Mallory Nezam, Author at Transportation For America

ACT Fellows learn from local leaders in the Twin Cities

Artwork along the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis, MN.

Transportation for America believes in hands-on learning from experienced practitioners. We put that belief into practice through programs like our Arts, Culture and Transportation (ACT) Fellowship, supported by the Kresge Foundation, where we have been able to take our fellows to different communities to experience first-hand the power of arts and culture to produce better transportation systems.

In late October, our 11 fellows participating in the fellowship visited the Twin Cities in Minnesota to learn from local practitioners using art and cultural strategies to improve transportation. We invited a few fellows to reflect on their experiences. The fellows were able to witness how community members are taking control and how transportation leadership and city government are learning from communities and becoming more responsive, and reflected on how they’ve integrated what they’ve learned into their own transportation projects at home.

Here’s what a few of our ACT Fellows had to share:

Listen to the community. They are the experts.

Sue Lambe
Manager, City of Austin Art in Public Places Program
Austin, TX

Our two days in Minneapolis-St. Paul were filled with meaningful glimpses into local culture, particularly along transportation corridors such as the Green Line in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. Rondo, like communities in many American cities in the ’50s and ’60s, was divided by an interstate highway which was constructed along racial lines to divide white people from people of color.

Local activist Melvin Giles. Photo: Sue Lambe

Deeply inspiring local activist Melvin Giles narrated our walk through the Rondo neighborhood and spoke of the fight for equity that the neighborhood has waged for decades. Melvin supports peaceful interaction while working for equity. He shared one of his biggest weapons in waging peace and de-escalation of violence by gifting each of us with a vial of his ever-present bubbles with bubble wand.

Melvin shared many insights with the fellows: the need to remain present through the tough times as well as the good times, his delight in the many friends and neighbors he introduced to us throughout the Rondo neighborhood, the art installations (one featured African American railroad employees) that seek to tell important stories illuminating the history of the African American community. One tiny moment in particular sticks with me and won’t let go: a casual comment about an unassuming empty lot. As we moved along the Green Line that rainy morning, Melvin sort of threw a hand toward a space sandwiched between a restaurant parking lot and an empty storefront, stating that the unassuming grassy lot is the epicenter of neighborhood celebrations, civic events, and political campaign stops.

The “unassuming grassy lot” that hosts community events. Photo: Sue Lambe

For me, this was a revelation. Without his interpretation of this space, as an outsider I would have seen what just appeared to be there—nothing. My current work includes bringing public art to 50 miles of transportation corridors in Austin, TX and my immediate thought was: how will we be able to correctly interpret these “empty lots” in Austin as deeply meaningful spaces?

Melvin showed us one answer: planners, designers, and civic leaders embedded in a space, community, or neighborhood, must spark conversations with those living there in the process of decision making and listen to the wisdom imparted in order to ensure that valuable community resources may remain and be celebrated, possibly with public art. I’m so grateful. Thank you, Melvin!

Taking time to work with intention

Keiko Budech
Communications Manager, Transportation Choices Coalition
Seattle, WA

During our trip to the Twin Cities, our cohort met artists, activists, electeds, and community builders working in the intersection of art and urban planning. The words “community” and “belonging” came up, rooting us back to why we do this work—to create and preserve spaces where people feel a sense of connection and community belonging.

ACT Fellows from Seattle with Minneapolis Councilmember Andrea Jenkins. Photo: Keiko Budech

Community artists and activists Melvin Giles, Missy Whiteman, and Andrea Jenkins all reiterated the importance of having community members and artists as a (paid) part of a planning process (at the beginning stages), and continued to ask the question, “how do you build on assets of the community that are already here?” There’s endless collective and creative wisdom in a community that is often overlooked in urban planning.

A highlight of our visit was meeting artist, poet, and Minneapolis Councilmember Andrea Jenkins. She described a powerful community-based art project in Central and South Minneapolis called ‘This house is not for sale’ that displayed art on realty signs outside of foreclosed homes to spread awareness about displacement in the neighborhood, distributed information about what to do if someone is trying to buy your home, and explored what it means to acknowledge a home’s history. She also shared her experience transitioning as an activist/poet into elected office. She took us on a walk to the bridge over the “scar that splits our neighborhood” (the interstate highway), where she hosts an annual dinner on the bridge to connect her east and west communities. Andrea was full of ideas of ways to use art and culture to bring community together, and reminded us that art can be a powerful agent of community transformation.

