Creative Citymaking

Creative CityMaking is a partnership between Intermedia Arts and the City of Minneapolis that fosters collaborations between local artists and City planners.  In 2013, Creative CityMaking embedded four teams of artists into the Long Range Planning Division of the City’s Community Planning and Economic Development Department (CPED) to enhance the creative planning process in transportation, land use, economic, environmental, and social issues. It is intended to engage artists in critical thinking and art making around City and urban issues and to increase artists’ and planners’ ability to facilitate community interaction and work collaboratively with the public to foster positive change in the quality and trajectory of social discourse about the city’s urban future.

The goals of Creative CityMaking include:

• to develop new creative strategies for community planning;
• to create a collaborative laboratory and learning environment that engages artists and City staff;
• working with a city department;
• to engage artists in critical thinking and art making around city and urban issues, and to increase artists’ and planners’ ability to facilitate community change;
• to provide artists and planners with new tools for community engagement and working with traditionally underrepresented communities;
• to document and communicate lessons learned throughout.

Creative CityMaking features a number of activities, including the following:
 

• four artist/planner collaborations tailored to five different City of Minneapolis Planning projects;
• the engagement of one anchor organization as a partner in each of these Planning projects;
• four institutes convening the artists, planners and anchor organizations;
• a culminating community event for each of the four Planning projects;
• a culminating community forum at Intermedia Arts sharing the collective results of all four projects;
• results sharing and documentation;
• project evaluation;
• a project Advisory Committee.