this effort which yielded some very positive results." 
      The HMSA's Creative Arts Team received 33 applications and will select a winner by July 23. The mural may be finished as early as late August or early September, according to Danielle De Laurentis, Associate Director of NNJCF.  The mural will be painted at the corner of Demarest Place and Main Street on the north wall at 135 Main Street. Demarest Place is a unique pedestrian walkway, crossing Main Street, between the Atlantic Street bus stop and the HACPAC. 
      The strategy lab took place on October 17 of last year at the site. Residents of Hackensack and the surrounding communities met to brainstorm ideas on art, physical elements and cultural programming. The goal of the mural project is to create an enlivened, beautified public walkway that serves as a gateway to Main Street from the bus stop and the HACPAC. 
      NCCP conducted Community Coaching for Hackensack in 2016. 
    
      



Thursday, June 21, 2018

New Workshops Part of the Certificate in Creative Placemaking

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP
The Certificate in Creative Placemaking program helps students influence the levers of power in communities. To this end, we are adding two workshops and a webinar to train students in strategic communications. We are also providing one year of free membership to the new membership program to be offered by The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.
The Certificate in Creative Placemaking is produced by The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking and New Hampshire Institute of Art.
Strategic communications series
Reading strategically, a webinar available in September 2018, focuses on how to scan and review scholarly articles, plans, studies and other academic documents efficiently and effectively.
Writing strategically, a four-hour workshop to be offered in December 2018, focuses on writing creative placemaking studies and plans that the average reader can find convincing and persuasive. The workshop will be held near NCCP’s office in the Newark, NJ area
Speaking strategically, a four-hour workshop to be held in June 2019, focuses on presenting complex information about creative placemaking to different audiences. The workshop will be held in or around Newark, NJ or Manchester, NH.
These training sessions are available free, only to current students and graduates of the current or previous versions of the Certificate program. The sessions are optional, but highly recommended.
Anyone in the Certificate program can benefit from the strategic communications series, whether they are working artists unfamiliar with the communication styles of government officials, or public officials who want to persuade key stakeholders in their communities.
Free NCCP membership
This summer, NCCP will be unveiling a new membership program. In the first year, members will get curated notices of job and grant opportunities, as well as new or interesting projects and reports. Members will also get special discounts to NCCP programs. First year membership fees will be around $30. 
Certificate students will have free memberships while they are enrolled in the program. 
There are some seats still available. To learn more about the Certificate program, please visit http://www.nhia.edu/creativeplacemaking   Also, please join us for an upcoming Certificate information session on June 27 at 6 pm eastern or July 19 at 12 pm eastern. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/certificate-in-creative-placemaking-information-session-tickets-33556580636

Monday, June 18, 2018

Our thoughts on the tragic events at Art All Night this weekend

By the staff and board of The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

So many of us were stunned to hear about the tragedy Sunday at Art All Night in Trenton, NJ. It is more than an annual arts festival; it is a wonderful and inspiring event that for more than a decade has shown that the arts can bring – even for a day – joy, freedom and safety in a challenged area of Trenton.

We learned yesterday that no matter how hard you try to make completely safe enclaves, the tensions and pressures of the outside world can sometimes barrel in. And we may fall back on our fears and question our confidence.

But if we give in to our fears or negative thoughts, we lose something of ourselves. And the people who want us to be afraid feel more empowered. What we learn after events like this is that if we can be both confident and careful, we can keep building better and safer communities.
While we are upset about violence for any reason, we offer our condolences to the family of the person killed and to the all the victims.

We hope that the organizers of Art All Night will continue their path, which not only helps Trenton but all challenged communities. And of course we hope that everyone will go support the event next time. And we also hope that everyone will help address the social and economic issues that lead to violence and tragedy.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Learn Grant Writing Skills from an NEA Director

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager
Jen Hughes
Director of Design and Creative Placemaking
National Endowment for the Arts
National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

Learn to craft an outstanding grant proposal from the source. Jen Hughes of the National Endowment for the Arts will offer a workshop on writing an excellent proposal at our upcoming Appalachian Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit.
   