Missy Whiteman and the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis. Photo: Keiko Budech

Missy Whiteman, artist and member of the Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo tribes, guided us around the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis along East Franklin Avenue. She explained that it’s better to take time on a project and do it right, because big land-use and transportation projects will last for generations. She also emphasized the importance of always working with indigenous community members (again, paid!) on planning projects to understand the history of the land that we are occupying, and what changes we can make to acknowledge and not repeat our oppressive history.

The Seattle fellowship team continues to explore questions around how to create public art that builds on the assets of community, and works to keep low-income communities and communities of color in place when new infrastructure is built (for example, the Puget Sound region’s current construction of our 116-mile regional light rail system). Community-informed public art can be a tool to preserve and celebrate the neighborhood’s history and culture, but if we don’t anchor community with anti-displacement tools, then who is that art work for? It was helpful to connect with experts in the Twin Cities dealing with similar questions, and explore a city with rich public art resources and multiple public art nonprofits, like Forecast Public Art, supporting community artists pursuing public art work.

Integrating on-site learning into projects at home

Erika Wilhite
Artistic Director, En Masse Arts
Springdale, AR

“Development without displacement” mural in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. Photo: Sue Lambe.

My favorite day of our convening was led by Melvin Giles in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul. They told us the story about Rondo, which was the center of the local black community in the Twin Cities. It was heavily damaged and forever transformed in the 1960s due to the construction of a new interstate highway right through the middle of Rondo, causing the displacement of over 500 families as well as local businesses. Along the way I snapped photos of murals that state “Development Without Displacement” and signs taped to the side of buildings declaring “We will not be moved.” All around there was evidence of a community speaking up, taking their space, and directing the conversation about development.

Our final stop on the tour was the Rondo library, which is where we met with Erin Laberee of Ramsey County Public Works and artist Hawona Sullivan Janzen. They recounted a story about how the city went to the Rondo community for input on a new bridge that was to be built over I-94, but in the process city representatives learned that there was a lot of listening that first needed to be done about the negative impacts that I-94 had on Rondo. The city acknowledged that there was a need to address those wounds and give the community control of the planning process. I am especially impressed that they scrapped their original timeline and extended the community input process to listen as long as it would take. I love this story because it is an example of how community-led development can create the conditions for healing and neighborhood development.

Concept for a land bridge or cap over I-95 in St. Paul, MN.

Since the trip, I have since learned more about ReconnectRondo, an organization in place to steward the community engagement and also cast a much more ambitious vision of a “land bridge” to place a cap over I-94 at several spots to reconnect the divided neighborhood, create new meaningful gathering spaces, and “leverage the potential of the Rondo Land Bridge and the numerous innovations, partnerships and policy changes in transportation, to see a sustainable and thriving community for us all!”

I see how the current conversation about transit in my community, Springdale, Arkansas, was rushed, and how we are missing opportunities to create conditions for community cohesion. I have shared these stories from Rondo and used them to rebut the claim that the process for community engagement can’t be amended once it is underway. There were many projects and stories of collaborations in the Twin Cities that I take away as examples of community-led, artist facilitated, development processes to share with my community and the NWA Regional Planning Commission (our metropolitan planning organization) of what equitable transit planning looks like in action.

Get to know Minnesota’s new Community Vitality Fellow Marcus Young

As announced earlier this week, Marcus Young, a behavioral artist, will be embedded within the Minnesota Department of Transportation for a year serving as an artist-in-residence in a program created by Smart Growth America. Marcus will be taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities.

Photo of Marcus Young by Ryan Stopera.

With this announcement, the Minnesota Department of Transportation becomes the second statewide agency to host an artist-in-residence, following the launch of Washington State DOT’s similar program last week. Marcus took a few minutes to answer some questions about the upcoming fellowship.

What was it about the MnDOT Community Vitality Fellowship that inspired you to apply? Now that you’ve been selected, what excites you most about the Fellowship?

When I saw the posting I knew this was a very forward-thinking opportunity created by MnDOT and Smart Growth America. A few years back I finished a nine-year tenure as City Artist in St. Paul where we helped define what was possible when artists work alongside government. Having a chance to develop the idea at the state level seemed like a natural next exploration. It’s an opportunity too intriguing not to jump in and see what happens.

