FOR OUR TOWN GRANTEES

Resources for Our Town Grantees and Project Partners

The Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance (CPTA) Program offers and disseminates technical assistance resources (TA) and training experiences for Our Town grantees and project partners. These resources are meant to expand communities’ capacity to harness the powerful potential of arts, culture, and design when intentionally incorporated into community development strategies.

Resources and trainings created through TA aim to prepare local leaders to carry out impactful arts, culture, and design projects that are well-positioned to yield catalytic, long-term, and equitable outcomes for their communities.

Beneficiaries of the program receive tailored advice from experienced creative placemaking Resource Team members, and have access to a range of technical assistance materials covering a range of topics, including: partnership with artists, community engagement, project management, and sustaining creative placemaking work during challenging times.

Explore the Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance program offerings and learn alongside our network of peer practitioners from across the country!

Top: The RiffRaff Arts Collective, Princeton, WV. Photo by Eric Proffit.

Current Grantees and Partners: Schedule a Call

If you're part of an Our Town project and interested in accessing One-on-One coaching as part of your technical assistance, reach out to us at OT@arts.gov.

Resource Team Consultation and Coaching

Our team of experienced practitioners is ready to partner with current grantees as they navigate their Our Town projects. This group of creative placemakers lives in communities of all sizes across the country and brings experience in a wide variety of arts and community work. Whether you’re looking for a thought-partner, mentor, or cheerleader (or all three!), the Resource Team is here for support. Information about the FY 2024-2025 Resource Team coming soon.  

Creative Lounge

The Creative Lounge is a space to swap and share stories, ideas, and questions about creative placemaking with Our Town grantees, partners, and Resource Team members. Join in on the conversation, or just listen: wherever you are in your Our Town journey, the Lounge is an informal place to drop in, celebrate your project’s successes, collaborate on strategies, and inspire connections as we learn from one another.

Creative Placemaking Workshop

Drawing on the deep knowledge and unique skill sets of the CPTA Resource Team and Partner roster, this offering for grantees and partners is designed to build knowledge, hone skills, and add to your Creative Placemaking Toolkit. Centered on a different skill each session, this year’s Workshops will give Our Town teams the tactical tools they need to execute their projects and work toward systems change.

Our Town Grantee Peer Exchange

Creative Placemaking is a collaborative and evolving field we’re all creating together. In Peer Exchanges practitioners come together with shared learning in mind, creating a virtual space for current grantees to network and learn from each other. Facilitated by the Resource Team and organized thematically around common questions, project activities, or community characteristics, these gatherings are an opportunity to celebrate and connect with peers across the country.

Peer Affinity Groups

Peer Affinity Groups offer opportunities for Our Town grantees to candidly discuss aspects of their creative placemaking practice that might benefit from peer support, including the following:

  • Addressing Gentrification and Displacement

  • Working with Local Government

  • Building Trust and Creating Meaningful Engagement with Community Members

  • Accessing Resources in Rural Places

  • Incorporating Arts, Media, and Creative Practices in Community Development

  • Strengthening BIPOC Arts Leadership; BIPOC-Centered Groups

Each group is peer-led by participants, with a Creative Placemaking Technical Assistance (CPTA) team member offering a flexible agenda and additional guidance. Joining a Peer Affinity Group does not commit you to staying with that group, and all groups are open to everyone. If you would like to join a group or have any questions about this program, please email us at OT@arts.gov. 

Creative Placemaking Toolkit

Intended to be a guide for anyone interested in beginning a creative placemaking initiative, this digital toolkit can be used flexibly—in whatever way best suits the needs of you and your team. Wherever you’re coming from, the webinars, worksheets, and activities in this resource are designed to help you recenter artists and residents within creative placemaking projects from the very beginning, offering practical and tactical advice on topics like partnership, community engagement, and evaluation.

Resource Team FY 2023-2024

Meet the FY 2023 - 2024 Resource Team!

Joining us for the FY 2023-2024 program year, this team of seasoned practitioners and innovative thought leaders supported Our Town grantees and project partners along their creative placmaking journeys.

Meet The Resource Team

Flannel and Blade

  • We are kind of elder, very queer, BIPOC creatives, producers and strategists who between us leverage 60+ collective years of strategy, production, socials, digital, content creation, events, marketing and communications expertise. We are artists and cultural producers that love to play and have a serious goal of providing services to those who are making a difference. We have built our foundations on social justice, and we only work with, and serve people who are doing the same by delivering high impact creative communications work for nonprofits, foundations, communities, and small businesses. We operate a sliding scale to keep our services within reach of anyone who wants them, and employ womxn, rural and BIPOC creatives. We do that on purpose to help keep us out of the mire of hetero-normative, patriarchal, white supremacist nonsense.

