“What makes the Cultural Trail unique is that it’s an urban exploration trail, as opposed to an urban escape trail.” / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

Back in 2007, we highlighted the Indianapolis Cultural Trail project in Bold Moves, Brave Actions, a feature that looked at five cities on five continents making exceptional strides toward becoming more people-friendly places. Indy, we wrote, was “taking what may be the boldest step of any American city towards supporting bicyclists and pedestrians” – an especially exciting thing to see happening in a city that may be most famous for speeding cars.

Now, five years later, the project’s big debut is upon us! Today marks the official grand opening of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Tomorrow, May 11^th, 2013, the city will host Get Down On It, a massive, downtown-wide effort to stage 75 cultural and entertainment events all along the eight-mile trail route.

We are particularly thrilled to see this project come to fruition, and not just because we had the opportunity to serve as part of the design team. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a significant project in and of itself, but it gains even more significance when considered in the larger scope of the transformation taking place in this Midwestern state capital. Driven largely by the efforts of the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) over the past decade, Indy is fast becoming a city where Placemaking is a way of life for all citizens. The focus on place, from the top down and the bottom up, is creating a stronger, more vibrant city that doubles down on the local people and places that make it most unique.

To mark the opening of the Cultural Trail, we spoke with Brian Payne, the president and CEO of the CICF and the “zealous nut” who took this amazing project from inspiration to implementation. Congratulations to Brian and everyone at the foundation for this remarkable accomplishment! We’re lucky to have had the pleasure of working with him, and to have seen the potential that a community foundation can have in leading a Placemaking agenda for a city.

We’ve gotten to know many of the projects of his Inspiring Places Initiative through having PPS lead trainings and technical assistance, and are looking forward to starting work shortly on major transformation of Monument Circle (a project that Brian had us help kickstart back in 2008 with a concept paper), the heart of the city and the Cultural Trail.

Why don’t we start this off by having you tell us a bit about what the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is, and how the project came about?

The trail is, from an experiential perspective, a great way to experience all of the great stuff in downtown Indianapolis; it’s also meant to serve as a catalyst for areas that need a catalyst. It is a curbed, buffered, beautifully paved, richly landscaped, and artfully lighted bike and pedestrian pathway that connects to every arts, cultural heritage, sports, and entertainment venue in the urban core. The inspiration for the idea was that it was going to connect to five designated cultural districts downtown in order to make those districts more vibrant and viable by connecting them and giving people a way to get to them that was walkable and bikeable.

Most bike trails are greenways; they’re a way to escape the urban environment and experience nature. The Cultural Trail is actually an urban trail that connects you to everything that’s good in the city center. What makes it unique is that it’s an urban exploration trail, as opposed to an urban escape trail.

One of the big benefits of this project is that it’s changing what we value in Indianapolis. We value beautiful design more since the trail came up; we value bicycle culture; we value sustainability. It’s also a major amenity that the tourism and convention industry is selling and appreciating. It’s a unique experience that makes Indianapolis different or better than it was as a destination. Even in these tough economic times, it’s actually been a catalyst for over a hundred million dollars of new real estate development. People are even moving their offices in order to be on the trail. We’ve had three major nonprofits relocate so that they can connect to the vibrancy this project is generating.

How did you first come to realize the importance of focusing on place? Did you come to Placemaking while you were working on the trail, or was it something you were aware of before?

It’s funny…today, I’m considered a local expert on Placemaking, but it was actually the trail project that taught me what I know. It wasn’t like I was an expert going in. Before I joined CICF as the president and CEO, my career was in managing professional theater companies. A few months after getting hired at the foundation, I was appointed by the mayor at the time, Bart Peterson, to be a commissioner of a new initiative that was originally scheduled to be a five-year, $10 million effort called the Cultural Development Commission. The goal was to establish Indianapolis more as a regional or even national cultural destination city.

We wanted to make our own citizenry connect to our local cultural offerings at a higher deeper level, but also to establish ourselves as a cultural city. My perspective was always: what are we going to offer that’s different, authentic, or unique compared to the cities around us? Why would someone from Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis—or, thinking nationally, Denver, Austin, etc—why would they come to Indianapolis for a cultural experience if we just offer what every city offers: regional theater, symphony, dance company, etc? What was going to make us a destination?

There was this idea presented to us, as new commissioners, that there was a significant opportunity in  the historic retail villages that were either part of downtown or just outside of it. It struck me that, inherently, cultural neighborhoods are unique from other cultural neighborhoods. Focusing on drawing out those neighborhoods’ distinctive qualities seemed like a great way to make the city a unique destination that people would travel to. I tried to raise money for that and got nowhere, because everyone said it wasn’t going to work because these districts were too disconnected: from downtown, and from each other.