This type of creative endeavor comes with a good dose of mystery. I look forward to moving along the borders of known and unknown, grateful for what we already have in Minnesota yet seeking the hidden possibilities for change. Bringing a creative spirit to this everyday context, I hope to engage our desire to live a good life and everyone’s yearning for a more just world.

While you’ll have a lot of time to formulate project ideas once the Fellowship starts, what are your initial thoughts on how you’ll approach the Fellowship?

Beginner’s mind. The concept articulated by Shunryu Suzuki that says the beginner’s mind is full of possibility. I sometimes joke that my nine years at the position in St. Paul was a practice in always being the dumbest person in the room, the one who knew the least. That person, however, has the outsider perspective and maybe the beginner’s mind too. That person can help bridge ideas across a long distance. To go a long distance is a meaningful journey, a powerful lesson. I will come to the Fellowship with as open a mind and heart as possible, open to all possibilities. At the same time, I hope that my more than 20 years as a professional artist in music, theater, and behavioral art ─ things that on the surface may not appear to connect to transportation ─ will serve me well. That is the distance I will enjoy traveling.

Tell us about one of your recent projects that you feel is relevant to the Fellowship.

I created Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk, a work of art that started in 2008 and is ongoing because it’s woven into the city’s infrastructure system. The project takes the $1 million maintenance budget to repair 10 miles of sidewalk each year in St. Paul and, without disturbing the original function of sidewalk repair, has added the function of publishing poetry.

More than 10 years since it premiered, the project has created more than 1,000 installations, with more than 20 percent of city land within a 2-minute walk radius of a poem created by this one project. The city is a book, a very large book. The project created a new platform for the creative voices of local residents. The dream is to pave all the streets in St. Paul with poetry.

In our Arts, Culture, and Transportation Field Scan, we profiled seven roles that artists play in solving transportation challenges, from generating creative solutions to healing wounds and divisions. How would you describe your approach as an artist working on transportation projects and how might your work resonate with or expand beyond those seven roles?

I think my role will be to ask a lot of “what ifs,” and probably most of them won’t be practical. Hopefully, however, getting used to asking playful, creative, even far-fetched questions can itself be helpful. Beyond that I will look for even just one far-fetched “what if” that becomes a “yes, it’s possible.”

What kind of professional or personal experiences do you have in work that might be specific to Minnesota state? What lessons from your work outside of Minnesota do you hope to bring to the residency at MnDOT?

Do you know of Mierle Laderman Ukeles? She has been the artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than 40 years. She’s very inspiring, and I think everyone working in this exciting and elusive business of pairing artists with government should know her story and her work. She created the concept of “maintenance art.” To maintain, to keep things alive, to keep us all alive and going, is art. I can think of no more creative act than to inspire, shape, and fulfill our basic, everyday lives beautifully. How can we make the everyday things we do across the state a work of art?

Irrigate: Turning a huge Twin Cities construction project into an opportunity

Though the new Green Line light rail line would finally connect the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with rail transit, business owners, local leaders, and advocates raised red flags about construction disrupting the corridor’s businesses as well as immigrant and communities of color. To mitigate these negative effects, Springboard for the Arts and other local organizations created a series of artistic interventions that did more than merely prevent painful disruptions; they helped the corridor thrive during a period of vulnerability.

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Relight the Victoria by artist Nick Clausen. Photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study featured in T4America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released next Wednesday, September 27. Sign up for our new Arts & Culture email list to be notified first.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been culturally, economically, and geographically linked, but until 2014 they lacked a meaningful, modern rail connection. The Green Line, originally known as the Central Corridor, was a new light rail line planned to run primarily along University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Pau The area is home to a large number of immigrants and communities of color, and already has a painful history of disconnection and displacement from the construction of I-94 right through the middle of many of the same neighborhood decades ago.

With a disruptive construction project planned, civic leaders feared that months of negative press, dust, and noise might bankrupt businesses and lead to a black eye for the project before it ever opened.

In response to this concern, Springboard for the Arts, a nationally recognized community and economic development organization based in St. Paul, the Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Coalition, and the City of St. Paul created Irrigate, a “community development strategy that mobilizes the skills and creativity of local artists to create innovative, meaningful, authentic solutions to local challenges.”

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Springboard trained 600 artists from the neighborhoods around the rail line to collaborate with businesses and organizations along University Avenue. A total of 220 artists completed 150 creative placemaking projects over 36 months that were designed bring attention, customers, joy and beauty to the spaces and businesses adjacent to the construction. Irrigate projects included musical and theatrical performances in businesses, artistic installations in construction fencing, dance workshops, interactive musical benches, murals, street theatre and performances, and much more.

