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Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts    Volume 6, Issue 2 
http://artivate.org  pp. 1-4         pp. 8-32 
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Copyright © 2017, the authors      
 
 

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE: 
CREATIVE PLACEMAKING AND ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP 
 
 The Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship, now Herberger Institute Enterprise and 
Entrepreneurship Programs, not only publishes Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the 
Arts, but also holds a biennial national symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts. In 2013 and 
then again in 2017, the symposium focused on the interaction between arts entrepreneurs and 
creative placemaking. Artivate is pleased to be able to now devote a very special issue to this 
topic as well. The journal solicited submissions broadly but also specifically from presenters at 
the 2017 symposium. Four of the five articles in this special issue developed from presentations 
at the 2017 symposium, “Arts Entrepreneurship In, With, and For Communities,” held in Tempe, 
Phoenix and Mesa May 5-7, 2017. Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson and Greg Esser were invited to 
serve as guest editors of this special issue and contribute the introductory essays below. The 
articles that follow move from the perception of individuals -- the artists who work in creative 
placemaking and other contexts -- to the implications of system-level change in the planning and 
policy sectors. Between, articles explore ways to expand pedagogy to build the knowledge and 
skills needed to support place-based strategies that integrate art, culture and community engaged 
design. 
 

Equity-based Creative Placemaking 
Maria Rosario Jackson 
Arizona State University 

     
 This collection of articles represents an important contribution to a nascent and growing 
body of literature about Creative Placemaking—the integration of arts, culture, and community 
engaged design into comprehensive community development efforts towards building places 
where all people can thrive. Placemaking has roots in urban planning and urban design concepts 
of the 1960s and 1970s intended to encourage planning and design processes anchored in a 
people-centered and community-driven approach. Creative Placemaking, coined in 2010 in a 
publication of the National Endowment for the Arts, intentionally brings into relief the centrality 
of arts, culture and community engaged design as crucial elements of comprehensive and cross-
sectoral efforts to improve communities (Markusen and Gadwa, 2010). Recent and longstanding 
research contributing to the rise of Creative Placemaking points to the roles of artists, arts 
organizations, and formal and informal participatory art practices in community contexts and 
their contributions to the strengthening of social fabric, civic engagement, stewardship, physical 
transformation, and narrative of place as well as economic, education, and health outcomes 
among others (Jackson and Herranz, 2003; Wali, 2010; Stern and Seifert, 2013).  
 At its best, Creative Placemaking is based on recognition of the following (Jackson, 2016): 

• existing community creativity, traditions, history, wisdom, and aesthetic expressions of its 
residents as well as a community’s natural and built environment are assets from which to 
build; 

• the contributions of artists, designers, heritage and tradition-bearers are necessary at 
critical junctures in community change processes including helping to frame community 
issues and devise solutions;  

• the integration of art, culture and design is not a panacea, but an important element of 



Jackson and Esser            Editors’ Introduction: Creative Placemaking and Arts Entrepreneurship 
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necessarily multi-pronged approaches to complex conditions, and  
• care must be taken to ensure that residents in vulnerable and often historically 

marginalized communities, in fact, benefit from change. 
 
 With the growing proliferation of Creative Placemaking and evidence of demand for artists 
and arts administrators to go beyond conventional well-established patterns of professional 
practice in the arts sector, what are the implications of Creative Placemaking for the field of arts 
entrepreneurship? How does the integration of art, culture, and design into community 
development impact arts entrepreneurs’ sense of how they can contribute in community 
contexts? How does it impact societal perceptions about the roles of artists, arts organizations 
and their contributions? How does it impact arts entrepreneurship training and professional 
development? Are existing validation mechanisms sufficient to recognize the increasingly 
complex and legitimate ways in which artists and arts administrators are creating their careers 
and contributing to society? Does Creative Placemaking impact our current concepts of an arts 
ecology? How does Creative Placemaking impact the boundaries of cultural policy and 
planning? 
 This issue of Artivate and the specific articles herein signal an emerging strand of arts 
entrepreneurship scholarship critical to the evolution of Creative Placemaking and, more 
generally, to our understanding of what it takes and who is implicated in helping to build healthy, 
equitable, and artful communities. On this trajectory, as Creative Placemaking and related 
practices continue to proliferate and be topical in arts entrepreneurship, we can expect to see 
areas of scholarship and pedagogy blending. Optimally, topics in arts entrepreneurship will be 
relevant to community development, urban planning, public health, and social services among 
other fields where there is evidence of arts entrepreneurs working strategically towards equitable 
communities and improved quality of life. The reverse is also true. Optimally, scholarship and 
pedagogy in community development, urban planning, public health, social services, and related 
areas will also be relevant to arts entrepreneurship as the field recognizes its potential influence 
in a broader and more complex terrain. Moreover, we will increasingly need to interrogate our 
current structures, assess the extent to which they impede or facilitate this trajectory, and be open 
to adaptation or the invention of new structures that make strategic synergies possible.  
 We are in the early stages of a generative and paradigm-altering period where we can 
reposition arts, culture, and design in how we conceive of healthy and just places where all 
people can thrive. Our charge is to move out of our respective comfort zones, seize the 
opportunity to learn across traditional boundaries, and forge new frameworks and alliances that 
benefit us all. This issue of Artivate is a step in that direction, with anticipation that future 
scholarship will have an even stronger grounding in an equity framework. At Arizona State 
University, through the efforts of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, the College of 
Public Service and Community Solutions, and other ASU divisions, we are committed to 
advancing a national and international body of scholarship, pedagogy, and practice anchored in 
an equity framework that includes the sustained integration of arts, culture, and community-
engaged design in place-based strategies that address structural barriers to opportunity and 
improve quality of life for all, and especially for historically marginalized communities. 
  

