Upcoming Creative Placemaking Session
Wednesday, Sept. 20,
Informal Brown Bag Lunch, 12pm-1pm
Workshop and Tour, 1pm-3pm
Mineland Reclamation Building, Minnesota Discovery Center
Chisholm, MN
Creative Placemaking is a way of taking a community’s own sense of itself and using creativity to help residents make it a livelier, livable, and thriving community. Come to our afternoon workshop on Creative Placemaking for the Iron Range on Wednesday, Sept. 20 to learn more about the ways that you can use the principles of Creative Placemaking in your community. To top it off, representatives of both Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council will be there to talk about their grant programs to help.
We’ll start with an informal brown bag lunch (bring your own) at noon, then go into a formal presentation on Creative Placemaking, with a discussion on how ARAC or IRRRB grants might be abe to help at 1 p.m. At 2 p.m., we’ll carpool over to downtown Chisholm and look at the work of the Chisholm Downtown Revitalization Project and examine the ways they’ve used public input and Creative Placemaking to help their downtown. For all those interested, the Recharge the Range Creative Communities subcommittee is meeting at 3:30 at Mineland Reclamation to talk about their plans for helping spur action for more livable and vibrant communities.
Background on Creative Placemaking: According to Metris Public Arts, creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire and be inspired.
How do you do it? By getting businesses, residents, nonprofits, and the government involved in a discussion about the physical and social character of a neighborhood or town. What are the things that can take us two steps closer to the ideal community that we envision? How does that blend in with the ideas of others? Can we use art and creativity to make the community more inviting? What are the small steps we can take while not forgetting about the big steps that must follow?