Hughes will provide an overview of the NEA Our Town program and analyze the components of an outstanding proposal during a session at the two-day summit, scheduled for June 21 and 22 in Charleston, WV. The deadline for Our Town grant applications is August 9.

The NEA recently appointed Hughes to the role of Director of Design and Creative Placemaking, which administers the Our Town grant program. Since 2011 the National Endowment for the Arts has made 538 Our Town grants, investing more than $41 million in creative placemaking projects in communities of all sizes across the United States and its territories.

Creative placemakers will have the opportunity to attend Hughs' workshop after purchasing a ticket to the summit. Space in the workshop is limited, and seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking in partnership with ArtPlace America is organizing the events to build capacity and connections in the nascent field of creative placemaking.
The Appalachian summit is the fourth in a series of five for 2018. The first three summits were held in Denver, Chattanooga, TN, and Madison, NJ. The final national summit for the year will take place in the Washington D.C. area in early October.
     
Katherine Bray-Simons, also of the NEA, offered tips in a similar grant-writing workshop at the event in Madison, N.J. Read about her advice here.
   






Monday, June 4, 2018

Wild and Wonderful Workshop at Summit in West Virginia

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager
National Consortium for Creative Placemaking
Historic photo of Luna Park in Charleston, WV

Take a walk on the wild and wonderful side of Charleston, WV, at our upcoming Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit for Appalachia. Two knowledgeable West Virginians will lead a mobile workshop through the city's west side on Thursday, June 21.

The workshop will help attendees flex their creative placemaking muscles and brainstorm ideas to improve the area through arts and cultural programming. "The West Side, A Wild and Wonderful Tour by Design," will take participants through the onetime site of a turn-of-the-20th-Century amusement park, a soon-to-be-built bourbon distillary, and a niche T-shirt retail store that hosts live indie music. The title of the workshop is a play on the state's slogan, "Wild and Wonderful." Todd Dorcas, Community Economic Development Program Officer for The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, and Mitchell Riggleman, who has a master's degree in architecture with a focus on history and theory, will lead workshop participants through a residential neighborhood that was once home of Luna Park, an amusement park that opened in 1912 and burned to the ground in 1923. The park was part of the first-ever chain of amusement parks collectively called, "Luna Parks." 

The park featured a roller coaster, dance pavilion, swimming pool, roller rink and live entertainment. Admission to the park was 15 cents, and a ride on the roller coaster, called the Royal Giant Dips Coaster, cost a dime, according to mywvhome.com

Dorcas expects the tour will highlight issues of infill development, abandoned structures, vacant lots, affordable housing, historic preservation and gentrification.

Over the course of the two-day summit, attendees will chose from more than 20 sessions organized along the following themes: local economic development and community wellness; building local arts communities, building arts ecologies in isolated areas; invigorating arts in smaller communities; placekeeping and protecting the ethos of a community; building effective partnerships with elected officials; creative placemaking in post-industrial communities; and mapping creative assets.

The summit will serve the 11 states that share the Appalachian Mountain Chain from Alabama to western New York. More than 200 people from 19 states are expected to attend. Only 60 seats are still available for the summit, and space in the mobile workshop is limited 20.

The summit is the fourth in a series of five summits this year. The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking in partnership with ArtPlace America.  The last of the series for 2018 will take place in the Washington, D.C. area in early October.




   

   

       
     


Thursday, May 31, 2018

Economic Development a Theme of Appalachian Summit

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager
National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