  • Figure out what you want to say, and the best way to say it. We'll identify your audiences, hone your unique messaging, and plan your delivery strategy across the right platforms for you.

Julie Garreau

  • An enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Julie Garreau, she/her, (Lakota name Wičhaȟpi Epatȟaŋ Wiŋ) is executive director of the nonprofit Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Since 1988, she has taken CRYP from a small youth center to a campus that includes youth and teen centers, art institute, garden, and social enterprises. In addition to completing several high-profile fellowships over the years, Julie has been recognized with such prestigious awards as the Bush Prize for Innovation, Spirit of Dakota Award, Presidential Points of Light Award, and Tim Wapato Public Advocate of the Year Award. She is currently a 2022 Vital Village Fellow.

  • Build and nurture the relationships you need to achieve your goals, whether that involves specific programs and facilities or broader initiatives in creative placemaking. As the founder and executive director of the nearly 34-year-old Cheyenne River Youth Project, I have learned one very important lesson: We must share our stories in a way that engages people and organizations to support our work. Those relationships are vital for our nonprofits and our Native communities.

Mark Valdez Portrait

  • is an artist, cultural organizer, and consultant who partners with communities, organizations, civic institutions, and others, using theater and creative tools to address community needs and to lift up community voices and stories. His work has been seen at the Alliance Theatre, Cornerstone Theater Company, East West Players, the Garry Marshall Theater, La Peña Cultural Center, Mixed Blood, the Ricardo Montalban Theater/CTG, and Trinity Rep, among others. Recent projects include the animated short film The Curious Cardinal which he wrote and directed, Detained by France-Luce Benson, and The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe, an interactive performance that uses art to influence housing policies. Mark is the recipient of various grants and awards including the 2019 Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities, 2020 Zelda Fichandler Award, and the 2020 California Legacy Artist Fellowship. He is a Board member of Double Edge Theatre and Cornerstone Theater, and a former Board member for Theater Communications Group (TCG). Mark was the founding Executive Director of the Network of Ensmeble Theaters, a collective of artists committed to co-creation. He is the incoming Artistic Director of Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.

  • Through facilitation, creative facilitation training, EDI training and strategic planning, program development, artist relations, artistic visioning, and civic-scale art-based problem solving.

Michaela Pride

  • (she/her), AIA, NOMA, is a Professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. As an architect and urban designer, she emphasizes principles of consensus, collaboration and public engagement in her teaching, research and professional consulting. Michaele’s current work focuses on the intersection between design and public health—seeking ways to create healthy, sustainable and equitable communities. At UNM, Michaele leads and supports projects through the school’s Design and Planning Assistance Center (DPAC), including several for NM Mainstreet communities and The Stories of Route 66: the International District (a plan for a new community space in Albuquerque). She is a core member of the HIVE Collaborative, a cross-campus community initiative to address adverse determinants of health. Related to this effort, she leads the funded Central Corridor Neighborhood Study in Albuquerque. Michaele also heads the MS Architecture track in Public Health and the Built Environment.

  • With developing strategies for your cross sector partnerships.

Rachael Viscidy

  • works to advance community-led economic development. She recently joined Friends of The Rail Park as the Community Development Program Officer. In that role, she engages communities in planning for the future of the Philadelphia park. Previously, as a LISC Philadelphia Program Officer, she partnered with community organizations across the city to support resident-driven economic development.

  • With cultural district work, streamlining processes, developing systems, economic development activities, cross-sector partnerships, and designing community and stakeholder engagement strategies.

Scott Oshima

  • (they/them) is an artist and organizer, based in Seattle / Coast Salish land, with over 15 years’ experience in community arts nonprofits. They currently work with 4Culture, King County's cultural funding agency, and are an advisor for National CAPACD's Creative Placemaking committee. When they served as the Sustainable Little Tokyo Program Director at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, they used community-driven and arts-based strategies to advocate for equitable development in LA’s historic Japantown and now serves as a Program Officer at the Durfee Foundation. Scott served on the Board of Directors for Little Tokyo Community Council and NEA Our Town Resource Team, and serves on the National CAPACD Asian American Pacific Islander Creative Placemaking coalition. Scott has presented at national conferences and convenings, such as ArtPlace Summit, People & Places, Western Arts Alliance, and Arts for LA’s State of the Arts Summit, and has written for the forthcoming ArtChangeUS FUTURE/PRESENT, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Journal, Orlando, X-TRA, and more. They can often be found singing songs to the freeways or picking grapefruits from 150-year-old trees in Little Tokyo.

