Community Heroes

Through Creative Exchange, we are always excited to share toolkits from creative community projects – especially ones created by artists, and using resources from Springboard for the Arts like the Toolkit Toolkit. In that spirit, we are delighted to share the toolkit for Community Heroes, a project for storytelling and celebration in community.

Every community has people who have held it down, kept it going, served, supported, and cared for their community. They are not often not in the spotlight, yet their absence would be deeply felt. Their actions flow from the care and love they have for the community around them.

The Community Heroes project celebrates the stories of these incredible people through a collaboration of local artists, youth, neighbors and organizations, who all work together on a photography public art exhibition.

The process involves gathering a team of neighbors to plan your project together, outreaching to the community to collect hero nominations, pairing heroes with photographers and youth writers to document their stories, and compiling this all into a public photography exhibition to display in a local space.

This toolkit is a resource to guide you through creating this project in your neighborhood, with instructions, worksheets, activities, case studies and more.

The Community Heroes project is produced by Photoville (an organization amplifying visual storytellers and activates public spaces) and Trellis (a community development non-profit) in partnership with PhotoWings. Special thanks to Partnerships for Parks’ Catalyst and all the community members involved in the first neighborhood projects for contributing to the practices of this project.

Learn more about the project, read about community heroes, and see past projects.

We are excited you’re considering creating a Community Heroes project in your neighborhood! Please fill out the form below to receive the toolkit.