Arts, Culture, and Community Mental Health
Examples of projects around the country that are infusing community development with creativity and collaboration and stimulating the potential for unique mental health benefits.
Working Through Growing Pains in Artist/Community Developer Collaborations
At their roots, both the arts and community development amplify a people’s voice. And while this connection makes sense on paper, it can look a lot different in practice. We would like to share three insights from our work together that speak to the promise, and peril, of such collaboration.
Reimagining a Neighborhood, The Way It Ought To Be
The arts have a long history of highlighting social issues and creating public conversation that results in measurable change. As an arts administrator with...
Sitting on a Porch Can Be Good for Your Health
To help combat isolation and reweave the connecting fabric that had been lost, a neighborhood arts center launches an initiative that eventually became a movement.
Starting Conversations with Public Art
An arts collaboration comes up with a creative spark to facilitate discussions about neighborhood change.
Regrets of an Accidental Placemaker
Had I unintentionally contributed to the gentrification of my neighborhood and other neighborhoods around Washington, D.C.?
Poem: ms. margaret on her landline phone with ruth, talking about her new neighbors...
A poem engaging equity for the author's godmother and other women who begin their sentences with the word "chile."
The $9 Jar of Artisanal Pickles: Equity and Local Food
Sustainability is about thriving, not just surviving. We will not thrive if we are poorly paid martyrs to a good cause, and thus, in a healthy, diverse and vital food system, some of our efforts might need to be directed to those who can pay nine dollars for a jar of pickles.
The Gentrification Will Be Televised
The North Pole opens discussion between residents of gentrifying neighborhoods and elevates the personal stories and memories of those being displaced.
Generating Civic Power in North Philadelphia
An organization embarks on a community-driven design process to transform two vacant row homes into a site for residents, artists, and law enforcement to collaborate on new public safety strategies rooted in care rather than control.
Using Art to Create Community at a Clinic
Arts projects at a Minneapolis clinic created a natural connection between people who might not otherwise interact.
Miracle on 42nd Street: A Tale of Artist Housing
The story behind a bold idea to create a subsidized housing community for artists in a New York City neighborhood.
How This Museum Supports Community Integration and Trauma Recovery
Using artistic expression to de-stigmatize and treat trauma.
Creative Placemaking: Honoring the Past While Welcoming our Futures
A discussion about honoring the history of a place while actively working to encourage its growth and foster positive change.
Artists as Organizers
Creative placemaking means more than merely adding public art into the mix. To be sustainable it needs to build relationships—and power.
We Need the Data—But Can’t Forget the People—in Creative Placemaking
However difficult, altering one’s viewpoint of a community is a crucial step, because creative placemaking’s overarching goal is to reach everyone where they are, and you can’t do that if you begin with a well thought-out plan in hand.
Poem: “Gentrification”
I have seen a neighborhood eat itself for dinner
If We Want the Arts in Baltimore, We Need Its Artists
Artists have left their mark on Station North and paved the way for an arts district, but the organically-developed communal live/work spaces that play such a vital role in helping make Baltimore an arts mecca are an endangered species.
The Cultural Ramifications of Gentrification in New Orleans
Gentrification is not just physical displacement; it’s cultural appropriation across entire neighborhoods. Artists have an obligation not to participate.
Taking Back the Front Porch: Using Art to Reclaim Community Identity
The front porch is a space in-between our private family space and our more public spaces where we create our own definition of “community.” In many parts of Chicago, this space is often a battleground.
Could Public Art on Utility Boxes Displace Communication?
What's not to like about colorful art on utility boxes? Well, in some places that drab infrastructure might be performing informal community functions...
Art in the Face of Gentrification
Four representatives of New York City organizations discuss their employment of art and artists to empower residents in the face of gentrification.
Challenges of Space and Place in Creative Placemaking
Some of us, myself included, are susceptible to the inaccurate thinking that when the arts are involved, the complications that can arise with traditional community building are lessened.
False Narratives About Artists Harm Artists, and Communities
In 2002, Richard Florida published a book that kicked off a wave of urban development efforts based on the belief that architects, artists, musicians,...
Art Matters–In Rural Classrooms and Beyond
Its surprising that we must continually fight to make sure that the arts have a role in public schools, and prove that our low-income communities are worthy of arts and culture-related investments.
Not Your Average Community Garden
A good community garden is a space that nurtures hope, natural abundance, and growth, and eventually moves beyond food and into the realm of relationship-building that can help sustain healthy communities.
A Community Planning Process–Even A Good One–Is Not Enough
Just the inherent language of community “transformation” signals that what has come before is not worth holding on to, and renders the history of these public housing sites insignificant.
Looking at Places Through Artists’ Eyes
How an Alaskan housing authority plans to focus on creative placemaking as a development strategy to better reflect the communities it serves.
An Appetite for Art in Small Town Minnesota
In rapidly diversifying rural Minnesota, an ArtPlace grant is seen as a resource for celebrating cultures and creating bridges between them.
