A new wave of creative placemaking is underway as part of ArtPlace, an innovative partnership model of foundations, corporations and government agencies that supports community building through the arts. Irvine is pleased to support this unique program for the second year in a row, having contributed $2 million to ArtPlace to support California-based projects among those supported nationally by the initiative.
ArtPlace was created in 2010 as a partnership among 11 foundations, six banks and eight federal agencies (including the National Endowment for the Arts) to transform urban and rural communities throughout the country by using the arts as an economic driver. To date, the initiative has raised more than $50 million in support of the various projects. The most recent cycle of grants, announced Monday, provides $15.4 million in support of 47 projects that were chosen out of more than 2,200 letters of inquiry. Six of those 47 projects will take place in California.
The approach being taken by ArtPlace, known as “creative placemaking,” has emerged over the past 20 years as a promising way to increase the vitality of communities and help them grow. Irvine is pleased to support this partnership because of ArtPlace’s resonance with our belief that the arts create meaningful ongoing “bridging and bonding” connections among Californians, fostering a vibrant, inclusive society. In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts built on its two decades of work in creative placemaking by announcing the first grants in its new Our Town program, designed to support public-private partnerships to strengthen the arts while energizing the overall community. ArtPlace takes this movement a step further, as the first major public-private partnership to encourage creative placemaking across America.