     The Appalachian region is rich in culture and art. How the region can transform that richness into economic wealth is a central theme of our upcoming Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit in Charleston, WV on June 21 and 22.
     It's no secret the region struggles to keep economic pace with the rest of the country. Average household income in the area is 80 percent of average household income in the rest of the nation, according to a study published by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Poverty rates are higher than the national average as well, and the disparity is more stark when one looks at the rates for children. 
      Creative placemaking recognizes the unique contribution artists and arts and cultural organizations make to local economies, and it provides tools and techniques for supporting artists, arts activity and community identity in places.  More than 20 sessions in our summit are related to local economic development and community wellness. People looking for practical advice will find it in a few of our workshops. Beth Flowers, Director of the AIR Institute of Berea College, will provide hands-on training for growing your local Appalachian creative economy and expanding partners and a network of support. Three presenters from east Kentucky will also workshop ways to discover cultural assets and turn them into community wealth. 
      The summit will also feature panel discussions that will shed light on leveraging philanthropic investments to strengthen mountain communities. The panel discussion is entitled, "Appalachia Funders Network: Leveraging New Investments and Creative Economies." Folks who enjoy looking at case studies and concrete examples will enjoy "Using the Arts to Strengthen and Sustain Small Communities" led by John Davis of Lanesboro Arts. He will present two case studies of small towns in Minnesota. One of the towns, New York Mills, MN, was twice named one of the 100 Best Small Art Towns in America and is cited as a national model for rural arts and economic development work. 
      Want to learn about workforce development through arts and cultural strategies? We have a knowledge exchange for that, entitled, "ArtPlace Deep Dive: Creative Workforce Development." Knowledge exchanges are conversations with small groups of people from diverse organizations who share their experiences and ideas to generate rich discussion.   
      Our summit program is designed to enable attendees to quickly identify themes so they can attend the sessions most relevant to them. In addition to economic development, themes include the following: building local arts communities; building effective partnerships with elected officials; creative placemaking in post-industrial communities; mapping creative assets; placekeeping and protecting the ethos of a community; building arts ecologies in isolated areas; and invigorating arts in smaller communities.


Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Creative Placemaking that Old House

   
Corner of a building in Downtown Bellefonte.
Photo by Keith Koch

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager 
National Consortium for Creative Placemaking
Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, Executive Director of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking, will address a gathering on old houses in Central Pennsylvania next week. Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, Principal and CEO of Metris Arts Consulting is also scheduled to speak. Both Vazquez and Gadwa Nicodemus have written foundational white papers on the emerging field. Metris Arts Consulting sponsored the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit for the Northeast Corridor earlier in the month. 

"What we're talking about is not just old houses. It's about communities," said Joseph Griffin, Vice President of the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association. The BHCA in partnership with the American Philatelic Society and the Centre County Historical Society is hosting its third annual Old House Fair on Friday and Saturday, June 8 and 9, in Bellefonte, PA.      

Also attending are local creative placemakers, including Micah Gursky, Executive Director of the Tamaqua Area Community PartnershipIn addition, Mary Vollero, the proprietor of Mary's Pink Church and Elaine Meder-Wilgus, the owner of Webster's Books and Cafe. Also joining the conversation will be Pat House, Director of the Bellefonte Art Museum and Jim Dunne, Secretary of the Bellefonte Historic Society. The historic organizations in central Pennsylvania created the event for people who love old houses or professionals who need specialized knowledge of historic buildings. This year, the coalition made creative placemaking the focus of its professional agenda. 
   
     Griffin said he looks forward to learning more about how the community can leverage arts and cultural programing to develop Bellefonte, the seat of Centre County. He describes the town as a "sleepy" place, a shadow of its former self during its heyday in the 1870's, when the municipality supported three newspapers. He said he believes that creative placemaking can, "change the quality and texture of people's lives." 
Centre County Bank Building
Photo by Keith Koch


Griffin said he has witnessed some impressive transformations brought about by creative placemakers. The town of Millheim, for example, was a sleepy place until a local proprietor opened up a cafe and began featuring musical performances and an art gallery, Griffin said. "The town has a little bit of life now because it’s kind of a cool place to be," Griffin said. Millheim had an estimated population of fewer than 1,000 residents, according to U.S. Census estimates for 2016. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area and also has a historic district listed with the Centre County Historical Society. 

Mary Vollero, one of the presenters at the Friday program, purchased an old church in Fleming, PA, painted it pink and began hosting yoga classes and art and music events. Elaine Meder-Wilgus did something similar with Webster's Books and Cafe in State College. 