So, I thought, let’s connect them! I was a new bicyclist at the time, and was enjoying this rail trail that we had called the Monon Trail. And I thought well we can just connect these downtown districts by creating an urban version of the Monon Trail. Over the years, the idea got more and more ambitious. We could have connected the districts with a five mile trail, but the trail wound up being eight miles. It also became a bigger idea, to connect every significant venue downtown. It’s also now the hub for an entire countywide system of trails. It connects the three other major trails in our multi-county area.

Placemaking has played a major role in transforming Indianapolis / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

There are a lot of other exciting new public space projects happening in the center of Indianapolis. Can you talk about the role that the trail has played in driving that shift toward the Placemaking idea?

PPS was certainly a big influence, but what’s happened is that, at CICF, the trail became the first of what we now call community leadership initiatives. The foundation used to be a straightforward, donor-advised grant-making organization. But we saw the trail project as a community leadership opportunity, and we started tying other community leadership efforts to what we were learning while working on the trail.

In 2005 (the trail idea started in 2001) we created two community leadership initiatives, one of which was called Inspiring Places, which has played a major role in encouraging people in Indianapolis to care more about Placemaking. We now have this idea that we should be a leading city in America for creating access to art, nature, and beauty every day, for everybody. Today, many of the people who cared about this trail project have been emboldened by the success of the Cultural Trail and Inspiring Places; they feel like they can get their ideas done, too. They feel like it’s worth being an advocate and having big ideas because they know there’s momentum around that now. There is now a huge, huge focus, and a lot of energy and people who are spending their creative time and resources making Indianapolis this great place.

You said something interesting earlier about cultural neighborhoods, and how each one is inherently different from other neighborhoods. How has the trail’s development affected the city’s neighborhoods? Is this energy spreading out from downtown?

It really is. Since we took on the Cultural Trail project we’ve been making sure that we balance that with our neighborhood efforts. We’ve had opportunities through that to work with some great partners. We have a very dynamic LISC in Indianapolis, and they had this idea of doing neighborhood quality of life plans. They’ve gone in and worked from the grassroots, doing neighborhood organizing around this idea of what the neighbors want to do to improve their local quality of life. The trail created major awareness, so among other things these neighborhoods want walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, they want cultural assets, and beautiful green spaces. All of these things reinforce each other.

Another great partner has been Keep Indianapolis Beautiful. They used to just be a neighborhood beautification initiative, but over the past ten years KIB has become a major community development organization. They use their principles of enhancing nature, expanding the tree canopy—the tools that they’ve always used—but they frame it with a much bigger ambition. Now, their work is about transforming neighborhoods and quality of life. They think much more comprehensively about what they do. All of these great organizations, we’re working together from different angles, but we all reinforce each others’ work.

You’ve been talking about connectivity; how do the Cultural Trail and the Inspiring Places initiative improve connectivity in Indianapolis?

At our foundation, we think that connectivity is the theme of the 21^st century. Whether it’s physical connectivity, digital, social, community—we think that a city that creates connectivity at all different levels is going to be a successful city. We’re big believers that innovation and creativity come from the collision and connection between different sectors and different kinds of people. We organize all of our work around connectivity.

The trail project is all about the journey, and the idea that the journey should be as exciting and inspiring as any of the destinations in our city. In fact, the journey itself should be a destination. The journey needs to be a great inspiring thing to do.

“We’re trying to create a city where the journey is as powerful and inspiring as the destinations.” / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

Children play on the Museum of Art and History’s rooftop sculpture garden during a Placemaking workshop / Photo: Greg Larson

In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake changed the face of downtown Santa Cruz, damaging dozens of buildings and hobbling the local retail scene. The Cooper House, which had been a key public gathering space in this oceanfront city’s core, was ruined. When the site was re-developed, a larger building was placed along the street, and a smaller adjacent public space, Abbott Square, was tucked away in the middle of the block as a retail pass-through. The square never really became a real destination for downtown…but now, with the help of the adjacent Museum of Art and History, that may be about to change.

PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin and Priti Patel visited Santa Cruz recently to kick off a series of Placemaking workshops with the MAH, a cultural institution that has been re-inventing itself as a participatory community hub since bringing on Nina Simon (a past Citizen Placemaker interviewee) as director almost two years ago. The museum has outlined a new vision “to become a thriving, central gathering place where local residents and visitors have the opportunity to experience art, history, ideas, and culture.” To further that mission, the MAH is taking advantage of a 50-year lease on Abbott Square to bring the excitement within its walls out into the public realm, creating a great new destination for Santa Cruz.