References 
Markusen, A and Gadwa, A. (2010). Creative Placemaking. A white paper for the Mayors’ 

Institute on City Design. Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts. 



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Jackson, M.R. (2016). Creative Placemaking: Towards a Sustainable Practice, in Scchupach, J. (ed). How to 
Do Creative Placemaking: An Action Oriented Guide to Arts in Community Development. 
Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Arts. 

Wali, A., Marchesi, E., Severson, R. and Longoni, M. (2010). More than a hobby: Adult participation in the 
informal arts. Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society  31 (3), 212-230. 

Jackson, M.R. and Herranz, J. (2003). Culture counts in communities: A framework for measurement. 
Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. 

Stern, M. and Seifert, S, (2013). Cultural ecology, neighborhood vitality and social well-being: A 
Philadelphia project. Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania. 

 
 

Creative Placemaking is Not One Thing 
Greg Esser 

Arizona State University 
  
 Creative Placemaking is not one thing. 
 Creative Placemaking, even as a contested and debated term, is currently one of the most rapidly 
adopted and absorbed terms within cultural policy in the United States, due in part to investments totaling 
more than $200 million and the implementation of on-the-ground projects in communities of all sizes 
throughout the country through ArtPlace America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Kresge 
Foundation and others. Dr. Steven Tepper, Dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at 
Arizona State University has referred to Creative Placemaking as “the most robust cultural policy 
framework in the United States since the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts.” 
 This issue of Artivate, along with the recent 5th Biennial Pave Symposium on Entrepreneurship and 
the Arts, “Arts Entrepreneurship In, With, and For Communities,” explores intersections between arts 
entrepreneurship and Creative Placemaking. The five essays collected in this special issue point to emerging 
and evolving strands of research and opportunities to deepen work and practices within the frame of 
Creative Placemaking while beginning to map future ways Creative Placemaking might influence more 
equitable communities.  
 If Creative Placemaking advocates for expanding the role of individual artists in society, and we are 
to measure those changes over time, it is also critically important to understand how we define and think of 
artists, and how the general public understands artists and their roles in communities as distinct and apart 
from their output as creators. Jennifer L. Novak-Leonard and Rachel Skaggs explore the public perception 
of artists and point to the role of public perception in shaping public policy. We need to distinguish between 
the composer and the composition, the painter and the painting. While we value process as much or more 
than product, we must also decenter traditional notions that privilege professionalization over participation. 
In so doing, we expand the circle of creators to more fully embrace those who might not readily self-identify 
as artists.  
 One of the challenges with standard arts funding models and practice is the artificial creation and 
reinforcement of the perception of an environment of scarcity that may be contrary to collaboration. One of 
the key concepts behind Creative Placemaking is that the comprehensive integration of creativity into other 
sectors leads not only to new and unprecedented opportunities for artists prepared to work in new contexts, 
but better outcomes for the challenges addressed through new collaboration across sectors. Creative 
Placemaking envisions new professional pathways for artists and designers not solely dependent upon 
traditional arts funding models. Amy Whitaker’s essay addresses a “more is more” approach.  As Senator 
Al Franken often quotes the late Senator Paul Wellstone, “We all do better when we all do better.”  



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 Reimagining and rebuilding new models for 21st century design and arts education is critical to 
empowering the leaders of tomorrow. Roger Mantie and Kevin Wilson embark on a project to begin to 
redefine how current education models might evolve through cross-sectoral collaboration within the 
university and by bridging traditionally siloed students in new place-based projects and environments. This 
approach is more notable in that it originates within a conservatory education model, arguably the least 
flexible of contexts in arts and design higher education.  
 Another key concept within Creative Placemaking is that place-based cross-sectoral collaboration 
can drive innovation, synergy, and more equitable outcomes for more people. Yet traditional professional 
sectors are too often reinforced “to protect territory” through a perception of limited resources to the 
detriment of new ways of thinking and new innovative solutions. Tom Borrup explores some of the 
traditional and sectoral barriers that have stymied more collaboration between the fields of urban planning 
and arts and culture in his call for “Just Planning.” 
 Kiley Arroyo situates lessons from Creative Placemaking into the need for systems change at the 
level of public policy, arguably one of the most significant sectors where more creativity is needed. As she 
posits, “human imagination is the generative basis on which individuals and societies successfully engage 
with complexity, envision alternative futures, transform systems, and successfully adapt to change.” It is 
artists who can ignite our imaginations and build bridges to better futures. 
 We hope the diverse range of approaches to examining the many facets within the Creative 
Placemaking policy framework reflected in these pieces complicates and deepens your appreciation for the 
complexity, the value, and the diversity that Creative Placemaking encompasses. We also hope that this 
issue inspires you to add your own research questions.  
 Arizona State University, as the New American University defined by access, impact and 
excellence, is driven by equity as the leading value for this work. Our definition of Creative Placemaking at 
ASU centers on the strategic integration of arts, culture and community engaged design into comprehensive 
community planning and development. We believe: 
● All communities have cultural assets--including the creativity, imagination and wisdom of 

residents—from which to build. 
● Art, culture and community engaged design are intrinsically important AND are crucial elements of 

strategies aimed at building equitable communities where all people can thrive. They contribute 
positively to a range of interrelated community conditions and 
dynamics such as, but not limited to: 
○ strengthening community fabric and stewardship, 
○ physical transformation of place, 
○ changes in community narrative, 
○ civic engagement,  
○ health and economic development, and more.  

 
 To learn more about this evolving work, please visit: creativeplacemaking.asu.edu 


