art & Creative Placemaking (WE-making) Repository

Based in St. Louis, Missouri and incorporated in 2014, the Story Stitchers Artists Collective uses a collaborative model to create social justice art. The mission of Story Stitchers is to document St. Louis through art and word and to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships, and literacy. Story Stitchers works to promote a better educated, more peaceful, and caring region through the creation and dissemination of original art.

The Madisonville Community Studio is an ongoing project co-created by Madisonville residents and Design Impact to explore key questions about the inclusiveness of neighborhood changes. The project is supported by the Kresge Foundation. To improve interracial relationships in Madisonville and increase Black residents’ power, influence, and representation in the neighborhood’s development decisions.

Since 1969, the Dunedin Fine Art Center’s vision and commitment remains to create and grow a fine arts and cultural center, a public arts school and library, open at all times to the general public, and not restricted to any group or groups. To facilitate our continued vision, the Dunedin Fine Art Center is proud to provide classes, events, and exhibitions.

HOME is a creative civic engagement initiative informed by West Hill residents, led by Chameleon Village Theatre Collective. West Hill’s community development corporation (the West Hill Neighborhood Organization) strives to activate its dual-zoning (UPD40) district; however, engagement is limited. HOME used creative methods to inform residents, collect their input, and share their stories through performance. The project utilized a three part methodology to 1) survey residents to collect their input about what they think the neighborhood needs, 2) build infographics to keep residents engaged 3) and collecting residents’ stories about what HOME means to them and presenting their input as a performance activating a home in the neighborhood with their stories for an opportunity to connect with one another. The act of listening to community and working with community, not for community, helped make the performance process both accessible and reflective of the surrounding community.

Asé Arts is a community arts model that roots the work of artists as essential to building vibrant, viable economies. Centering Artists as core community assets, we are the culture-bearers, historical preservationists, and visionaries who build expansive strategies to lead us into the future. Investing in the arts as a foundational pillar to building resilient communities ignites systematic change. Which results in economically abundant communities that are rich in heritage, diversity, and social opportunity.

Every summer in Reading, Pennsylvania, Barrio Alegria engages community musicians and vocal artists to perform in their Alleyway Concerts series. The Alleyway Concerts were born out of the desire to activate underappreciated spaces while also gathering community members through music. Concert locations have ranged from abandoned lots to bodega fronts to inside a laundromat. Using simple portable speakers and microphones the program engages local artists and businesses to see the beauty of their community through a new lens.

The Vacant Homes Tour in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, showcased vacant and abandoned properties, their histories, and potential. The tour took participants on a journey back in time through the stories of the people and homes of a once vibrant community, and worked to reframe the narrative around vacant properties from challenges to assets.

Since 2008, co-founders Max Frieder and Joel Bergner—first independently and later jointly— have led hundreds of Artolution community-based public art projects around the world. Artolution became incorporated as a non-profit corporation in 2016 with a focus on developing sustainable programs in communities where we have been active, to be facilitated by local artists trained by Frieder and Bergner.