Naturally, Nina and her staff brought the same innovative spirit that they’ve applied to exhibitions and events at the museum to the Placemaking Process. While hundreds of citizens and stakeholders participated in workshops and meetings over the course of several days, it was a children’s workshop organized in collaboration with one of the dads in the community, Greg Larson, that really showed off the museum’s capacity for thinking outside the box.

“The children’s workshop was exciting because it speaks to two things,” says Cynthia. “First, it showed that it’s not really far-fetched to think that kids can talk about public space and contribute really meaningfully to Placemaking. Kids have great imaginations, and they can look at an adult problem and think differently about what they want to do with it. Second, it highlighted the museum’s role as a community institution, as a creative and networked place, and so clearly spoke to that vision that the staff is working toward.”

“Kids have great imaginations, and they can look at an adult problem and think differently about what they want to do with it.” / Photo: Greg Larson

One of the most exciting things about this unique component of the process in Santa Cruz was that it grew organically out of the museum’s public engagement efforts leading up to the workshop. “One of the things we’ve heard over and over again from people is that there’s no place for families to come downtown with their kids,” Nina explains. “When I ran into Greg, a museum member and manager for an adjacent town, I invited him to the Abbott Square workshop and he asked if he could bring his daughter. He runs a dads group, and offered to put together a family component to the workshop.”

Greg worked with the MAH’s Director of Community Programs, Stacey Garcia, to plan activities to engage local kids into the Placemaking process. On the day of the event, Greg and 25 local kids (aged five to 10) joined the adults in the opening presentation on Placemaking in the workshop led by Cynthia and Priti, before breaking off for a series of adventures and brainstorming activities. The first stop was Abbott Plaza itself, where everyone was encouraged to think about ideas for the space. “We told them, ‘Imagine you could have anything you want in this square, and got them to start sharing ideas while they were in the physical space,” Greg recalls.

Next, it was up to the museum’s rooftop sculpture garden, where kids were encouraged to play on the art while considering what made the space fun, and thinking about what would make them want to come back. After that, they went back inside to do some more traditional group brainstorming, drawing their ideas on big sheets of butcher paper, and then sharing ideas with each other. Among the ideas generated were a theater space, Chinese lanterns, a giant slide, a maze, a chocolate fountain, a zipline, flowers, a climbing wall, a tunnel—even a replica of the Titanic!

Sharing ideas with the group / Photo: Greg Larson

The kids then voted on their favorites to select a few key “big ideas” to present to the grown-ups, and then spent some time coming up with three skits to act out during that presentation to illustrate their ideas for the climbing wall, maze, and tunnel. Once they were back with the adults, the skits proved to be a big hit. “The kids crawling around and over and under the tables in the room during their skits got the adults more engaged,” says Greg. “It was beyond theater in the round; the kids took the stage to the adults.”

True to form for an arts-friendly town like Santa Cruz, those adults were ready to play ball! Says Cynthia: “One of the dads worked with the city, and also teaches rope climbing, and it got him thinking, ‘You know, we could hook some guide wires between the buildings, and I could teach lessons in the plaza. It’s not that far-fetched.’ Kids wanted a zipline, and he was like, ‘You could do that, actually…’ These kids didn’t know to be cynical.”

In fact, the ideas were so well-received that, according to Nina, the kids’ contributions had a marked impact on the adults’ discussion. “You could tell that the adults really became the stewards of the kids’ ideas, in a sense. It re-oriented us to what it really means to create something that’s family-friendly.”

When you approach it the right way, Placemaking has the potential to bring out the kid in everyone. While priorities have to be determined and decisions have to be made, at the start, there is potential in every public space for an amazing new destination to emerge. Sharing freely and openly at the outset is key because, even if some of the more outlandish ideas won’t be feasible, they can help to set a tone and establish the kind of flexibility and open-mindedness that lead, ultimately, to stronger results.

“I think that the main takeaway was that it really is possible to engage kids in productive ways, parallel to adults, in a creative design process,” says Greg. “It’s important for it to be multi-modal, experiential, reflective, artistic, tactile. If there’s anything consistent to what the kids drew up, it was that the square and the art on the square needs to be engaging, or participatory as Nina would say, where they can touch it or interact with it, not simply observe it.”

We’ll be back in Santa Cruz next month. We’ll keep you posted as the new Abbott Square shapes up!

Click here to view a slideshow of the results of the kids’ workshop!

