Creative Placemaking: Towards and Evaluative Framework
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Date
2016-06-07
Authors
Freeman, Lena
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Creative placemaking has an important role in cultural community development.
Collaborations and partnerships are intrinsic to the development of these initiatives that
seek to engage their communities through the use of the arts. However, as creative
placemaking gathers credence in their efforts in shaping community development,
placemaking initiatives are burdened with the difficult task of evaluating their impact on
their communities. The National Endowment for the Arts has expressed that creative
placemaking projects should increase residents’ attachment to community, increase the
quality of life, stimulate arts and culture activity, and stimulate economic development.
While these indicators are important in understanding the stability and vibrancy of a
community, they are subject to other influences that are outside of the control of a
creative placemaking project. Therefore, creative placemaking initiatives have often
found difficulties in demonstrating their direct impact on their communities based on
these indicators alone.
I argue that creative placemaking should not be evaluated solely on these indicators to
determine success, but rather, to also incorporate the evaluation of the partnerships and
collaboratives that are used within a creative placemaking’s process. By doing so, this
will allow policy makers, funders, and evaluators the opportunity to recognize that the
impact that collaboratives have within creative placemaking, as well as present a more
holistic approach to the overall evaluation of creative placemaking outcomes.
Description
51 pages
Keywords
Creative placemaking, Evaluation, Collaboration, Community arts