Creative placemaking: Creating change by building partnerships

Abstract

Arts, artists, and creative strategies can be critical vehicles for achieving social, economic, and community goals. Creative placemaking is one type of arts-led planning that incorporates the goals of communities with stakeholder participation. Questions exist, however, around who participates in the creative placemaking process and to what end. This study explores a case where a state-sponsored workshop brought together people from diverse backgrounds to facilitate community development and engagement through creative placemaking. The study highlights how a one-shot intervention can reshape perceptions of creative placemaking that are held by planners, nonplanners, artists, and nonartists. The study shows that while pre-workshop participants focused on identifying resource-based challenges, post-workshop participants focused more on initiating collaborations and being responsive to community needs. The different attitudes before and after the state-sponsored workshop demonstrate the importance of not only building stakeholder understanding but also facilitating stakeholder engagement for successful creative placemaking.