  • Work with artists to create joyful community engagement strategies.

Theresa Hyuna Hwang

  • (she/her) is a community-engaged architect, educator, and facilitator. She has spent over 15 years focused on equitable cultural and community development across the United States. She is the founder of Department of Places, a participatory architecture practice based on occupied Tongva Land (Los Angeles, CA). Additionally, she directs Design Futures Forum, a national anti-racist design education initiative. She is a certified trauma-informed and non-violent communication parenting educator and a dedicated mindfulness practitioner in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Theresa was the former Director of Community Design and Planning at the Skid Row Housing Trust, a non-profit supportive housing organization where she was the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow from 2009-2012. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design (2007) and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Art History from the Johns Hopkins University (2001). She is a licensed architect in California.

  • With designing interactive creative processes with community members; co-creating community-engaged programs; reflecting on the intention, impact, and meaning of past work and how it can inform future work; supporting staff during challenging times and how to incorporate wellness strategies into the work.

Jamie Horter Portrait

  • (she/her) is a rural advocate, community engagement artist, and facilitator based out of Lyons, NE (pop.851). She works primarily in rural places and believes in the power of art to shape and enhance quality of life. Jamie uses art practices and facilitative methods for people to engage in conversations and decisions impacting their communities and organizations. She works to create collaborative spaces that are artful, interdisciplinary, accessible, and highly participatory.

  • Explore new community engagement strategies (including remote/online options and also for rural areas), processes for artfully facilitating or hosting meetings, project management, and working with artists.

John Davis Portrait

  • (he/him) is the founder and former Executive Director of Lanesboro Arts in Lanesboro, MN (pop. 754). His work with the Lanesboro Arts Campus initiative resulted in the city’s selection as one of the top 12 Small Town Artplaces in America for 2013. The following year, Lanesboro won a 2014 Bush Prize for Community Innovation. In 2018, Mr. Davis received a Bush Fellowship to further study and advance the field of rural arts and rural sustainabilityand is currently a leadership team member of the Waterers,a regional assembly initiative of ArtPlace America. Mr. Davis was the recipient of the 2011 Visionary Leadership Award from the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits for his community-building work in the arts in Lanesboro. His innovative work in New York Mills, MN (pop. 1,199) has been recognized as a national model for rural economic development in the arts, and New York Mills was twice recognized as one of the top 100 small arts town in America. Davis has over 30 years of experience with small town and rural creative social change work. He is a national speaker on rural arts issues, risk and innovation. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and broadcast on C-Span; it has also been featured in Corporate Report Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times, and the NBC Today Show.

  • Facilitate community problem solving, develope successful collaborations & partnerships, strategy, strategic planning, navigate rural political structures, implement new program ideas, fundraise, reframe the narrative, think through artist residencies, get spinning wheels unstuck from mud.

Leah Reisman Portrait

  • (she/her) is a sociologist, evaluator, and nonprofit practitioner with expertise in strategy, evaluation, the arts, and immigrant communities. Leah is adept at deploying right-sized, rigorous research to develop smart strategy, and thrives in making connections – between organizations, people, and ideas. An ethnographer by training, Leah is a skilled facilitator and strategist with demonstrated research, synthesis, and project management skills and deep experience in both the study and practice of nonprofit management. She was trained as a program evaluator while working at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science, and currently serves as an affiliate at Metris Arts Consulting. Leah also works with the nonprofit and philanthropy clients as an independent researcher and, as a Research Fellow at NYU’s John Brademas Center, is contributing to a major Mellon Foundation-funded study focused on the relationship between arts engagement and social wellbeing in California. Bilingual in Spanish, Leah also currently serves as Health and Wellness Associate Director at Puentes de Salud in Philadelphia. Across her varied roles, Leah leverages strong communication and problem-solving skills to navigate complex strategic and organizational issues spanning philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, and local communities.Her original quantitative and qualitative research on strategy consulting to nonprofits, Philadelphia’s philanthropic ecosystem, cultural philanthropy in Mexico, and professionalization in nonprofit organizations has been supported by the National Science Foundation and featured in academic journals, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

  • Leverage evaluative thinking in your work, create a theory of change, and design an interview or meeting facilitation guide to generate input from stakeholders. I can also help you embed a language justice approach in your project, and think through the specifics of working with Latinx immigrant communities.

