Creative Placemaking: Leveraging Arts & Culture, Diverse Partners & Community Spaces

Use the special discount code "TrailSkills" to save 15% on registration.

Three 2-hour video conference sessions
Thursdays, March 28 - April 11, 2024 • 9-11 PT/12-2 ET + Optional Q&A April 18

Make the most of creativity in your community. Creative Placemaking leverages arts and culture to engage, revitalize, and reshape communities.

Creative Placemaking is as much about “doing” as it is about planning; leveraging the power of diverse partnerships and hands-on participation to turn under-appreciated assets into focal points for a new community vitality. Whether focused on an art walk, a community design process, public art, outdoor theatre, integrating creative strategies into community engagement and planning, celebrating community cultural heritage and historic preservation, or another endeavor, the Creative Placemaking process adds arts and culture to your community well-being and economic development toolkit.

Community spaces like streets, parks, buildings, facades, sidewalks, and vacant lots are the context for our shared life. These spaces can profoundly influence the strength and breadth of the bonds, trust, and networks that underpin community resilience. These bonds become especially important in the face of uncertainties, disasters, and emergencies, but they are at the heart of how communities function even in the best of times. Identifying and creatively capitalizing on these underutilized assets can build this “social capital” and spark a new community spirit—boosting vitality, supporting economic recovery and growth, and getting people out, moving, and connecting with each other—pandemic or no pandemic.

In this course, you will learn how to use the Creative Placemaking process to identify and leverage overlooked assets in your community, highlight and deepen your community’s unique character, integrate arts and culture into planning, expand participation for greater equity, and engage creativity and local knowledge to make your community a great place to live, work, play and visit.

WHY USE CREATIVE PLACEMAKING? HERE’S WHAT SOME FORMER STUDENTS HAVE TO SAY:
A service club leader said, “This course made me look at the spaces in my community with fresh eyes.”

One librarian said Creative Placemaking is in perfect alignment with the connecting role that rural libraries and librarians play.

One community-based organization turned to Creative Placemaking because “the usual approaches to planning are so boring.”

A state economic development officer said creative placemaking is the way their state will succeed in the recovery from COVID-19, “through giving voice to the community and community-led design, integrating arts and culture and making a place where people want to live, want to work, and want to play.”

A rural community cultural leader uses Creative Placemaking to help herself look at her “surroundings in different ways, comparing and contrasting neighborhoods, being more aware of communities, and being more involved in public policies.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Foundations of Creative Placemaking

• Understand the concept of Creative Placemaking and its role in fostering vibrant, sustainable, equitable, and economically successful communities.

2. Implementation and Collaboration Strategies

• Identify specific strategies for fostering artist/community collaborations.
• Learn how to assemble a robust cross-sector planning and implementation team.
• Identify community problems and challenges suitable for a Creative Placemaking approach.

3. Community Engagement and Integration

• Learn effective approaches to engage the community in mapping assets, including hidden or under-appreciated ones.
• Explore creative "doing" approaches for community projects.
• Learn how to integrate arts and culture into planning.

4. Funding and Promotion

• Develop skills to identify and tap into funding sources for Creative Placemaking initiatives.
• Identify ways to market, promote, and derive benefits from the unique aspects of your community and Creative Placemaking projects.

COURSE INSTRUCTOR
Michele Archie is a principal of The Harbinger Consultancy. She brings 30 years of experience with community engagement and community economic development in rural communities across the West and throughout the country to this course. Michele also leads Harbinger’s work with Geotourism and related projects that help regions create shared identities, deepen community well-being, and tell their unique stories. She is affiliated with the Western Community Assessment Network and the National Geotourism Council.

FEES & DETAILS

• Every class will be presented live and available for replay in case you need to miss a session or want to review.

• $525 regular course fee/$425 early registration discount through December 15, 2023

• Group rates for two or more participants from the same organization or community — $425 per person regular group rate/$375 early registration discount

Learn more, including a session-by-session summary at the webpage listed.

Location

This is a virtual training. See the event website for more details.

Trail Core Competencies

• Project Preparation
• • Stakeholder Engagement

• Program Administration and Leadership
• • Education and Public Outreach
• • Partnership and Collaboration

Relevant Trail Types

• Accessible Trails
• Bicycling Trails
• Equestrian Trails
• Hiking Trails
• Long-distance Trails
• Mountain Biking Trails
• Motorized Trails
• Nature Trails
• Rail-Trails
• Rails with Trails
• Shared-Use Trails
• Urban Trails
• Utility Corridors
• Water Trails
• Winter - Nonmotorized Trails
• Winter - Motorized Trails