Scientists and engineers can learn from creative placemaking: a model of arts-driven community engagement
Community Engagement in Research Priorities: Science and the Arts
Addressing global challenges such as energy, transportation, communication, and public health requires the expansion of traditional ways of defining research priorities and engaging with communities. As described recently in an article in Issues in Science and Technology by Melissa Flagg and Arti Garg, the U.S. science and engineering research enterprise is currently at an inflection point, realizing that it must consider more decentralized models of engagement that will result in greater public benefit from research results and make steps towards equity and social justice. A second article in the same journal by Angela Bednarek and Vivian Tseng speaks to efforts driven by the philanthropic community to support co-creation of knowledge with end user communities. Currently, speaking to this imperative, the National Science Foundation includes co-design of research in its Civic Innovation Challenge , Racial Equity in STEM Education, and Navigating the New Arctic programs, and its newly created Directorate for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships emphasizes partnering to increase societal benefit from research. There is rich theory around co-creation of research priorities, participatory action research, and community science, with practitioners and funding agencies experimenting with different approaches. While guidance exists, individuals who have gone down this path know that is quite difficult.
What can we learn from other communities? As STEM professionals, we tend to think of ourselves as problem solvers. While we bring critical expertise and ways of thinking to bear, we don’t have a monopoly on creativity and are not the only problem solvers at the table. We need to be aware and learn from initiatives outside of our immediate sphere of expertise, for example those coming from the arts. Think about the words of Deborah Cullinan, CEO of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco: “Creativity exists in the community to solve problems. Artists don’t just solve specific problems. Artists represent our ability as a society to solve all our problems.”¹
One example worth studying is the creative placemaking initiative. Creative placemaking — comprising extensive public-private partnerships which leverage the strength of the arts world — has proven to be an effective tool in helping drive community development and increase benefit for local residents. It offers an example that should be considered by science and engineering practitioners and policymakers as they envision a research framework for the next seventy five years.
What is Creative Placemaking?
Creative placemaking is a movement that puts the arts at the center of community development. It applies methodologies of artists and culture bearers to community development to help communities achieve their aims. It can incorporate a full range of artistic disciplines such as dance, visual arts, or storytelling to address a full range of community development pursuits such as economic growth, housing, transportation, or water usage. Begun in 2010, it has been fostered by a partnership of actors across the government, non-profit, and private enterprise spaces. It has resulted in hundreds of community projects, infrastructure to support the local implementers, and a new discipline taking hold in the university community. Creative placemaking offers a view of artists as problem solvers — similar to how scientists and engineers see themselves. And, although creative placemaking has a focus on the arts, it involves scientists and engineers in critical ways and demonstrates a model of using local communities as partners in and drivers of initiatives.
Creating Creative Placemaking
Part of the compelling story around creative placemaking lies in its origins where a strong, well-connected leader identified a burgeoning need, built a coalition, and marshalled resources from multiple sectors. In 2009, on the heels of the Great Recession, Rocco Landesman became the Chairman of the NEA. Landesman recognized the perfect storm of imperative and opportunity taking place in American communities.²,³ Communities needed a way to recover economically, the NEA needed partners to support the arts, and arts and culture had not previously been positioned as a focal point for federally supported community development. In addition, at the dawn of the Obama administration, the creative economy was a hot topic,⁴ interagency cooperation was a priority⁵ and Landesman had excellent connections. He convened actors across the federal sector, building ties with the Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Agriculture and several White House initiatives.⁶ He convened the philanthropic community, bringing to the table the Ford Foundation, Kresge Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. He also brought to the table representatives of the banking sector that had a commitment to community development such as Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.
“When I came to the NEA,” Landesman said, “I wanted to focus on…how the arts can be a force for social cohesion and economic development in neighborhoods, communities, [and] cities.”⁶ What he focused on, and what he created, is the creative placemaking initiative.
Landesman’s extensive outreach and ability to bring resources to the table led to two main national-level creative placemaking initiatives to support community development through arts and culture. The Our Town grant program, named after Thorton Wilder’s Pulitzer prize winning drama, is funded by the National Endowment of the Arts and has supported upwards of 700 projects in all 50 states totaling over $50 million between 2012 and 2021.⁷ ArtPlace America, a 10 year $150 million³ initiative from 2010–2020, was supported mainly by the private philanthropy but brought in partners across all sectors (including 15 foundations, eight federal agencies, six financial institutions, as well as dozens of other working partners). While ArtPlace had multiple components, in particular it supported over 250 projects through its National Creative Placemaking program and six targeted investments of $3 million each through its Community Development Investments.⁸ Through Our Town and ArtPlace combined, over a thousand projects have been funded across the nation that involve state and regional governments; policy-related non -profits that deal with issues such as housing, social justice, transportation, public health, food and water; arts practitioners and educators; schools and universities; and companies from the private sector. The impact of the Our Town program can be seen via the Exploring Our Town collection of vignettes and the impact of ArtPlace is described in Art Place America: 10 Years.
Examples of Creative Placemaking Projects that Intersect with Science and Engineering
As creative placemaking brings art and cultural practices to bear on community development, science and engineering crop up in the multitude of community development challenges to be solved. For example, ArtPlace developed a matrix to help conceptualize their work, and divides community development domains into 10 categories. Among these are agriculture and food; environment and energy; health; housing; public safety; and transportation. Each has a substantial science and engineering component.
