Creative Placemaking
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,…
Creating Community Ownership of the Bottineau Line
Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and networks can strengthen community bonds, build relationships, and…
Using Performance Art as a Means of Engagement
Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and networks can strengthen community bonds, build relationships, and…
Teaching Community Changemaking Through Art
Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and networks can strengthen community bonds, build relationships, and…
Diverse Voices Create the Community
Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and networks can strengthen community bonds, build relationships, and…
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…
How Grand Rapids, Minnesota Thrives Through Creative People Power
This article is part of a series highlighting artists and leaders featured at the Rural Arts and Culture Summit, a biennial, practitioner-driven gathering hosted by Springboard for the Arts that…
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…
From Trenton, New Jersey to rural Vermont, Will "Kasso" Condry uses art as a catalyst for activism and revitalization
Will "Kasso" Condry, Jr. is a pioneer of the street art movement in New Jersey, and made national headlines in 2014 when he painted a mural of Michael Brown, the Ferguson teenager who was shot and…
A rural renaissance: How small towns are leading the way in creative placemaking
In 2014, New London was the recipient of a $262,500 grant from Artplace America. The grant helped fund nine different projects. Full disclosure: I was lucky enough to be one of those recipients. We…
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…
Realize Bradenton realizes it takes a village to raise a city
The City of Bradenton is a riverfront community of 53,000 people in the urban core of Manatee County, Florida. In 2007, Bradenton created a citizen-driven visioning plan called “Downtown by Design,”…
Al-Bustan plants the seeds of Arab culture and community in Philadelphia
Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture started in Philadelphia in 2002 when founder and executive director Hazami Sayed wanted a place for her two young sons to go where they would learn and apply the Arabic…
Five Years of Creative Exchange!
Give your feedback and take our survey here! February 20, 2014 was the day that we launched Creative Exchange. I had just become a father, and here was another baby about to go out into the world. We…
Write Denver Toolkit
"Write Denver ushered in a deeper level of community engagement for Lighthouse Writers Workshop. We wish the same for you! Whether you're an individual or part of a larger organization, we hope the…
New toolkits from the 2018 Toolkit Cohort
Creative Exchange is based on the idea that artists are everywhere, that artists are shaping their communities in all sorts of ways, and by sharing stories and tools from those artists, we can build…
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…
Ready Go Toolkit
Ready Go is a resource from Springboard for the Arts that connects neighborhoods, non-profits, businesses and individuals to artist-created, mobile tools that are purpose-built to pique curiosity and…
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…
Mary Welcome welcomes new neighbors all around the country
Mary Welcome, née Mary Rothlisberger, is a citizen artist based in Palouse, Washington, a tiny rural town with a population of 998. While Welcome's numerous and diverse artistic involvements take her…
Toolkit Cohort Announced!
New toolkits are coming! We're excited to announce a new round of artists and organizations selected from our open call for toolkits, and we'll be working with these artists over the summer to create…
Announcing IdeaLab:Westwood in Denver on April 17!
IdeaLab is rooted in the notion that everyone is capable of being part of a movement, based around events that cross-pollinate local and national experts, create new opportunities for community…
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…
Art on the Block and NOIS envision economic power for the people in Southwest Detroit
Amelia Duran was born into a family with a strong heritage of activism in Southwest Detroit, a predominantly Latin American neighborhood. Her mother’s family has roots in the area that date back to…
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…
Lucas Koski sees lawn art as a vehicle to diversifying funding sources
Lucas Koski, Asset Manager at Minneapolis-based Artspace, has always enjoyed a good spectacle. In high school he got into event production because he wanted to see bigger and better events than those…
"Miss Neighbor Lady" Kathy Mouacheupao hosts "Gatherings" in her St. Paul neighborhood
Kathy Mouacheupao has worked in arts-based nonprofits her entire professional career, working as the Executive Director for the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent in Saint Paul for ten years and as…
Public Transformation celebrates & contemplates art in rural America
Artifacts line the wall of Outpost Winona: handmade art and everyday objects, each labeled with the name of a place: railroad spikes from Lake City, South Carolina; a cookbook from Alliance,…
Connecting Americans to Healthcare
I’ve said it on this platform before, but artists need access to healthcare. In fact, everyone needs access to healthcare, but artists, who often work non-traditional jobs and have sporadic income,…