Flamenco Christmas on the Green Line: A Processional of Song and Dance by Deborah Elias. Photo by Rudy Arnold.

These projects completely changed the narrative about the long construction project and transformed the coverage. They generated more than 51 million positive earned media impressions, which spread stories about the people, neighborhoods and businesses sharing University Avenue and helped to connect new and old customers to the businesses during construction. As Nancy Homans, Policy Director for the City of St. Paul explained,

While the City of Saint Paul tried feverishly to garner positive coverage for the benefits of transit that the Central Corridor would bring to the community, their positive message was consistently diluted in the media by negative stories about the impact of construction. As Irrigate projects began popping up along the Corridor…the magic of art started a different conversation. Irrigate’s public process engaging artists from the community to support local businesses provided a nimble and creative way to influence the narrative and change community perceptions of the value of community development.

Businesses reported that Irrigate projects helped them maintain visibility and reach new customers, and Springboard felt that the project helped to change the narrative of the corridor, build social capital among neighbors and businesses, and increase the prosperity of small businesses in the corridor. Ultimately, when opening day arrived, the mood was one of celebration, instead of just relief after enduring the collateral damage that would have come from a painful construction process.

Opening day on the Green Line. Flickr photo by Michael Hicks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/14238058898/

As with many of their successful projects, Springboard published a toolkit for communities who want guidance on running a similar program during construction. Irrigate has also been featured on ArtPlace’s website, in a documentary video, and in T4A’s Scenic Route Guide.

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This project is one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America, to be released next Wednesday, September 27. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the rest of September.

Engaging east Portland to plan a more inclusive bus rapid transit line

When roughly 14 miles of a bus rapid transit line was proposed along Division Street in East Portland, the effort was greeted with interest in an often-neglected area of the city, but also concern about the possibilities of displacement and development poorly engaged with the unique local culture. To address those concerns, community members throughout the Jade and Division Midway districts were engaged through arts and culture projects to recalibrate the plan to better serve community needs.

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America and Smart Growth America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study that will be featured in Transportation for America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released later this month.

When we consider the role of art in transportation, most people probably first think about artistic contributions to the physical environment like creative streetscaping, transit stations, or other parts of the built environment. But art can be just as vital to the process of planning & building transportation projects.

In Portland, Oregon, arts-based engagement is helping to build dialogue between local agencies and the community to ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit (BRT) line serves the residents of ethnically diverse, low-income districts in the eastern part of the city. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance (DMA), two nonprofits located respectively in the Jade and Midway Division districts along Division street in Portland, have been empowering residents, businesses, and students to actively shape the evolving BRT project through arts and culture.

Home to many immigrant and refugee families that give this area a distinct ethnic and cultural diversity, the Jade and Division Midway districts have historically lacked strong, safe, transportation infrastructure. However, in recent years citizens have also witnessed development that has led to displacement throughout many communities in Portland. So Jade and Division Midway community members met the BRT proposal with curiosity but also scrutiny.

As stated in the Jade Midway District Arts Plan:

The BRT project will impact local businesses, and a city-wide housing emergency is driving housing costs up. Housing complexes in the district have changed private owners and renters experienced rent increases. Our work remains to address these challenges to continue to root the community in place.

Creative tactics, spearheaded by APANO and DMA, have created a platform for the community to advocate, express, and communicate their desires related to this new transportation proposal to ensure that the final project best serves their needs, reflect what makes their community unique, and is embraced by the people it serves.

For example, neighborhood artist Solomon Starr and local youth used hip hop to document the experiences of southeast Portland community members taking mass transit, while artist Tamara Lynne engaged community members who live, work, and travel along the proposed transit route through interactive performance.

To further build local capacity to do more of this kind of creative engagement with the community, these organizations built a Placemaking Steering Committee comprised of eight civic, nonprofit, and government members to guide creative placemaking plans in the district, and ultimately strengthen coalitions. APANO also launched a creative placemaking project grant program that is funding projects in the district led by cultural workers. These cultural workers then participate in a cohort known as the Resident Artist Collaborative, in which they receive training to help engage the community in the production of new artworks.

By building public awareness and political pressure through arts and cultural projects, APANO and the Division Midway Alliance helped to pause construction of the BRT planning process until the Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet, Metro, and others made formal community benefits agreements and agreed to mitigation measures to ensure that this vital new transit service would serve the community’s needs.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the rest of September.

