Architecture/Design

Isabel Velsaco Gomez (right) displays her sculptures in a Poughkeepsie business.

Adaptations to Meet the Moment and Keep Engaged

This profile is part of a three-part series that highlights the work of five NeighborWorks network organizations that pursued new or expanded partnerships with artists or arts-based organizations to…


Building Partnerships to Lead the Work

This profile is part of a three-part series that highlights the work of five NeighborWorks network organizations that pursued new or expanded partnerships with artists or arts-based organizations to…


A building with a large poem, Ode to East End, on its wall

Using Art to Keep a Neighborhood’s Culture in Place

This profile is part of a three-part series that highlights the work of five NeighborWorks network organizations that pursued new or expanded partnerships with artists or arts-based organizations to…


Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists

Developed by Springboard for the Arts, Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists is based on a series of professional development and entrepreneurship workshops that have been taught at arts…


Handbook for Artists Working in Community

In this day and age of continued disparities, injustices, pandemics and systemic racism, artists are critical agents of change in our communities. More than ever, we need artists to be catalysts and…


Rivers Run Through It: Shel Neymark's Mural Map & Community History Project in Rural New Mexico

Shel Neymark was born and raised in Chicago, near Oak Park. He remembers there were 52 Frank Lloyd Wright houses within biking distance of where he lived as a kid and he was "fascinated" by them. "I…


Mural Map & Community History Toolkit

Springboard for the Arts and Art of the Rural were inspired to commission a toolkit from an artist living and working in a rural place, as a way to bridge the Rural Generation Summit in May 2019,…


Two women in hijabs talking and holding camping lamps.

Connecting Community in Cedar-Riverside

Jamie Schumacher is the Executive Director of the West Bank Business Association, a partner with Springboard for the Arts and People’s Center Health Services on connecting and celebrating the…


Creative Community Development Trainings

Do you believe that artists generate creative people power, and that communities thrive when they are connected to their artists? Have you downloaded the Irrigate: Artist-led Creative Placemaking…


The Blue Sky Center is building a creative economy in rural California

The New Cuyama townsite in California's Santa Barbara County is relatively young. Built in the early 1950s by the Richfield Oil Company, it was a company-driven town where the company came in, built…


Jer Thorp creates data-based public art to engage and empower communities

Jer Thorp is an accomplished public speaker—check out some of his selected talks here—and an artist based in New York who has participated in highly visible public art projects, like designing the…


Creative People Power

Springboard for the Arts and Helicon Collaborative are excited to launch Creative People Power, a new report and framework for combining creativity-centered and people-centered development to build…


Saying “Yes” to 4th Street

In a downtown core experiencing change, the 4th Street Market District partnership leads creative experiments & looks to the future It was a summer Sunday afternoon in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and…


Hip Hoppa Locka brings Muslim hip-hop culture to Northwest Miami

Miami Dade College is the largest educational institution in the country, spread out across eight campuses throughout Miami-Dade County. MDC's moniker is "democracy's college" because of its…


Toolkit Toolkit

Yes, this is what you think it is. Since the launch of Creative Exchange in 2014, over 6,000 toolkits have been downloaded from the site, facilitating artist-led projects, business skills…


An "American Riad" in Detroit

A "riad" is a traditional Moroccan style of housing featuring either a house with an interior garden or town houses built around a central courtyard. The latter promotes a community of neighbors…


5 Questions with Creative Exchange: What we have learned from our artists

Since August 2016, Creative Exchange has been asking each of our Artists With Impact a series of five questions, which appear at the end of every profile. We did this to create a thread of continuity…


Tempe’s Sound Canopy; A Respite for Residents and Performers

This story is supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Knowledge Building grant supporting a partnership between Springboard for the Arts and the International Downtown Association.…


Rural Arts & Culture Summit Videos

The Rural Arts & Culture Summit was held from June 6-8 in Morris, MN, and it was magical. 400 artists, community development professionals, leaders, and advocates from 22 states came to the town of…


Springboard for the Arts announces new national Train-the-Trainer Intensive

Springboard for the Arts is excited to announce the first Train-the-Trainer Intensive for their Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists curriculum and award-winning artist-led community development…


Building Democracy in 'Trump Country'

This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com. A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them Letcher County, Kentucky, is one of the most open-minded places I’ve ever lived. I might not have…


Roots of Rondo honors a neighborhood, looks to the future

America’s network of interstate highways is considered to be one of the most impressive infrastructure achievements of all time, a lasting symbol of the country’s postwar prosperity. But the…


Join us in Denver for IdeaLab 2017!

Are you an artist, social entrepreneur or organizer? Do you want to connect to others to organize around racial equity and social justice? Do you believe in the power of creative storytelling? Join…


Announcing the 2017 Rural Arts and Culture Summit

The 2017 Rural Arts and Culture Summit will take place Tuesday, June 6, through Thursday, June 8, at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Organized by Springboard for the Arts and the Center for…


Artist Chamindika Wanduragala takes on motherhood and race through puppets

I. Rebirth When Sri Lankan artist Chamindika Wanduragala returned to the Twin Cities arts scene after almost a decade away, it was a much needed rebirth. A visual artist by training (having earned a…


Place-based art project Water Bar addresses disparities in drinking water access

“Welcome to Water Bar, water is all we have.” These are the words that greeted me as I walked through the door. Immediately, Shanai Matteson, co-owner of Water Bar & Public Studio, offered me a…


A City's Challenge: Preserving Artists' Spaces in Denver

The story behind the Lawrence Street Artists illuminates how creatives struggled for affordable space in Denver long before the recent nationwide clampdown on converted warehouses. It was nearly 30…


Let's Get To Work

Creative Exchange is the national program of Springboard for the Arts, based in Fergus Falls & Saint Paul, MN. This piece is adapted from the main Springboard website here. Springboard for the…


Mural Arts' Porch Light Toolkit

Mural Arts in Philadelphia believes that hands-on art-making provides a strong pathway for individual and community healing. Their Porch Light program, a joint collaboration with the City of…


Special Sauce & Agency: Evaluating Work of Art

"I feel like I just got a million dollars worth of guidance!" That's what one artist commented after downloading the Work of Art toolkit. Since the Work of Art toolkit launched as a free resource in…