Creative Counties Placemaking Initiative
Integrating arts into solutions to local challenges
Developed in partnership with Americans for the Arts and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Creative Counties Placemaking Initiative equips county leaders with tools and resources to identify and strengthen ways to integrate the arts into solutions to local challenges.
Creative Placemaking Toolkit for Counties
Webinars
NACo's webinars are free to everyone and recorded for viewing after the live event. Recent webinars have included:
- Building Arts-Driven Community and Economic Development Solutions for Your County
- Leveraging New Tools & Resources to Build the Arts in Your County
- Telling Your Community Story: Strengthening Economies through Place Branding
Check out all of NACo's upcoming and past Creative Counties webinars here.
Resource Hubs
- Arts & Economic Prosperity 6
- Arts & Economic Prosperity 5
- Social Impact Explorer
- 2019 Profile of Local Arts Agencies
- Animating Democracy
- Local Arts Agency Dashboard
Reports
- Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 National Statistical Report
- Business Support for the Arts 2021: Art for Everyone's Sake
- Community-Based Arts Organizations: A New Center of Gravity
- Building Worlds Together: The Many Functions and Forms of Arts and Community Development
- Programs Supporting Art in the Public Realm: A National Field Scan
- Artists & Communities: Conversations on Passion, Practice, and Engagement
- Animating Democracy--Aesthetic Perspectives
- Animating Democracy--Diving into Racial Equity
- Creative City Report
- Local Arts Agency Partnerships: Types, Components, and Impacts
Fact Sheets
Dive Deep
Explore All Arts & Culture Resources
Explore all of NACo's resources on arts and culture, including latest news and resources, related committees and featured initiatives.
NACo testifies before Congress in support of federal rural development programs
On September 18, Potter County, Pa. Commissioner Paul Heimel testified on behalf of NACo before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee Subcommittee on Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development hearing, titled “USDA’s Rural Development: Delivering Vital Programs and Services to Rural America.”
Garden helps county residents heal from mass shooting
El Paso County, Texas built a “healing garden” where people could gather to remember residents lost to a mass shooting.
EPA announces up to $14 million for brownfields job training program
On July 23, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for $14 million through the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Brownfields Job Training Grants Program. This program helps communities impacted by brownfield sites—blighted, contaminated properties—build local workforces to support site cleanup and redevelopment.
Presidential historians’ message: ‘Lead with empathy, optimism, resiliency’
Doris Kearns Goodwin: In today’s divisive political landscape, empathy can feel hard to come by, which makes it that much more important to public service.
The arts fuel economic growth in counties of all sizes
A county doesn’t have to be Los Angeles or New York to see the economic benefits from the arts.
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