One cross-cutting issue affecting communities across the globe is water resource management, touching on (at least) agriculture and food, environment and energy, health, housing, and transportation in the categories above. ArtPlace and the U.S. Water Alliance (USWA) joined forces to use arts and culture to bolster the One Water approach, a unified framework to solving water issues in an “integrative, inclusive, and sustainable manner.”⁹ The report produced by USWA outlines strategies for water organizations and leaders in the water sector to engage with artists to support One Water aims.
One of these strategies is using the artistic process to bring new options to the table in planning water resources. For example, in West Palm Beach, FL, the engineers at the local solid waste authority worked with a team of artists on the design of a new facility to turn waste into energy. One challenge the group had to tackle was the fact that the process involved used a great deal of water, and water is scarce and expensive in southern Florida. Bringing the artists into the design process opened up creative avenues that might not have been there otherwise and resulted in a plan to harvest rainwater to obtain the needed water to support the facility. This solution saved money, was environmentally sound, and did not divert water from the local water infrastructure system that was needed elsewhere. The team felt that having the artists fully involved in the design process enabled a completely different way of thinking, allowing for a solution that achieved positive outcomes from the environmental and financial perspectives. Furthermore, the team of artists was fully involved in the formulation of the project’s construction and educational programming, enhancing ties with and benefit to the local community.
Inclusion of the arts and culture can also enhance community involvement in infrastructure building and disaster resilience. In coastal Louisiana, the storytelling platform Cry You One worked with under-served communities affected by hurricanes and oil spills to create narratives dealing with the negative geological and ecological impacts of those disasters. Their efforts were so successful in bringing together the community that Cry You One is now regularly included in disaster preparedness planning with local officials.⁹
As an additional example, an ArtPlace award to the Cook Inlet Housing Authority in Anchorage, AK supported the use of a theatre set designer in workshops with native populations to develop solutions for very small housing units to solve issues related to housing in the community. The set designer Enzina Marrari who was involved noted an evolution in thinking over the course of his work “We moved from a social practice approach — artists identifying a social problem and designing work around it — to a civic practice approach — artists responding to problems identified by the community and designing work to address them.”¹⁰
Looking ahead
A statement from the Center for Performance and Civic Practice summarizes the ethos of creative placemaking:
“If you are working for change,
the people you hope will benefit
from that change
must be the authors of the vision for change.
They must be co-designers and co-leaders of any strategies to accomplish that change.”¹¹
The science and engineering community is exploring ways in which it can magnify public engagement in research, leading to a more civic practice. Creative placemaking offers a framework in which leaders incorporate arts and culture to create a space for innovative and inclusive community engagement, generating a better understanding of and meeting the needs of communities as they grow. It also offers an example of a multi-stakeholder effort with a strong leader that brings together the government, industry, and non-profit sectors in an effective way. We in the science and engineering community can use these efforts as a touch point as we aim to create space for a broader spectrum of voices to be heard, for more innovative solutions to be reached, and a wider swath of the world to benefit from resulting advances.
References
1. Callanan, Laura. “Forward.” Community Investment Development Review: Creative Placemaking 2014: 5.
2. Hughes, Jennifer. “An Annotated History of Creative Placemaking at the Federal Level.” The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking. Ed. Tom Borrup, Maria Rosario Jackson, Kylie Legge, Anita Mckeown, Louise Platt, Jason Schupbach Cara Courage. Routledge, 2020.
3. ArtPlace. “ArtPlace America: 10 Years.” 2020. 21 April 2021. <https://forecastpublicart.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/artplace_10years_fin_spreads.pdf>.
4. Hughes, Jennifer. Interview. Jennifer Pearl. 9 April 2021.
5. Rosenstein, Carole. Interview. Jennifer Pearl. 9 April 2021.
6. Chu, Jane and Jason Schupbach. “Our Town: Supporting the Arts in Communities Throughout the United States.” Journal Community Development for Investment Review: Creative Placemaking 10.2 (2014): 65–72.
7. Hughes, Jennifer. Interview. Jennifer Pearl. 27 April 2021.
8. Art Place. Partners | Art Place. 2021. 22 April 2021. <https://www.artplaceamerica.org/about/partners>.
9. U.S. Water Alliance. “Advancing One Water Through Arts and Culture: A Blueprint for Action.” 2018. <http://uswateralliance.org/sites/uswateralliance.org/files/publications/uswa_artsculture_FINAL_PAGES_RGB_0.PDF>.
10. Choi, Laura. “Forward.” Community Development Innovation Review: Transforming Community Development Through Arts and Culture 2019: 4–5.
11. Rohd, Michael, et al. “Creating Process for Change.” Community Innovation Development Review: Transforming Community Development Through Arts and Culture 2019: 121–130.
This material is based upon work supported while serving at the National Science Foundation. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The author wishes to thank Jennifer Hughes at the National Endowment for the Arts, Carole Rosenstein at George Mason University, Lyz Crane formerly of ArtPlace America, and Ellen McCallie at the National Science Foundation for insightful conversations related to this paper.