El Paso’s Transnational Trolley: How art can help imagine creative transportation solutions

What begun as a sort of arts-driven guerilla marketing campaign for the fictional return of a historic streetcar in the border communities of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is becoming a reality, a demonstration of the power of art to capture the imagination of a community and help them look at old problems in different ways and imagine creative solutions.

This story is part of arts and culture month at T4America & Smart Growth America, where we’re telling a handful of stories about how arts and culture are essential to building better transportation projects and stronger communities. It’s adapted from a longer case study that will be featured in Transportation for America and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation.

Unlike San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Mexico, which are separated by 20 miles, El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico sit immediately adjacent to one another, separated only by the width of the Rio Grande River and the international border between the United States and Mexico. Until 1846, El Paso was in fact part of Juárez and Mexico, and the two independent cities today form the world’s largest binational metroplex, with thousands of daily crossings by foot, car, and bus; billions of dollars of trade; and five border crossings connecting the two cities and region. For generations, residents on both sides of the border have crossed frequently for work, school, recreation, and to visit family; more than 80 percent of El Pasoans identify as Latinx.

Until it was closed down in 1974, these border crossings were facilitated in part by an international streetcar system that connected the downtowns of both cities. As in many American cities, the streetcar system ran President’s Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars, with a sleek Art Deco design that was introduced after the Great Depression to lure new car owners back onto public transportation.

The iconic streetcars and stories of their transnational past served as the inspiration for Peter Svarzbein’s Masters of Fine Arts thesis project at New York’s School for Visual Arts. In 2012 Mr. Svarzbein, a native of El Paso, created the El Paso Transnational Trolley, which could be described as part performance art, part guerrilla marketing, part visual art installation, and part fake advertising campaign. The project began with a series of wheatpaste posters advertising the return of the El Paso-Juárez streetcar, and continued with the deployment of Alex the Trolley Conductor, a new mascot and spokesperson for the alleged new service. Alex appeared at Comic Cons, public parks, conferences, and other public spaces to promote the return of the streetcar, while additional advertisements appeared across El Paso, sparking curiosity and excitement for the assumed real project.

Eventually, Svarzbein admitted that the project was a graduate thesis masquerading as a streetcar launch, but rather than graduating and moving on, he decided to move back home to El Paso.

When Svarzbein learned that the City of El Paso planned to sell the historic PCC streetcars, he lobbied the city to cancel the sale, and instead return the streetcars to the streets of El Paso. Thanks to the region’s dry climate, the streetcars have remained in relatively good shape for the past four decades even though they’ve been stored in the open desert at the edge of El Paso.

After gathering thousands of signatures in support of the project and with the strong backing of the City of El Paso and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Commissioner Ted Haughton, the El Paso trolley won a $97 million grant from TxDOT. It is now slated to begin service in El Paso in 2018. The third phase of the project will include a connection to the Medical Center of the Americas, while the second will include the much anticipated transnational connection to Juárez.

In one of the most surprising twists in this long tale, shortly after this funding was awarded, Svarzbein rode the wave of public support for the once-fictional project to win a seat on El Paso’s City Council.

Svarzbein’s approach as an artist transformed the discussion. The project’s website quotes artist Guillermo Goméz-Peña: “An artist thinks differently, imagines a better world, and tries to render it in surprising ways. And this becomes a way for his/her audiences to experience the possibilities of freedom that they can’t find in reality.”

Clearly, Svarzbein credits his creative campaign with helping to get the project off the ground and building the community support needed to win funding, claiming that “there is a sort of responsibility that artists have to imagine and speak about a future that may not be able to be voiced by a large amount of people in the present. I felt that sort of responsibility. If I couldn’t change the debate, at least I could sort of write a love letter to the place that raised me.”

This story is another example of how transportation professionals are exploring new, creative, and contextually-specific approaches to planning and building transportation projects. They are collaborating with artists and the community in new ways to transform transportation systems into powerful tools to help people access opportunity, drive economic development, improve health and safety, and build the civic and social capital that binds communities together.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in our upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which arts and culture are helping to solve transportation challenges while engaging the community in a more inclusive process.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the entire month of September.

Webinar wrap: Creative placemaking grants informational session

Earlier this month we hosted an informational webinar detailing our expectations and tips for our Cultural Corridor Consortium (3C) grants. Transportation for America is accepting applications to support creative placemaking projects addressing transportation challenges or opportunities in three U.S. cities.