Photo: Vincent Desjardins via Flickr

1.) Towards an Architecture of Place: Moving Beyond Iconic to Extraordinary

“In the last decade, some of the new buildings that have won the most acclaim exemplify what we might call a kind of new “Brutalism.” They recall that style’s monolithic disregard for human scale and for connection to the surrounding streetscape.”

Photo: PPS

2.) Seven Ways to Disrupt your Public Space

“Placemaking tosses out the idea that an architect or planner is more of an expert about how a place should be used than the people who are going to use it. By bringing people together around a shared physical place, it’s also a powerful tool for disrupting local complacency.”

Photo: Universal Pictures

3.) Ten Great Movies for Placemakers

“While the best way to learn about what makes a great place is often to get out and observe how public spaces work first-hand, there are films that illustrate Placemaking principles quite beautifully.”

Illustrations: Andy Singer

4.) Levels of Service & Travel Projections: The Wrong Tools for Planning Our Streets?

“When we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.”

Photo: Fred Kent

5.) Whom Does Design Really Serve?

“The design professions have been given free reign to set up a wholly dysfunctional system when it comes time to promote the best and brightest, and the results are devastating our public spaces…Whether [competition] jury members actually have to use the spaces that they praise is irrelevant. They are tastemakers, not Placemakers.”

Photo: PBS Newshour

6.) You Are Where You Eat: Re-Focusing Communities Around Markets

“[Public markets are especially viable] today because the global economy has skewered our sense of being able to support ourselves. Markets are very reassuring places, because they give you a sense of responsibility for your own health. People are experimenting, and reinventing what it means to have a good life.”

Photo: PPS

7.) Is Your City Design Centered or Place Centered

“It is critical to remember, in any project, that you are creating a place, not a design. While good design is important to creating great places, it is but one tool in your kit–not the driving force behind good Placemaking.”

Photo: PPS

8.) What Makes a Great Public Destination? Is it Possible to Build One Where You Live?

“Making a great place requires lots of participation from lots of people. That creates lots of new Placemakers, and inspires a whole new group of zealous nuts. Placemaking can change the way that people think about their role within their community.”

Photo: Brendan Crain

9.) Place Capital: Re-connecting Economy With Community

“Public spaces that are rich in Place Capital are where we see ourselves as co-creators of the most tangible elements of our shared social wealth, connecting us more directly with the decisions that shape our economic system.”

Photo: Dover Kohl & Partners

10.) Creating Great Streets: What Does it Take? An Interview with John Massengale & Victor Dover

“Although a lot of time and money was being put into large projects, they weren’t necessarily leaving behind streets that are better to grow a business on, or to make a home…We thought, ‘Why is that?’ It’s the Placemaking piece, actually.”

Photo: Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority

11.) Creativity & Placemaking: Building Inspiring Centers of Culture

“Shifting attitudes are chipping away at the austere walls of yesterday’s “culture ghettos,” with people demanding more inspiring, interactive gathering places. Creativity is becoming one of the most coveted social assets for post-industrial cities with increasingly knowledge-based economies–and this is good news for culture vultures and average Joes, alike.”

Photo: Ethan Kent

12.) How Small Change Leads to Big Change: Social Capital & Healthy Places

“Many people have become so used to their surroundings looking more like a suburban arterial road than a compact, multi-use destination that they’ve become completely disconnected from Place. Real life is lived amongst gas stations and golden arches; we have to visit Disneyland to see a thriving, compact Main Street.”

A dance troupe performs in the Andrew Freedman Home during No Longer Empty's "This Side of Paradise" / Photo: NLE

Since ceasing operations as a grand retirement home in the 1980s, the Andrew Freedman Home had been standing quietly inconspicuous on its spacious lot off the Bronx’s famed Grand Concourse. Just a handful of activities had been taking place on-site, mostly in the basement: a Head Start preschool program, a food bank, a thrift shop. The property owner, the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council (MBSCC), began thinking about how to more fully utilize the multi-storied mansion to bring this unique space into active community use.  That was the impetus for the phone call that MBSCC and Holly Block of the Bronx Museum of the Arts (BMA) made to No Longer Empty (NLE), a Brooklyn-based arts organization that organizes site-specific public art installations to revitalize fallow spaces.

For NLE, “site-specific” means including both the physical place and the people who live and work in the surrounding community. By using art to interpret physical space and its historical context, NLE uses its installations to re-frame vacant, forgotten spaces as places that are open for interpretation. As Executive Director Naomi Hersson-Ringskog explains, “What we do well is listening to the initiatives, challenges, and caveats the community expresses.”

