RUPRI President and CEO Chuck Fluharty delivered the keynote presentation at the National Association of County’s Placemaking Challenge Workshop, held March 28th-30th in Des Moines, Iowa.
About the NACo Placemaking Challenge:
As public funding becomes increasingly strained, counties must search for and employ new strategies to improve their communities and local economies. NACo, in partnership with Americans for the Arts and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, launched the Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge to support counties as they work to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges. The Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge invited counties with populations of less than 250,000 to form multidisciplinary teams to apply.
Teams that submitted winning applications will attend an in-person, 2 ½-day training and peer exchange workshop on March 28 – 30, 2018 in Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa. Guided by expert facilitators and practitioners, the workshop will be designed to assist teams as they identify local place-based assets and how they might be leveraged to promote more livable, dynamic, resilient places with the arts at their core. The convening will feature panel discussions, small group exercises, mobile tours and team presentations.
Selected teams will be presented with the systems and tools necessary to develop successful creative placemaking solutions, and will be given time to meet and design solutions tailored to their communities’ unique culture, assets and needs. Teams will leave the workshop with an implementable action plan, and an improved local capacity to integrate arts and culture into community building and problem-solving. In addition, teams will be able to access pre- and post-workshop technical assistance and mentoring support.
