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Arts and culture are a deep and intrinsic part of every community. Across the United States there are over 113,000 organizations dedicated to many aspects of cultural life. This activity encompasses a broad range of disciplines that ranges from performing arts production and presentation, to visual arts exhibition, to arts education and arts in healthcare, to preservation and interpretation of our collective heritage.

Creative placemaking is a new way of making communities more livable and prosperous through the arts, and making them better places for the arts. Creative placemaking is about more than public art or performing arts centers. It is about making places better for everyone. Traditional approaches to using arts as a revitalization tool tend to focus on building large institutions, districts or just 'doing projects.' Creative placemaking starts with building effective partnerships. Our approach to creative placemaking is based on six key elements: Building diverse and productive partnerships in communities and with local leadership to implement ideas. Enhancing quality of life for more people in communities Increasing economic opportunity for more stakeholders in communities Building healthier climates for creativity and cultural expression Engaging existing assets (both physical and human) as much as possible Promoting the best and distinct qualities of a place Our work is guided by the teachings of reflective practice, double-loop learning, asset-based community development, fifth level leadership, arts-based community development, communicative practice, environmental justice, and other current and cutting-edge philosophies of practice.  

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) is the nation's newest people-powered department, founded on the truth that art and culture are our most powerful and under-tapped resources for social change. Radically inclusive, useful and sustainable, and vibrantly playful, the USDAC aims to spark a grassroots, creative change movement, engaging millions in performing and creating a world rooted in empathy, equity, and social imagination. 

It's time for the arts to get the respect and the resources they deserve. It is becomingly increasingly obvious that the arts make major contributions to the quality of life of our communities and societies, but it is also clear to us that arts have a major role in helping us discover those innovative ways of operating and being with each other that will allow us to build a truly sustainable future.

World Map of Street Culture

EmcArts Inc. is a social enterprise for learning and innovation in the arts. We serve as a nonprofit intermediary for many arts funders, and as a service organization for the arts field around innovation. We exist to strengthen the capacities and effectiveness of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, serving their needs in the design and management of innovative change, and assisting them in building their adaptive capacity.

The Arts are key to so many things: human expression, education, economies, community development, and innovation in technology and human thought. Why is this critical component of our humanity still undervalued and under-resourced? We need to find the language and data to help society understand how cultural ecosystems work and why it must support them to ensure its own well-being and survival. At CSI, we create project partnerships to demonstrate and measure how arts operate in promoting sustainability and resiliency. Our projects always target the same outcome: empower the arts and humanity.

work with communities to tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy. We believe that communities thrive when they draw on participants' personal experiences and local cultures. By telling stories-whether in the form of performance, radio, video, or other media-communities build power, envision new democratic possibilities, and change culture and policy. Our work is located at the intersection of arts, technology, and social change.

The Laundromat Project believes art, culture, and engaged imaginations can change the way people see their world, open them up to new ideas, and connect them with their neighbors. When artists have the opportunity to build and contribute their unique skills and perspectives to the needs of their neighborhoods, they can be invaluable assets in furthering community wellbeing. 

An initiative involving a series of Art-Dialogue Community Workshops in both St. Catharines and Fort Erie exploring ways to deepen connections across Age & Culture. Many thanks for the Ontario Trillium Foundation for funding this project.

ArtsFwd is an online community of arts and culture leaders committed to doing things differently in their organizations in order to stay relevant and vital in a changing world. We engage this community by sharing stories, providing tools, and fostering dialogue that celebrates the challenges, discoveries, and achievements of those who boldly experiment in pursuit of truly adaptive strategies.

Bloomberg Philanthropies focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: public health, environment, education, government innovation, and arts & culture. These five areas encompass the issues Mike Bloomberg and his team are most passionate about, and where they believe the greatest good can be achieved. While Bloomberg Philanthropies works on a wide range of issues within each focus area, we apply a distinctive approach to all of our undertakings.

The mission of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is to promote the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, and to collect, conserve, and study the art of our time. The Foundation realizes this mission through exceptional exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications, and strives to engage and educate an increasingly diverse international audience through its unique network of museums and cultural partnerships.

At AS IF Center, we are rebuilding these cross-disciplinary connections while keeping a balance between the two cultures. As artists, it's important that we do more than just serve science, and that we can follow our own creative paths.  And as scientists, it's important we maintain accuracy and critical thinking when conducting, and communicating about, science.

Public spaces are an important part of Knight Foundation's work in cities and the communities where we invest. We believe that great public spaces have the power to transform cities. They are where neighbors can meet and residents can enjoy local arts and culture, take a jog or spend time with family. They help to advance civic engagement and the attachment people feel to their cities - both necessities for creating more informed and engaged communities. Recent research by the Center for Active Design shows that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.

By harnessing the expertise and diverse viewpoints of global participants, Pivot Projects seeks to help solve the world's ecological challenges, including climate change. We aim to influence on two vectors: by making policymakers aware of new thinking and priorities; and by working with people in their communities to help them identify and address their most pressing sustainability issues. We take a holistic view of humanity's complex relationships with the rest of nature-incorporating not just science but economics, politics, arts, culture, personal development, community, and beliefs.

The two-year bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship launched in 2018 to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life and to enable more Americans to participate as effective citizens in a diverse 21st-century democracy. The Commission recognized that the political culture of the United States and the makeup of its population have both changed dramatically in recent decades. From "fake news" to partisan polarization to the rise of social media, the environment in which citizens gather information and engage with one another and with their government is entirely different from what it was at the turn of twenty-first century.

Launched as a ten-year initiative in 2003, Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) represents a philanthropic experiment in using information, money, strategy, and partnerships to effect change in the support system for artists in the United States. LINC's mission was to improve the ability of artists to create work, build social capital, and contribute to democratic values. Between 2003 and 2013,