Marty Pottenger

  • (she/her) has been the Executive Director of Art At Work since 2001. Her plays include the OBIE-winning City Water Tunnel #3; ABUNDANCE: America & Money; PhillySavesEarth (2016); and home land security, and her TEDx Talk has reached international audiences. Marty is the founder of Art At Work, a national initiative to increase cities’ resilience through strategic art partnerships with governments, unions, communities – Portland, Philadelphia, Boston, Broward County, New York City.

  • Set the table for building authentic understanding between team members even in places where differences seem daunting.

Mina Kim

  • is an independent consultant who codesigns shared learning opportunities, cross-sector relationship-building, and strategic planning initiatives with community members. Mina believes in holding and processing generative conflict as essential to cultivating systemwide capacity and ecosystems that seed and foster community capital. Her current partners include Filmbuilding Malden, New England Foundation for the Arts, Arts Equity Group, and LISC. Previously, Mina served as Program Officer of the Community Initiative at the Mass Cultural Council and as Assistant Director at The Fenway Alliance.

  • Design community-based processes, build strategies for cross-sector partnerships, frame project impacts, and support visioning and planning for cultural districts and community engagement.

Renee Piechocki

  • (she/her) is passionate about developing projects and initiatives to engage artists and communities in the public realm. She is an artist, public art consultant, and arts advocate. Renee is an independent consultant and public art producer who provides technical assistance, planning, and project management for nonprofit organizations, municipalities, community development corporations, artists, and others across the United States. Her current consulting roster includes healthcare, transportation, and community development entities. She frequently collaborates with Jennifer McGregor to develop public art strategies and plans for entities such as the Port Authority of New York New Jersey (2019); San Antonio River Authority (2016); and Boston's Rose F. Kennedy Greenway (2012). Currently, her clients include UPMC, Allegheny County Airport Authority, and Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Select public art related publications include Asphalt Art, in collaboration with StreetPlans and published by Bloomberg Philanthropies; “Contextualizing the Public in Social Practice Projects” in A Companion for Public Art co-authored with Jennifer McGregor; “Beyond the Ribbon Cutting: Education and Programming Strategies for Public Art Projects and Programs” in Public Art by the Book, edited by Barbara Goldstein; and Artist Residencies in the Public Realm, a resource guide for community collaborations. She founded Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art in 2005 and served as director until 2017. Her work as an artist ranges from social practice projects, short films, and photography. She is currently planning for a June 2022 solo exhibition in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.

  • Brainstorm innovative opportunities for artists to create in the public realm, to plan for public art, to create an artist selection process, and consider meaningful ways for communities to participate in process.

Susannah Laramee Kidd

  • is an ethnographer turned evaluator and arts and culture policy researcher. She is passionate about developing learning processes that enable practitioners to meet their artistic and social change goals. To that end, she wrote a brief guide for evaluators and researchers on the “Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence for Arts for Change” framework published by Animating Democracy in 2017. As an independent consultant, Laramee Kidd works with artists, arts and community development organizations, and community advocates to create frameworks that generate knowledge for action from the ground up. Currently, with Sara Daleiden, she has been part of a team at the City of Santa Monica, CA supporting the Art of Recovery initiative. In 2020 and 2021, many of the Art of Recovery projects activated commercial corridors and public spaces hit hard by the pandemic. With Metris Arts Consulting, she led knowledge-building, theory of change, evaluation-planning and capacity-building, and cultural asset mapping projects in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and for the state of Indiana. Previously, Laramee Kidd was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at the LA County Department of Arts and Culture, where she collaborated with artist Sara Daleiden to evaluate public art, social practice, and public engagement projects at parks and libraries in unincorporated LA County neighborhoods. Laramee Kidd holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology of Religion and Literature and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University. After many years of getting to know and love several U.S. cities, Laramee Kidd is thrilled to be based in her hometown of Philadelphia.

  • With documentation and communicating learnings with stakeholders, designing and implementing an evaluation or assessment, crafting program strategy for impact (a.k.a. theory of change), systems change analysis and evaluation, crafting participatory and equitable project and evaluation structures, stakeholder analysis, inclusive community engagement design, designing participatory public decision-making processes.

Margy Waller

  • (she/her) is an advocate for creating community through the arts. She is a Senior Fellow at Topos Partnership (a national strategic communications organization), founder and Serendipity Director of Art on the Streets, and was a leader in the transformation of ArtsWave, an arts advocacy and support non-profit. She advises on national initiatives to organizations such as Americans for the Arts, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and ArtPlace. Previously, she was Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, with a joint appointment in the Economic Studies and Metropolitan Policy Programs. Prior to Brookings, she was Senior Advisor on domestic policy in the Clinton-Gore White House. Before joining the Administration, Margy was Senior Fellow for Social Policy and Director of the Working Families Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. She also served as Director of Public Policy at United Way of America, and Director of Policy Development at Public/Private Ventures in Philadelphia.