      The coalition of historic associations revived the tradition of the Old House Fair three years ago after a decades-long hiatus, Griffin said. The professional program grew out of a need and desire to provide information to professionals who deal with old structures in the course of their work; lawyers, commissioners and architects. In prior years, the professional portion focused on financing historic renovation projects or the intricacies of tax and historic preservation codes. The Saturday itinerary is intended more for homeowners looking to troubleshoot issues with their old homes. 
      Griffin said he hopes to learn more about creative placeamaking and how it can invigorate his community. "We all hope for some wonderful transformation to occur." 
      

     
     

     
      

                           
          


   


Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Getting an NEA Our Town grant is hard. Some tips to make it easier.


By Andrea Orlando, MSJ
Communications Manager, National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

Proposals for the NEA Our Town grant program (https://www.arts.gov/national/our-town) are due August 9.  Only 25% of applicants get this grant.  

Here are some tips from an NEA senior staff member and some ideas on how The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking can help you.  NCCP's work has been supported five times through the Our Town program.

A successful grant proposal is as much about recognizing the unique assets of a place as it is about creating something entirely new, said the NEA's Katherine Bray-Simons at the Northeast Corridor Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit in May. 

Katherine Bray-Simons of the NEA conducting a workshop at the CPL Summit
Photo by Justin Jajalla

The NEA is looking to fund projects that leverage “undervalued” or “under-recognized” or “under-tapped” assets, Bray-Simons told the group. Those assets could include a unique local history, architecture or new civic energy around a special opportunity.  
     
The NEA distributes the funds to rural and remote areas as well as urban centers. Notable examples of Our Town grant recipient locations are Wilson, North Carolina, which received funding to restore whirligigs, vernacular art created by WWII veteran Vollis Simpson. The whirligigs are kinetic sculptures made from mechanical spare parts. A public-private partnership employed conservators to restore the aging structures and installed them in a local park. Bray-Simons said the most “poetic” aspect of the project was that locals who had once worked in a now-closed machine shop received training in conservation and are now conservators themselves. 
Vollis Simpson whirligig

Our town grants can range from $25,000 to $200,000. Bray-Simons encouraged the group to look for cross-sector partnerships and be “imaginative” about who those partners may be. The program requires at least one of the partners to be a 501 c3 nonprofit. The program also requires a letter of endorsement from a local official, either from the municipality or the county where the proposed project is located, or from a federally recognized Native American tribe. 

“We’re looking for a player who sets policy and has decision-making power in identifying and carrying out that policy,” Bray-Simons said. 

Clarify the community development goals of the project and justify its timing. “Why is now an important time for intervention?” Bray-Simons asked. 

NCCP has been in several projects supported by Our Town grants. They are creative placemaking plans for Long Beach Island and Perth Amboy (both in New Jersey), the Livable Neighborhoods Program of the Municipal Art Society of New York City, the New Jersey Creative Placemakers program, and the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summits.


Working on the Perth Amboy Plan
Photo by Noelle Zaleski
     While we can't promise to get you a grant (and we will NOT lobby the NEA on anyone's behalf), we can help you think about better ways to connect arts and culture to community and economic development issues.  If you put NCCP in your proposal ($5,000 minimum from the grant), we'll help you free.  If not, we'll ask you for a modest amount to cover our costs. For more information, please contact NCCP Executive Director Leonardo Vazquez by email or at 973-763-6352, x1

The NEA website now includes a resource page for people interested in learning more about the program. https://www.arts.gov/exploring-our-town/. 


    
  


Friday, April 20, 2018

Creative Placemaking Leadership Summits Send Ripples Across the Southeast and Southwest

   




