Springfield Cultural Partnership Pop-Up Civic Space

Springfield Cultural Partnership plays a vital role in civic organizing in Springfield, MA, by leveraging the arts as a tool for community engagement, cross-sector collaboration, and civic participation. The nonprofit serves all ages and backgrounds, with a special focus on youth and Black and Latinx communities and artists, representative of the city’s cultural, racial, and socio-economic diversity. 

In May 2025, as part of Project for Public Spaces’ Community Placemaking Grants: Civic Spaces, Springfield Cultural Partnership was selected as one of two nonprofits to receive $60,000 each in direct funding, as well as planning, implementation, and capacity building assistance. For this grant cycle, Project for Public Spaces is partnering with CultureHouse to improve access to dedicated civic spaces where community residents can organize, engage in public dialogue, and work to address local issues. 

With support from this Community Placemaking Grant, the Partnership will transform a vacant space that is street-level and faces Main Street at the Tower Square business center in Springfield, into a free, accessible space for artists and residents to gather, create art, and engage in civic programming. The project will demonstrate how the arts can drive public dialogue, community organizing, and local change. 

Starting in June 2025, the Project for Public Spaces and CultureHouse teams will work with grantees to organize visioning sessions with their respective communities, before choosing a site for activation, conceptualizing an activation plan, designing, construction, and programmatic implementation take place. Pop-ups are expected to run for three months sometime between November 2025 and May 2026. 

Click here to learn more about Project for Public Spaces’ Community Placemaking Grants: Civic Spaces.

Check back to see this space transform!