2011
The Sioux Falls Arts Council in South Dakota used their NEA Our Town grant to revitalize the Whittier neighborhood of the city by bringing renowned muralist Dave Loewenstein (near center, wearing hat) to work with more than 250 community members to create The World Comes to Whittier, a 150-foot-long mural of the history and culture of the neighborhood. Photo by Nicholas Ward, courtesy of Sioux Falls Arts Council
Communities have always had dedicated spaces for the arts. Museums hold collections of visual art, theaters stage works of drama, and concert halls were designed for musical performance. But what if the community itself was a dedicated space for art? What could that mean for local life?
The NEA began to explore this idea when it introduced the Our Town grant program in 2010. As the agency’s main creative placemaking initiative, Our Town was founded on the belief that the arts have a unique ability to create a distinct sense of place, jumpstart local economies, and increase creative activity, making them a key ingredient for vibrant, resilient communities.
Through Our Town, the NEA invests in projects that place the arts at the center of community life, strengthening the places we call home. Projects have touched every artistic discipline, and have borne outcomes as diverse as murals and public sculptures to festivals, the establishment of cultural districts, and the redesign of public spaces.
The grant program requires partnerships between nonprofit arts organizations and local government entities, which has created many interesting public-private collaborations. For example, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the city’s arts council worked closely with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to create a mural on a barren wall in the public park that had become a site for graffiti. Since it was on public property, the city’s participation was critical. Muralist David Loewenstein was enlisted to collaborate with the community and local students to develop and implement the mural, which would represent the Whittier neighborhood’s identity and culture.
From 2015 to 2019, the Our Town program invested in knowledge-building grants. Projects resulted in a wide range of resources for the field, including publications, trainings, convenings, capacity building resources, and pilot programming to introduce creative placemaking non-arts sector leaders. Additionally, the NEA Design program together with the Office of Research & Analysis produced a report on a framework for Our Town project design, performance monitoring, and evaluation.: Our Town: A Framework for Understanding and Measuring the National Endowment for the Arts’ Creative Placemaking Grants Program.