Photo by Sooraj Shajahan

By Andrea Orlando, MSJ

Communications Manager, NCCP


A small city in Colorado may get solar panel murals for their planned live/work spaces for artists. Prison inmates in Georgia may have their art displayed throughout the community. A small-town art center in Alabama will reach out to the local young people to ask what would entice them to remain in the area after college graduation.
    These are just a few of the ripple effects of regional creative placemaking leadership summits produced by the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.  
    “The summit has changed not only my life and my outlook, but it’s going to make huge changes in our community for a very long time,” said Elizabeth Welch, Executive Director of the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Waycross, GA.  Welch attended the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit in Chattanooga, TN in March, the first in a series of five regional summits planned for 2018.   
     For Marilyn Leuszler, chairperson of a creative district in a Colorado town, the CPL Summit in Denver last month affirmed and inspired. 
     “There were so many passionate leaders who presented, and it was easy to see why their various programs and projects are successful, Leuzler wrote. Leuszler’s creative district, called Corazón de Trinidad, is part of a Colorado municipality with a population of fewer than 10,000 people.  “The resonating theme was that the best and most successful ideas are based on each individual community. There were no cookie-cutter plans for making your community better.”
     More than 500 artists, arts administrators, planners, architects and designers have attended regional creative placemaking leadership summits hosted by the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking in partnership with ArtPlace America. And those events are inspiring just the right people, the achievers who were already making their communities better through arts and cultural programming. More than 90 percent of summit attendees who took a post-summit survey either agreed or strongly agreed that what they learned at the convening was useful to their work.  
     Leuszler attended the
Photo by Andrea Orlando
Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver 
summit in Denver in April. The workshop on combining solar energy and art impressed her so much she is now gathering information on incorporating solar power into plans to develop affordable live/work spaces for the creative community. “I would not have known of this combination of art and solar had I not attended the Creative Placemaking Summit in Denver,” she wrote. 
     Leuszler is hoping to solve another community challenge with an idea from the summit. Her organization had been planning to plant grass seed to keep the wind from blowing dirt from the site of three buildings slated for demolition. After a workshop led by a presenter from Pheonix, she decided to plant native wildflowers and install benches and sources of shade as well as a maze of pathways to run through a colorful garden.   
     Sulynn Creswell, Executive Director of Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center in Camden, AL, said she had been grappling with the question of how to inject youthful energy and creativity into her paper mill town of approximately 2,500, a town she described as being in one of the poorest regions of Alabama.  She had her aha moment at the Chattanooga summit in a workshop on asset mapping. She realized that high school-aged children needed to be consulted in the town’s quest for improvement. “We really want our young people to stay, and how do we engage them in envisioning our future,” Creswell said. “Youth bring so much vitality, energy and new ideas. We want to make this a place that is going to hold on to all of that.” 
Photo by Ivan Schustak
CPL Summit in Chattanooga
     Creswell added that the only people under represented at the summit were elected officials. “I think it would have been helpful if there had been someone from city government there. They need these kinds of summits to really recognize what would happen if the arts were incorporated into the life of the community,” she said. 
     Rusty Sox, who does work for South Arts, an arts organization and co-organizer of the Chattanooga summit, said grant applications from summit attendees have been flowing in. South Arts works in partnership with the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Sox said the summit empowered people to talk to their elected officials about new ideas. “We’re getting new energy and excitement about creative placemaking,” he said. 
     The next summit will take place much closer to home for NCCP, which is based in Union, NJ and its co-producer, ArtPlace America, which is based in Brooklyn, NY. The Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit for the Northeast Corridor is scheduled for May 3 and 4 in Madison, NJ at Drew University. 
     “I think it’s going to be the best one,” said Executive Director of the NCCP, Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP. Vazquez said the upcoming summit in New Jersey will have fascinating workshops and impressive sponsors. 
Photo by Andrea Orlando
ART Factory, Paterson, NJ
      Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP, Parks Commissioner of NYC will lead a brainstorming session on making improvements to Oval Park in East Orange. Oval Park was the site of a baseball stadium and the sometime home of the New York Cubans. Most members of this unique team were from Latin America. Today the park is a small neighborhood open space in a challenged area of the Newark suburb.  There is nothing to remind visitors of the history of the team, which won the 1943 Negro Leagues World Series. The workshop, one of three mobile workshops that will take place on site, will resurface that history through creative placemaking.
     Attendees may also sign up for a mobile workshop at the ART Factory in Paterson, a complex of more than 20 factory buildings dating back to 1840. The buildings are now a burgeoning art studio center that is expanding to include an artists’ and makers’ market. Another field trip will take summit-goers to an abandoned baseball field in Paterson, Hinchliffe Stadium. The stadium also has a place in Negro League baseball history from the era of segregated baseball, which ended soon after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on April 15, 1947. 
     Vazquez said the summits welcome everyone from people who are just starting to learn how to make communities better through arts and local cultural activities to those who have been doing the work since, “before placemaking was cool.” 
      “We all learn from one another,” he said. 
     Summit attendees are invited to stay connected through NCCP's online community on our website.
     