No Longer Empty’s exhibition “This Side of Paradise,” served as the impetus for community groups to engage with the space and link this resource with their own plans and needs. Getting conversations flowing among existing cultural organizations, including members of the nascent Bronx Arts Alliance, inspired visions of the events and programs that the mansion could host and also led to new creative collaborations.

In addition to opening up avenues of dialogue, Naomi also says, in terms of the physical site, “The first thing we do is open the gates. It’s a sign of welcome and a way of getting the community to start associating with the site and what the site should be.” One of the groups that took advantage of the space was the Bronx Children’s Museum (BCM). With its gates open, the mansion turned into fertile ground for Museum programming, especially with the BCM’s new home still under construction.

Rolling out the red carpet to welcome the community--literally! / Photo: NLE

NLE’s Director of Programming and Outreach, Jodie Dinapoli, recalls talking with the BCM’s Executive Director, Carla Precht, who wished to develop an early childhood program that would explore the question “What is art?” The mansion, filled with the works of more than 20 artists through NLE’s exhibition, became an ideal site for realizing interactive tours and workshops. The BCM, working with three teaching artists, paired-up with local children’s organizations, two of which were literally under the mansion’s nose: Head Start, which was operating from the basement floor, and BronxWorks, which was across the street. It was an outstanding example of how people began to re-connect with a long-ignored space that was already along the route they followed in their daily routines.

The mansion became recognized as an asset in a variety of ways. For Inspirit, a Bronx-based dance company, rehearsal space is always a necessary resource. The re-activated mansion was able to provide not only physical space but inspiration and a unique performance context. Another performer, Diana Crum, expressed a “[craving for] more spaces in between: performance settings where artists and pedestrians gather to experience time-based work and in the process forge a temporary community, ripe for reflection and re-imagining.”

Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory used the mansion’s unique setting to film and document their work. For Boogie Down Rides and the Bronx Arts Alliance, the space became a convenient gathering spot for meetings. BronxNet, which produced the film of featured artist Mel Chin, began using the space to offer media courses throughout the run of the exhibition and possibly on into the future. Reflecting on the process of these successful collaborations, Jodie emphasizes, “Collaboration is beautiful, but requires diligence. To be a true success, each group must define their objectives, goals, and needs.”

The care taken to interact and engage with people throughout the programs and events helped this private space achieve the warmth and vibrancy of a true public destination. As the hosts of the space, NLE staff and volunteers remained active and engaged with the site once programs were underway. They observed that many visitors, especially non-habitual art-goers, will hesitate at the doorway to the exhibition or the event. One of the simplest methods for putting a visitor at ease and imparting a sense of belonging was to have a friendly greeter at the front desk. A smile and a hello goes a long way in cultivating a welcoming environment. “Our tone is about engagement,” Naomi says. “We want to engage people in conversation, which is the way to share knowledge and inspire more curiosity.”

Children search for Easter eggs on the Freedman Home lawn / Photo: NLE

As with bringing vibrancy to a place, the aspect of a warm human presence cannot be overestimated in creating vibrant exhibitions and programs. On the day of NLE’s Easter Egg Hunt at the mansion, volunteers were present to walk people up and down the street between multiple events also being orchestrated by the BCM and the BMA. It turned into a huge day out on the Grand Concourse for close to 800 children with the feel of festive neighborhood block party.

On the other hand, not every activity that occurred in the space was planned. With the gates unlocked, local workers would spontaneously use the front lawn and garden as a lunch spot. “This was an example of how the community began using this private space in a public manner,” Naomi says, reflecting.

Creating an open testing ground for ideas both spontaneous and planned is a great value of NLE’s Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper approach to public art. Although NLE only temporarily occupies any site, the spirit of nimble mobility is ideal for sparking communities into new awareness and playful experimentation with their everyday surroundings. The ability of any community to recognize the potential of its hidden assets is is the first step to turning a place around.

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To learn about one of PPS’s favorite projects up in the Bronx, visit our project page for the Bronx River Arts Center (BRAC) renovation and expansion!

Aphrodite interviews a New Yorker on Love TV in front of the city's iconic Flatiron Building / Photo: Love TV

Love was recently high in the air at PPS, as we were regaled with tales of a heartfelt summertime voyage around New York City’s five boroughs, where deeply-held secrets, innermost dreams, and impassioned desires were divulged by locals in the bright glare of broad daylight across public parks, plazas, streets and ferry terminals. Inside a giant pink television…to a golden-haired vixen called Aphrodite…with an Australian accent…

Nope, we’re not losing our grip on reality here in the office. In fact, we had the good fortune to be visited by artist Rebecca Macintosh and creative producer Victoria Johnstone, two Australians who had been touring their urban installation, “Love TV,” around New York City as a part of the DOT’s Summer Streets and Weekend Walks Urban Arts Program.

