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Strengthening the State Arts Agency Support

November 13, 2020

By: Ryan Stubbs, NASAA Senior Director of Research

Several exciting new resources are now available as part of the collaboration between ArtPlace America and NASAA, Strengthening the State Arts Agency Support System for Creative Placemaking. Together, these three resources provide a previously unavailable articulation of the many ways in which state arts agencies support creative placemaking, and how practitioners can better access public resources for creative placemaking projects.

  • The Creative Placemaking Public Resources Guide is a website to help creative placemakers, community developers and arts organizations navigate federal funding opportunities. The new guide includes tips on how to apply for relevant funding programs, a database of information on federal resources and case studies that illustrate creative placemaking innovators using a variety of public sources.
  • State Arts Agency Resources for Creative Placemaking Practitioners illuminates ways in which state arts agencies can be a useful resource for creative placemaking practitioners. It emphasizes your roles as information providers and conveners and offers tips on applying for state arts agency grants. It also recommends resources for people interested in creative placemaking and state policy.
  • State Arts Agency Roles in Creative Placemaking is a field scan that helps state arts agencies learn from each other and helps private funders understand the variety of community development and placemaking functions that state arts agencies fulfill.

These tools are intended to elevate the knowledge of creative placemaking practitioners and to communicate the important roles that state arts agencies play in supporting the arts and community development. We hope that these resources will be a starting place not only for practitioners seeking opportunities, but for state arts agencies that provide technical assistance to stakeholders seeking such resources.

NASAA thanks ArtPlace America for its generous support of this work, Metris Arts Consulting and Susan Fitter Harris, who wrote and assembled the Creative Placemaking Public Resources Guide, and the National Alliance of Community Economic Development Agencies (NACEDA) for its partnership throughout these efforts.