  • with engaging your community, finding partners, equitable planning and collaborations, developing your pitch, documenting your initiative, and finding public funding—especially federal COVID relief dollars.

Melissa Kim

  • (she/her) believes solutions to complex social challenges are most effective when they are imaginative, pragmatic and co-created with communities. She has more than 15 years of experience working with resident leaders, community-based organizations, institutions and government agencies on collaborations and community capacity building. Currently, Melissa is Director of Community Impact at LISC. Previously, she served as Deputy Director at LISC Philadelphia and led arts and culture-based community economic development programs at The Village of Arts and Humanities, Asian Arts Initiative and the North 5th Street Revitalization Project. She serves on the boards of The Village of Arts and Humanities, Friends of the Rail Park and The Merchants Fund and is an alumna of the Center for Community Investment’s Fulcrum Fellowship and Field Catalyst programs.

  • With designing and planning your project, thinking through ideas and stuck points, connecting you with people and resources.

NOCD-NY

  • Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY is a citywide alliance of artists, neighborhood leaders, activists, and policymakers that have joined together to revitalize New York City from the neighborhood up. We facilitate peer learning, increase the visibility of community-based work, and advocate for it. Our artistic vision and asset-based approach recognizes the powerful culture that already exists in communities and we support liberatory art that is dialogic, participatory, and builds agency. NOCD-NY has ongoing cross-sector collaborations with NYC agencies and initiatives, one of which included an Our Town project with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Our core team includes: Caron Atlas, Emily Ahn Levy, Tom Oesau, and Hatuey Ramos-Fermín. Caron has worked in urban and rural communities across the U.S. for over 35 years as a director, resource person, mentor, educator, and member of national cohorts. Emily offers skills in urban placemaking and public space programming, project management, event production, and diversity, equity and inclusion consulting. Tom has coordinated neighborhood networks, collaborated on public housing programs, and organized forums and youth-led initiatives. As an artist, Hatuey has done community based public art projects, built neighborhood partnerships, developed art workshops and residencies, and produced large-scale events and festivals. Our alliance includes resource people working in city government.

  • By leveraging our skills in community network building, peer exchange and mutual collaborations, equitable and participatory engagement, events and convenings, public space programming, placekeeping, artist partnerships and residencies, workshop facilitation, partnering with public housing communities, and collaborating with city government.

Sarah Allan

  • Since 1998, Sarah Allan (she/her) has used arts and culture to foster community/economic development and has managed over $7 million dollars in arts-related projects, including public art, programming, and project financing/development. Most recently, she worked at the City of Covington, KY as the Assistant Director for Economic Development and managed the City’s public art initiatives. She also directed The Center for Great Neighborhoods’ Creative Placemaking and Economic Development programs. Sarah holds an MBA in Economic Development from Eastern University in Philadelphia, where she was also an Urban Studies adjunct professor for 11 years teaching the course Arts and Community/Economic Development. She is currently the Director for the 10,000 Small Businesses program at Cincinnati State.

  • With getting your project unstuck if you hit roadblocks with funding & financing, City/municipalities, community buy-in, etc. I can also help you talk through creative ways to get more voices at the table so that your project is as equitable and diverse as possible.

Tasha Golden

  • Tasha Golden, PhD is Director of Research at the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and a national leader in arts + public health. She studies impacts of arts & culture, music, aesthetics, and social norms on well-being, health research, and professional practice. Holding a PhD in Public Health Sciences, Dr. Golden has served as an advisor on several national health initiatives, and as adjunct faculty for the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine, she is developing courses for the first graduate certificate in Arts in Public Health. Dr. Golden is also leading the pilot evaluation of Massachusetts Cultural Council's “CultureRx”—the first arts-on-prescription model in the U.S. Dr. Golden’s research is informed by her work as a career artist and entrepreneur. As singer-songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, she toured full-time in the U.S. and abroad, and her songs appear in feature films and TV dramas (ABC, SHOWTIME, FOX, NETFLIX, etc). She is also a published poet and the founder of Project Uncaged: an arts-based health intervention for incarcerated teen women designed to amplify their voices in community and policy decisions.

  • With identifying how your program is (or could be!) benefitting participants’ health; figuring out how to measure/evaluate your program’s effects; communicating about your program to funders, leaders, and publics (including press/media); learning how to apply principles of trauma-informed practice to your work as artists, teaching-artists, or arts orgs; learning more about how arts & culture affect individual, community, and public health. More about my work is at tashagolden.com.

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