Describing Love TV as a “bold, fun and innovative public art adventure,” Rebecca and Victoria had been busy sharing the love across nine sites with 19 performances in some of NYC’s most diverse and far-flung neighborhoods. Through an outreach process organized jointly by Love TV and local community partners, people went online to either nominate themselves or their neighbors for an interview with Rebecca—aka the illustrious Goddess of Love, Aphrodite—in her public studio, a cheerfully fuchsia mobile theater shaped like a giant TV set. As local personalities revealed all, the interviews were aired on a screen before an inflatable lounge, allowing for prime public viewing with all of the fluffy comforts of home. Interviews were rapidly uploaded onto the Love TV website and posted to social networks, growing “a lively online Love TV community” across the world.

As happy a spectacle as Love TV is, its aim is far from superficial. As Rebecca explained, the project endeavors to activate public spaces and strengthen community spirit by creating a place for “their stories, by their people, [so that communities can share their] personal love affair with their respective neighborhood or city.” Indeed, Love TV’s five-borough journey collated interviews from a passionate public, from boy wonder drummer Marakai at the Jamaican Music and Arts Festival in Queens, who dreams of “a big pool in the park,” to soon-to-be MTV Superstar singer Ray 6 at the TAMA Summerfest in Brooklyn, who was brimming with pride in Bed-Stuy’s music-filled streets: “Tompkins is it! Brooklyn is the place to be.”

In addition to the nominated guests, Love TV also built up its own merry team of followers, from George the Greek, an Astorian poet who serenaded Love TV at multiple locations, to a group of Italian tourists who simply fell in love with the installation and reoriented their NYC itinerary to follow Aphrodite around the boroughs. So why is Love TV so loveable? What’s the secret to its success?

A crowd gathers to watch a performance at Fordham Plaza in the Bronx / Photo: Love TV

As veterans of pop-up public space activation (Love TV has been touring the world’s public places for more than five years), Rebecca and Victoria dropped by PPS HQ to share tips and tricks over a brown bag lunch with Placemaking staff. They described how, when new to a neighborhood, city, or country and working on a tight schedule, on-the-ground partnerships and a spirit of collaboration are the absolute starting point for any pop-up event. Community partners are essential for ensuring that work fits within the local context—especially when needing to tap into neighborhood knowledge to select an appropriate site, since poor site location can make or break a performance.

Yet Love TV’s charm swells from something other than good site location and thorough research. This installation creates a public meeting space (often in very limited supply, especially in poorer neighborhoods) charged with a spirit of optimism, and uses a commonly-held human value that spans cultural, social and economic differences—love—to inspire positive community conversations and visions for the future. Every participant was asked what they would do if made mayor for a day and, Rebecca told us, this became a significant moment in each interview. With community organizing so often focused on what people don’t want, it’s rare for communities to have the opportunity to come together to define common values by sharing their hopes and desires in their own local public spaces.

So Love TV’s beauty, on one hand, lies in this curation of shared community experience in public space; but that beauty also, perhaps more strategically, comes from the way the project finds avenues for these aspirations to linger. Rebecca noted that Facebook seems to have become that place where, well beyond Love TV’s departure, participants and communities continue to dwell online to share their urban dreams for the future. Victoria and Rebecca hope that the few hours of rosy fun they bring to neighborhoods will do more than simply bridge off- and online community conversations, but also seeding longer-lasting effects–perhaps as an online archive of community strengths and needs which municipal officials, planners and advocates could use.

Love TV is back home now, resting up with Rebecca and Victoria on Queensland’s Gold Coast. But if the project sparked a little something for you, or if you think your community could use a healthy dose of Australian warmth, community imagination, and/or a whole heap of fun, get in touch with these Placemaking romancers, and see what can come when you “turn on” an intimately good time in your neighborhood.

Audience participation! Dancing in the NYC DOT's Flatiron Plaza / Photo: Love TV

“Place matters, and the first place is your body. We are whole people. We bring that whole-ness to our communities.” –Maria Bauman, leading a “Physio-Expresso” exercise / Photo: @keith5chweitzer via Twitter

What do the Lower East Side’s finest scaffolding, North Brooklyn churches, a chocolate factory, and the Staten Island Ferry have in common with something called Physio-expresso? All were on the roster when artists, art administrators, community leaders, urbanists, researchers and policy makers gathered last week in Fort Greene’s South Oxford Space for the cheerfully dynamic  Spacing Out: A Forum On Innovative Cultural Uses of Urban Space. The event was coordinated by the Arts & Democracy Project, Urban Bush Women, and the Naturally Occurring Cultural District Working Group (NOCD-NY), an alliance of community-based cultural networks and leaders that aim to ‘revitalize NYC from the neighborhood up’.