Bringing Together Arts and Community Development
Who has been behind the large increase in financial support for and attention to what has been termed "creative placemaking" over the past couple years, and why?
Preserving the Character of Little Tokyo
In the wake of rapid gentrification, an organization in Los Angeles leverages the arts to celebrate a community's rich heritage and keep social equity as a priority. But what is the core character of Little Tokyo?
Keeping Your Artists Close to Home
New Orleans relies on its artists as a core part of its economy. What can be done when those artists can no longer afford to call the city home?
Creating Miles of Art in the Mile High City
How a Denver organization intends to create a 9-mile art-, health-, and heritage-themed bike and pedestrian trail that will feature authentic cultural expression.
Affordable Housing and . . . a Museum in Harlem
For over 30 years, Broadway Housing Communities has developed its own formula for meeting the housing needs of West Harlem's lowest-income residents. One of its unorthodox ingredients has been art galleries, and now, there's a children's museum in its newest building.
A Tale of Two Murals in Albany
Having had the experience of public art with no public involvement, a community organization set out to show there could be another way.
Working with Local Artists
In response to an influx of high-profile street art, one Brooklyn community development organization decided to invest in homegrown art and artists, and learn how to support them.
Poetry on the Panel
Attendees at the 2015 PolicyLink Equity Summit experienced something unexpected when they walked into many of the panels and workshops: a poetry performance.
Poem: “Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization”
Yes, Your Honor, there are rodents, said the landlord to the judge, but I let the tenant have a cat. Besides, he stacks his tires in the hallway.
Poem: “What Must Be Done”
Do not hate them.
Do not be angry with them:
The real estate agents, appraising
the value of other peoples lives,
calculating the profit that someone’s home
of twenty...
Flipping the Script
A nonprofit forgoes the typical community meeting for a "living charrette," which leads to greater neighborhood feedback about a proposed 24-acre development in Austin, Texas.
Art Just Became Even More Essential
Coming mere days after the election, the reference to the famous Audre Lorde declaration, “Art gives us tools other than the master’s tools,” felt apropos. The people in the room were ready to hear any message of hope. I was no exception.
Exploring Foreclosure Through Art
In Minneapolis and Boston, artists help explore the losses (and gains) of foreclosure with work that supports advocacy and community building.
Poem: “This Yes”
When the federal government required the mills of Cohoes to hire “colored” workers or lose war contracts, the mills relented but Cohoes maintained its segregation. Workers of color settled across the river in North Troy.
Interview with Rip Rapson, president and CEO of the Kresge Foundation
If you look at what Rip Rapson has accomplished and the insight he brings to his current work, you'll get a much better picture of who he is and the challenging work he spearheads at the Kresge Foundation.
Not All Artists Are Young. Or Childless.
On Dec. 3, the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland became the deadliest in the city’s history, claiming the lives of 36 individuals. The warehouse...
Gentrification Was the Killer in Oakland Fire
It’s usually hard to distinguish a victim of gentrification. Many people have a story of getting priced out of their neighborhoods, of being looked...
The Catalyzing Power of Art
Art can be an economic engine for neighborhoods, but sometimes locally-based artists need some support to kick their businesses into gear, and community-based organizations are stepping up.
Who Is It For?
A Washington, D.C. nonprofit undertakes a redevelopment project and tackles the issue of cultural displacement.
An Artist’s Way of Seeing: Community Engagement in Creative Placemaking
How are artists converting the power and creativity of art into community-led change?
Conflict and Placemaking: Tactical Urbanism on Nicollet Mall
Earlier this year, the City of Minneapolis broke ground on a $50 million overhaul of Nicollet Mall, a 12-block centerpiece of its downtown. Like...
Interview with Richard Baron, CEO of McCormack Baron Salazar
It still surprises many people that Richard Baron, the CEO of one of the largest for-profit affordable housing developers, got his start in the field supporting public housing tenants in a rent strike.
Conflict and Placemaking in Humboldt Park: Paseo Boricua
The area surrounding Paseo Boricua is not exclusive space, but in a gentrifying part of the city, it is undeniably—and perhaps unavoidably—contested space.
Keeping Seniors Healthy by Fostering Connections and Community
For high needs seniors with chronic illnesses, health is not merely—or even mostly—a matter for medical professionals.
Placemaking for, and by, Whom?
Place-Making in Legacy Cities: Opportunities and Good Practices, prepared by New Solution Group LLC in partnership with Center for Community Progress, December 2013.
Urban Art or Graffiti Vandalism?
Review of Stations of the Elevated, by Manfred Kirchheimer, 1981.
Educate, Motivate, Organize
An Interview with Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi
Let’s Turn this Old Barn into a Theater…Part II
Moving into a newly adapted space usually entails a leap in operations—not a slow, steady climb.
The (In)Efficiencies of Scale
ArtsBlog (the blog of Americans for the Arts) recently hosted a forum called: “So, Does Size Matter?” The short answer is hell yes it...