     

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Look Who's Going to the Northeast Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit May 3 and 4

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP
They'll be there. Will you?
Creative Placemaking Leadership Summits, produced by ArtPlace America and The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking attract leaders and key influencers who work to make communities better through arts and local culture. Here are some of the organizations whose leaders will be at the Summit at Drew University, May 3-4 in Madison NJ. Register before April 26 to get the best ticket prices.
Age of The Creative New York NY | Alameda County Sheriff's Office San Leandro CA | Americans for the Arts Washington DC | ArtPlace America Brooklyn NY | Bunker Hill Community College Boston MA | Catamount Film & Arts Saint Johnsbury VT | Chestnut Hill Advisory Partners LLC New York NY | City of Bloomington Bloomington IN | Community Solutions / Brownsville Partnership Brooklyn NY | Conexion AmericasNashville TN | Creative Agency Somerville MA | Creative Glassboro Glassboro NJ | Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development Hartford CT | Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation Brooklyn NY | Detroit Collaborative Design Center Detroit MI | Drew University Madison NJ | Drexel University Philadelphia PA | Enterprise Community Partners Boston MA | Spaceworks NYC New York NY | Fairleigh Dickinson University Madison NJ | FEMA Riverside NJ | Flemington Community Partnership Flemington NJ | GARNER Arts Center Garnerville NY | Greater Jamaica Development Corporation Jamaica, NY | Greater Nashville Regional Council Nashville TN | HACE CDC Philadelphia PA | Heurista Co Asheville NC | Jersey Community Acupuncture Flemington NJ | Just Act Philadelphia PA | Larisa Ortiz Associates LLC Jackson Heights NY | League of American Orchestras New York NY | Local Initiatives Support Corporation Newark NJ | Little Tokyo Service Center Los Angeles CA | Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) NYC New York NY | Looney Ricks Kiss Princeton NJ | Los Angeles County Arts Commission Los Angeles CA | Lupoart Morristown NJ | Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts North Adams MA | Mayo Performing Arts Center Morristown NJ | MEC Placemaking Des Moines IA | Meta Local Collaborative New York NY | Metris Arts Consulting Easton PA | Metro Arts Nashville TN | Modern Vintage Ink, LLC Brooklyn NY | Moving in the SpiritAtlanta GA | Municipal Art Society New York NY | National Endowment for the ArtsWashington DC | Neighborhood Design Center Hyattsville MD | NeighborWorks America New York NY | NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley Woonsocket RI | New Jersey Community Capital New Brunswick NJ | New Jersey Community Development Corporation Paterson NJ | New Jersey Health Initiatives Camden NJ | New York City Department of Small Business Services New York NY | New York City Department of Parks New York NY | Northern New Jersey Community Foundation Hackensack NJ | Northeastern School of Law Boston MA | New York City Department of Small Business Services New York NY | Perkins+Will Atlanta GA | Queensland University of Technology  Queensland Australia | ReThink Theatrical New Brunswick NJ | Seattle Housing Authority Seattle WA | Shelterforce Magazine Montclair NJ | SHIFTSPACE Design Philadelphia  PA | Sierra Club Detroit MI | Sikora Wells Appel Haddonfield NJ | South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation Bronx NY | Southwest CDC Philadelphia PA | Studioful Architecture Salem MA | Surdna Foundation New York NY | The Cultural Planning Group Melrose Park PA | The Forever Museum Archive New York NY | the Neighborhood Design Center Baltimore MD | The Rockhopper Trenton NJ | The United Way of Passaic County Paterson NJ | Topos Partnership Cincinnati OH | Trenton Downtown Association Trenton NJ | True Stories Let Loose  Nashville  TN  | Urban Institute Washington DC | Urban Land Institute Washington DC | Urban League of Essex County Newark NJ | UrbanPromise Pennsauken NJ | What Works Cities New York NY | Youngstown State University / City of Youngstown Youngstown OH