The aim of the forum was to share best practices (and war stories), to help activate and enhance Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts in New York City. Councilmember Letitia James started things off by explaining why building support for NOCDs is a pressing issue right now, in light of real estate development trends where neighborhood boundaries are hastily redrawn and renamed (DUMBO, Bedford Hill, BoCoCa, anyone?) without appreciating that the community’s cultural workers will likely be priced out, victims of their own ‘success.’ As the morning’s speakers revealed, many communities lack the expertise for navigating arts and cultural resources, and are thus unable to develop the capacity to advocate for themselves and their work.

The morning’s presenters (representing each of New York City’s boroughs) described their own experience spearheading creative re-use of existing urban spaces, and how they routinely navigate issues such as partnership-building, programming and managing spaces.

“Saints of the Lower East Side” is on view through September 5, 2012 / Photo: Fourth Arts Block

Tamara Greenfield of the Fourth Arts Block on Manhattan’s Lower East Side described how art could find an unlikely but happy home within temporary, and typically unsightly structures like the scaffolding at vacant lots and construction sites. While street artists, especially those who are lesser known, relish the opportunity to create work for a new urban platform, the generally brief public life of temporary infrastructure creates huge challenges in terms of rapid project planning, having time to secure adequate funding, and brokering relationships with building owners and the ragtag team of necessary city partners like the DOT and NYPD.

Up next was Sheila Lewandowski, director of Long Island City’s The Chocolate Factory, a theater housed in a formerly-industrial home of delicious things. Sheila spoke about adaptive reuse, and her search for an experimental performance and art space which would help preserve the natural character of the neighborhood. “Space matters,” she proclaimed, explaining that many artists want to respond to old buildings in their existing state. In addition to re-use of a physical structure, the Chocolate Factory has also shown how the community surrounding a venue can inform how it adapts to new cultural tenants by partnering with 200 local businesses in an average year. “It’s very important that the community sees that you’re a part of it,” Sheila said. “You don’t do anything alone.”

Monica Salazar’s presentation about cultural use of religious spaces turned an eye toward the economics of re-use. In 2009, inspired by a New York Times article about local North Brooklyn churches renting out space for rehearsals (and with her own band needing a music-making place), Monica contacted Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary’s in East Williamsburg/Bushwick, Brooklyn with a similar suggestion. Her initiative rapidly developed into The Trinity Project, a bartering program with a membership structure that allows artists to teach classes in exchange for space, while also offering the church a ready army of caretakers. Said Monica: “I was amazed to see how valuable trade is…once the dollar is removed from the equation.’

Visitors explore The Point’s Bronx facility during the “Key to the City” project / Photo: Shelley Bernstein via Flickr

Carey Clark of The Point in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood illustrated that while some neighborhoods may not have high levels of cultural traffic or city investment, they nonetheless house communities craving the same opportunities and advantages. The Point is an organization which formed in 1994 to strengthen the South Bronx in partnership with local residents through programming, facilities, and resources, including the wildly successful Hunts Point Riverside Campus for Arts and the Environment, a permanent open public space for the arts and environment. “You need to have a vision,” she explained, “but be prepared to be flexible.”

Sometimes strategic flexibility means saying “no,” as highlighted by Prerana Reddy, Director of Public Events at the Queens Museum of Art, who spoke about the QMA’s current work supporting the Heart of Corona.  The QMA has a well-deserved reputation for working with the local community by seeing ‘the museum is a production partner’ in a community ‘full of cultural workers.’ The museum declined the DOTs invitation to take on full management responsibilities for a re-designed Corona Plaza, arguing successfully that maintenance and upkeep should be handled by another organization while the QMA focuses on what they do best: programming. “We have broad cultural networks,” she explained. “How do we use these to co-produce with the neighborhood?” The QMA is now working with several partners on a series of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper activations of the space.

COAHSI’s “Culture Lounge” will encourage visitors to Staten Island to linger in the ferry terminal / Photo: COAHSI

Turning challenges into opportunities was a necessary philosophy, if not working method, for Melanie Cohn, director of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island. COAHSI received a Rockefeller grant to create a new cultural space at New York City’s third most visited site – the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, where 75,000 people pass through every day. For this new space, COAHSI had to balance the needs of local artists, who are feeling the squeeze of a growing lack of cultural space as the borough booms, with the DOT and Homeland Security, organizations that prioritize moving people through the terminal as quickly as possible. The solution? “You talk a lot,” according to Melanie, and invest in outreach about how to engage with influx of population coming into the space.

