Communities across the country are discovering the incredible power that is unlocked when the arts are connected with traditional community development. Staff from Plan F Solutions has deployed over 200 artist projects in response to neighborhood concerns including safety, youth engagement, small business retention, blight reduction, participatory budgeting, community health, and neighborhood history.
Well over 10,000 participants engaged in these arts-based community development activities, with significant media coverage accordingly. With such a vast array of experiences, Plan F Solutions is able to easily manage the logistics, marketing and other organizational challenges that can come with short-term arts and culture activities. CONTACT US TODAY TO DISCUSS YOUR NEEDS IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING AREAS:
CULTURAL ASSET
MAPPING
Where do I start? The great thing about creative placemaking is that it can be deployed anywhere. You do not have to be adjacent to a lake, freeway, or university to discover the power of arts-based community development. Unlike many other types of community assets, every community has artists. The key to each new creative placemaking endeavor is to survey the existing landscape for cultural assets that can be mined and deployed on behalf of a community. The first step in any creative placemaking journey is mapping its cultural assets. Plan F Solutions can help you with this critical early step that will help your community discover what makes it unique.
ARTIST ENGAGEMENT
How do I ask artists to help fix their community? Plan F Solutions can help your community design programming that is beneficial to both your neighborhood and your community’s cultural assets. Artists bring people to the conversation that normally would not participate in these types of civic activities and artists help quickly build momentum for the work as it develops. Once your change concept is designed, Plan F Solutions can conduct community surveys to test interest in the project and also lead community discussions where the power of creative placemaking can be shared. As your community becomes more curious about the power of arts-based community development, Plan F Solutions can help convert that interest into early projects that allow you to test how simply asking artists to help can transform the direction of your entire community.
PROJECT SUPPORT
How do I design projects that respond to my community needs? Once found and engaged, your artist army can assist in the empowerment of the community through technical assistance provided by Plan F Solutions staff. These strategies are tactile activities that are inherently cost effective with a clear intent of helping a community tell its story organically. Then comes the fun part of watching a community skeptically test this new way of thinking by directly engaging in the creation and presentation of visual and performance art. As community stakeholders realize they are solving community problems AND having fun in the process, it is fantastic watching the momentum build and grow. Let Plan F Solutions help you develop your project or support a current initiative that needs to be adjusted.
SUCCESS MEASUREMENT
How do I know creative placemaking is working? By teaching communities to solve their own concerns with their own existing asset base, neighborhood residents become resilient and empowered. Polishing and celebrating a community’s existing arts and culture individuals and organizations is a critical component of the work. Plan F Solutions has measured the impact of these arts and cultural activities through third-party data collection as well as the deployment of a proprietary surveying tool called CitizenMetrics. CitizenMetrics is a longitudinal attitudinal community surveying tool that can measure how a community feels about its future. As we all know, perception truly is reality regardless of what the statistics say. Contact Plan F Solutions to design measurement methodology that will provide clear evidence that your creative placemaking effort is working and should continue.