Creative placemaking occurs as a result of partners from the public, private, non-profit, and community sectors collaborating together to strategically shape the built, social, and economic character of our neighborhoods, city, and region. It employs cultural and creative initiatives that leverage the power of the arts and humanities to strengthen our communities and reveal and/or celebrate shared identities.
Erie Arts & Culture believes that public engagement and community investment are at the heart of creative placemaking. We value members of the community as assets and engage them in a manner that taps into their creativity, imagination, experience, and wisdom. When successful, outcomes of creative placemaking include:
Through creative placemaking initiatives, Erie Arts & Culture engages communities in a spectrum of creative efforts, from one-off projects to intentional and strategic plans that incorporate the arts and humanities more systematically into neighborhood development. Such initiatives take many different forms, including:
Creative placemaking is most successful when it is embedded in a comprehensive plan that seeks to reverse community disinvestment by addressing broader issues of affordable housing, education, health and safety, and other matters of racial, social, environmental, and economic justice.