With presentations over, the room broke into a series of rapid-fire discussion groups to delve further into the topic areas, share our own experiences, and explore common challenges. The room rejoined to share key take-outs. Here, a few of the questions most pertinent for Placemakers looking to bring cultural activity out into streets & public spaces:

• How can cultural workers arm themselves with ‘the right questions’ to ask?

• What is the process for acquiring space, and where can we access the technical expertise to manage and use it?

• How can cultural workers develop effective relationships with host organizations such as museums and libraries?

• How can cultural workers help expedite the sharing of a common vision with project partners?

• How can projects be made more sustainable in the short and long term?

Ideas, tactics, experiences, strategies and indeed, the entire morning, passing by with blistering speed and spirited enthusiasm. Many thanks to the organizers and The South Oxford Space for their initiative and planning, and creating the opportunity to develop some new practitioner working methods.

• New: A short movie from On The Commons. [The Nation]

• The Trust for Public Land’s Park Equity and Public Health Toolkit. [TPL]

• “Streetsblog is the force de majeure in the American Livable Streets movement”. [Planetizen]

• Raleigh passes legislature to require a place in construction budgets for public art. [The News and Observer]

• NASA does grassroots! [Federal Computer Week]

• Check out the 7th International Public Markets Conference in San Francisco! [PPS]

• Push for a new position: The White House Farmer. [The Daily Journal]

• Obamas bring their locavore Chicago Chef to the White House. [New York Times]

One of Olafur Eliasson's "Waterfalls" underneath the Brooklyn Bridge

The state of public art projects may actually be quite good, even faced with adversity in trying times like these. American Artist acknowledges the inevitable decline in funding for public arts projects from private sources but highlights the benefit of public funding for arts projects during tight economic periods.

PPS’ Cynthia Nikitin asserts that “art commissions tied to these projects will continue to survive”. Local and state government legislators have long known that artwork in public places actually generates revenue. New York City’s “Waterfalls” and “Gates” installations from the summers of 2008 and 2006 together generated over $300 million in revenue from visitors. Unfortunately, not everyone sees the light. Colorado has already cut planned spending for public art by about 40%. Luckily, however, few other states have gone down that path so most public art commissions associated with public projects will continue to move forward as planned.

To read more about public art, go to the American Artist website.

• StreetsBlog’s best of 2008, featuring Hans Monderman. [StreetsBlog]

Each year, the U.S. nonprofit arts industry generates $134 billion in economic activity, claims a report issued by national art advocacy group Americans for the Arts. According to the group’s June 2002 study, Arts & Economic Prosperity: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts Organizations and Their Audiences, that figure includes $24.4 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenues; $53.2 billion in spending by nonprofit arts organizations; and $80.8 billion in event-related spending by arts audiences. Taxes aside, that breaks down into the equivalent of 4.85 million full-time jobs and $89.4 billion in household income. The findings of the report are based on surveys of 3,000 nonprofit arts organizations, as well as interviews with more than 40,000 attendees at arts events in 91 cities in 33 states, plus the District of Columbia.

Also included with the findings are:

• The Arts & Economic Prosperity Calculator, a tool that allows organizations (and entire communities) to estimate the economic impact of their expenditures;
• A powerpoint presentation on the economic benefits of art;
• A summary of the findings for the 91 Partner Communities
• Detailed data tables and survey instruments; and
• A list of the 91 Partner Communities grouped by population category

(Photo above: Public art in action)

• Murrieta, CA gets a new farmers market just as demand for one is increasing. [The Press Enterprise]

• South Dakota is offering grants for farmers markets. [Farmers Market Coalition]

• A federal stimulus for city parks? [Gotham Gazette]

• Some praise for public art. [Mercury News]

• Not good enough to simply be ‘a park in and of itself’. [Tulsa World]

• Wisconsin farmers highlight the benefits of shopping locally… in case you weren’t sure. [Chicago Tribune]

• The town of Hurlingham and Fulham in England hands over a popular community park to a private polo organization for the purpose of constructing a  private and exclusive polo field. [BBC and The Cowan Report]

• Niagara Falls, NY is on the brink of passing a controversial new zoning regulation on increased building heights in an effort to encourage green building practices while at the same time rivaling neighboring Canadian high rises. [Buffalo News]