Well, here we are. The last ArtPlace blog post.
Today is the day, after 10 years, that we culminate a decade of work in helping build a field of practice around the notion of this thing called creative placemaking — and as we later came to call it, place-keeping, place-knowing, place-tending, and creative community development, among other names.
ArtPlace was a ten-year, $150 million collaboration among a number of foundations, federal agencies, and financial institutions that operated from 2010 to 2020. For a decade we worked with an extraordinary community of artists, community developers, culture bearers, designers, government officials, philanthropists, and researchers from rural, Tribal, suburban, and urban communities across the United States. Together, this national community has helped position arts and culture as a core sector of community planning and development.
To help establish and strengthen the field of creative placemaking, ArtPlace invested in demonstration projects through the National Creative Placemaking Fund; organizational change through the Community Development Investments program; cross-sector research, knowledge, and network building; strategies to vest power in local assemblies through Local Control, Local Fields; the creation of resources for arts and culture, local government, and higher education stakeholders; and storytelling and bringing people together.
Thank you to the many colleagues and partners who guided our work. In reflecting on all we have done collectively, we celebrate with joy all who will continue this work in the years ahead. As we culminate a decade of work, we affirm that equity and justice are central to the field of creative placemaking. As an influential actor in the field, we acknowledge that we didn't always get it right. We are hopeful that you will continue to transform the field by putting anti-oppression at the core.
With our deepest gratitude and admiration, thank you for making this field what it is today, and for the ways you will continue to shape it in the future. Although we’re finishing our part of the relay, the race is far from over.
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Our website will be maintained as an archive for the next several years.
Read the whole story of ArtPlace in our book, ArtPlace: 10 Years.
If you are looking for additional material on ArtPlace’s work, please contact the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (A2RU).
ArtPlace America was a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.