After our last round of 3C projects in San Diego, Nashville and Portland, Transportation for America is seeking to award $50,000 (each) to creative placemaking projects in three new locations that engage residents, attract the attention of local public works and transportation agencies, and spark new conversations that bring more people to the table to plan and implement new transportation investments.

We are especially committed to funding collaborative projects that expand transportation opportunities and local control for low-income people, recent immigrants, and people of color living in communities that have experienced disproportionate disinvestment. We are accepting applications from communities of any type and size, including indigenous, rural, urban, suburban.

A full recording of the webinar is available here, or through the video above.

Applications may be completed online via a form on the T4America website at https://t4america.org/creative-placemaking-grants/, and you can also download the full application form there for the full information or to submit via email.

Application are due by June 2nd at 5 p.m. EST

Note: Unfortunately, due to our previous work with projects in San Diego, Nashville and Portland, OR, proposals from those cities are not eligible.

More questions? Email 3CGrant@t4america.org

To learn more about arts and culture in the transportation sector, check out The Scenic Route, our introductory guide to creative placemaking in transportation released last year. http://creativeplacemaking.t4america.org

Good luck!

Bolstering creative community engagement in the Nashville region

Considering the enduring creative energy in Tennessee’s principal city, it’s no surprise that Nashville is deepening its commitment to engaging the community in creative ways, and integrating artists into community development and transportation projects.

We believe that incorporating the arts into the process of planning and building transportation projects results in projects that better serve local communities, are championed by locals, and more fully reflect the community’s culture and values.

There’s been a surge of interest around the country in this approach; in developing strategies to be more responsive to a community’s transportation needs and the unique cultural components of place. Nashville, Tennessee is no exception. Through the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) leadership, the region is deepening its commitment to creative community engagement and integrating artists into community development and transportation projects.

The Nashville Area MPO recently launched its creative placemaking efforts with the adoption of its most recent regional transportation plan. The MPO’s long-term goal is to embolden and equip their members to facilitate more valuable public engagement and further community outreach in local planning efforts.

On March 1st, the MPO convened area elected officials, transportation planners and engineers from local and state governments for a Creative Placemaking Symposium to learn how and why it works, and begin thinking through how this approach could address the challenges and opportunities in their own cities.

Through the symposium, the MPO educated attendees about the difference between creative placemaking — a method to engage the community in planning transportation projects — and simply plopping public art at a bus stop that is out of context and not reflective of the neighborhood.

But where should planners or local officials get started, especially when it seems like a new, perhaps unfamiliar approach? Symposium speakers inspired those in attendance to start by getting to know artists in their communities and work with them to identify and document transportation challenges and solutions.

El Paso Councilman Peter Svarzbein delivered a the keynote address on his successful arts-based campaign to bring back a historic streetcar between El Paso and Mexico. T4A’s own Director of Arts and Culture, Ben Stone, offered examples of creative placemaking projects across the country. Additionally, local leaders Caroline Vincent, director of public art for Metro Nashville Arts, Gary Gaston, executive director of the Nashville Civic Design Center and Renata Soto, executive director with Conexión Américas provided examples of their work in the Middle Tennessee region.

From left, Rochelle Carpenter with T4America/Nashville MPO, Renata Soto with Conexión Américas, Caroline Vincent with Metro Arts, Ben Stone with T4A/Smart Growth America, Gary Gaston with the Nashville Civic Design Center and El Paso Councilman Peter Svarzbein.

The symposium served as a forum for planners to think through how and why creative placemaking might benefit projects in their own towns and cities.

“Creative placemaking is first and foremost about public engagement,” said Rochelle Carpenter, who works for the MPO and T4America. “By facilitating community discussions that inspire people to express their feedback, we hope it will lead to greater participation in the transportation planning process, better transportation projects and more public support for those projects.”

To learn more about creative placemaking in Nashville, read about:

Profiled in our Scenic Route guidebook, the story of creating the region’s first-ever bilingual crosswalk along Nolensville Pike, in partnership with the MPO and Conexión Américas.
Envision Nolensville Pike: a community-led plan to improve walking, bicycling and transit use along Nashville’s most diverse corridor
Tactical urbanism initiated by the Nashville Civic Design Center and its program, TURBO
The Learning Lab, a professional development program for artists in civic, social and placemaking practices by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts