Creative Placemaking Toolkit for Counties

The Creative Counties Placemaking Initiative supports counties as they work to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges.

Overview

As public funding becomes increasingly strained, counties must search for and employ new strategies to improve their communities and local economies. NACo, in partnership with Americans for the Arts and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, has launched the Creative Counties Placemaking Initiative to support counties as they work to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges.

Webinars and Conference Sessions

NACo's web-based learning opportunities provide elected and appointed county officials the opportunity to learn from their peers and industry thought leaders on best practices in county government.

Webinars

NACo's webinars are free to everyone and recorded for viewing after the live event. Recent webinars have included:

Check out all of NACo's upcoming and past Creative Counties webinars here.

Conference Sessions

The NACo Conference Learning Center hosts a myriad of recorded workshop presentations from the Annual and Legislative Conferences. Recent conference sessions have included:

Check out all of NACo's Creative Counties workshops here.

The Challenge

The Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge invites counties with populations of less than 150,000 to form multidisciplinary teams to compete in a challenge competition to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges. Teams that submit winning applications will attend an in-person, one-day training and peer exchange workshop on July 16, 2020, in or around Orlando, Orange County, Florida, in conjunction with NACo’s Annual Conference.

The Application

Instructions to apple can be found at http://www.naco.org/creative-counties-placemaking-challenge, and in a downloadable PDF. Teams are required to consist of at least one county elected official, one local arts leader and one local business leader. Applications will be evaluated and weighted based on the:

Quality and appropriateness of the team members;
Strength of the proposed partnership;
Ability of the team to follow through with their action plan and all workshop activities; and
Appropriateness of outlined goals to the community in which the project will take place.

The Workshop

The teams that submit winning applications will attend an in-person, 2 ½-day training and peer exchange workshop on July 16, 2020, in or around Orlando, Orange County, Florida, in conjunction with NACo’s Annual Conference. Guided by expert facilitators and practitioners, the workshop will assist teams to identify local place-based assets and how they might be leveraged to promote more livable, dynamic, resilient places with the arts at their core.

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Creative Placemaking Toolkit for Counties