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Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts    Volume 6, Issue 2 
http://artivate.org  pp. 32-45         pp. 8-32 
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Copyright © 2017, Kevin Wilson & Roger Mantie 	 	
	

INSPIRING SOULFUL COMMUNITIES THROUGH MUSIC: CONNECTING ARTS 
ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT VIA 
CREATIVE PLACEMAKING 
Kevin Wilson and Roger Mantie 
Arizona State University 

 
Abstract 

 Due to its focus on business topics such as entrepreneurship and management, arts entrepreneurship 
education has often focused on economic motivations and market-driven rationales (Beckman, 2007; 
Manjon and Guo, 2015). The same often holds true for the community development field (Phillips, 2003). 
This article examines an interdisciplinary collaboration between courses in two disparate units of a 
university: music and community development. Creative placemaking activities are presented as 
pedagogical tools for connecting arts entrepreneurship and community development goals. At the heart of 
the experiences described was a desire to extend beyond the dominant paradigm of both arts 
entrepreneurship and community development in relation to economic development of the individual and 
collective. In so doing, it is suggested that these projects represent a soulful approach to learning and 
community building (Westoby, 2016; Westoby and Dowling, 2009) via creative placemaking. 

 
 
Our charge [as arts entrepreneurship educators] is to prepare students for a professional life of 
means, meaning, and the opportunity to give back, equipped to thrive within the world they will soon 
inherit, a world rife with challenges, yet ripe with opportunities.  

- Mark Rabideau  
 

 Recognizing the importance of weaving arts activities into the fabric of community development 
practice, the National Endowment for the Arts introduced a focus on “creative placemaking” in 2010.  
Markusen and Gadwa (2010) describe creative placemaking as a process whereby: 

[P]artners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical 
and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. 
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. (p. 3) 

ArtPlace America, a ten-year collaboration between a number of foundations, federal agencies, and 
financial institutions, has been at the forefront of efforts to advance creative placemaking. Drawing on the 
urban planning ideas of Jane Jacobs, ArtPlace America suggests that community development work “must 
be locally informed, human-centric, and holistic,” and that in creative placemaking projects, “art plays an 
intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development”,(ArtPlace America, 
2016) Due in part to the relatively large investment of economic capital in creative placemaking projects 
over the past ten years, creative placemaking has become an important conceptual and aspirational ideal 
influencing arts entrepreneurship and arts-related training programs in higher education.  
 Arts entrepreneurship education (AEE) is an area of growing interest in arts education and 
pedagogy research that resonates with the discourses of creative placemaking. In part, AEE is a response to 
the creative industries placing value on the consumption of arts, entertainment, and culture for economic 
growth in urban development (Beckman, 2007; Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015; Lloyd, 2002). Due to its 
emphasis on business topics such as entrepreneurship and management, AEE has generally been focused on 
economic motivations and market-driven rationales (Beckman, 2007; Manjon & Guo, 2015). Yet, there is 
growing support that more humanistic characteristics, such as self-efficacy, self-actualization, place-making 



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for exploration and innovation, empowerment, trust building, collaborative engagement, and sense of 
community are inherent to the pedagogy and practice of arts entrepreneurship in higher education (Beckman 
& Essig, 2012; Manjon & Guo, 2015). 
 Pollard and Wilson (2014) identified five goals with respect to AEE: (a) the capacity to think 
creatively, strategically, analytically, and reflectively; (b) confidence in one’s abilities; (c) the ability to 
collaborate; (d) well-developed communication skills; and (e) an understanding of the current artistic 
context. Welsh et al. (2014) suggest that the effectiveness of AEE is directly related to the extent to which 
AEE programs address and meet both the professional and academic needs of students. Roberts (2013) 
echoed this notion, suggesting that entrepreneurship in the arts goes beyond building a business skillset, and 
he advocates for pedagogy to be innovative by means of genre blending.  
 While scholars have presented various pedagogic methods and dispositions for AEE in recent years 
(Essig, 2013, 2015; Pollard & Wilson, 2013; Welsh et al., 2014), collaborative and experiential learning has 
been deemed effective in developing innovative ideas for students to utilize as value-enhancing knowledge 
sharing processes (Essig, 2013; Welsh et al., 2014). Essig (2013) suggests that mentorship, collaborative 
team projects, and experiential learning are three useful pedagogies for developing “entrepreneurial habits of 
mind.” This situates universities as mediating structures for the creative process of arts entrepreneurship in 
linking the means for arts entrepreneurship (i.e., alertness, specialized knowledge, financial capital) with its 
end-goals (i.e., wealth creation, value creation, sustainable culture) (Essig, 2015).   
 In this article we describe the practical application of the university as a mediating structure by 
examining an interdisciplinary collaboration between courses in two disparate units of the university: music 
and community development. The intent of our collaboration was to offer a humanistic approach toward 
building and bridging relationships and developing human capacities that reach beyond the economically 
dominant paradigm within which research and practice in AEE have typically been situated. While not 
officially (or even unofficially) courses in arts entrepreneurship, we believe the activities that resulted from 
our two courses embody the spirit of AEE and demonstrate how AEE thinking can be embedded in the 
fabric of arts training and community development. We believe our interdisciplinary collaboration responds 
to, and supports, Rabideau’s claim that AEE: 

must thrive in non-curricular spaces, as much as be infused across curricular initiatives; cross-
pollinate among faculty, regardless of generational boundaries, traditional silos, and tenured lines; 
and unite campus and community, with particular attention to those at the margins of society. 
(Gartner, Roberts, & Rabideau, 2015) 

We further support Jackson, Herranz, and Kebwasa-Green’s (2003) assertion that there is a need for 
comprehensive documentation of the various ways in which people participate in cultural activities that can 
provide better grounds for understanding community dynamics. This article represents a modest step in that 
direction. 
 

Setting the Stage 
 Fortunately, from our perspective, community engagement projects variously described as 
outreach, engagement, creative placemaking, and more are becoming increasingly common in arts 
education and training programs in higher education. To our knowledge, however, instances of these 
initiatives originating in music units are less common than in other artistic units. Although AEE has 
advanced considerably in recent years, it is still, particularly in the higher education music field, in its 
relative infancy. In order to advance work in this area, ongoing theorizing is imperative. Toward this end, 
we offer conceptual elaboration that is, to some degree, post hoc in nature. While our initial joint discussions 
were grounded in our respective pre-existing theoretical understandings as instructors and researchers and 



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we had what might be loosely be called “working hypotheses,” our collaborative efforts have helped to 
bring forth additional insights that we believe can add value to AEE discourses.  
 
Dialogical Community Development (DCD) 

Community development has been concerned with the notion that economic development is a chief 
indicator of community wellbeing (Bhattacharyya, 1995, 2004; Phillips, 2003). Yet, in order to ensure social 
support and a sense of community, humanistic characteristics such as agency, empathy, hospitality, 
resilience, and civic engagement are significant elements of sustainable community development 
(Bhattacharyya, 1995, 2004; Putnam, 2000; Westoby & Dowling, 2009). Establishing trust and 
empathetically engaging with others in a manner that welcomes reciprocation opens the door for 
communication to spark collaboration. 

The conceptualization of community for this article heeds the call from Westoby and Dowling’s 
(2009) critical insight into the essence of community work. Westoby and Dowling coined the term 
“dialogical community development” (DCD) to reflect the practice of listening deeply and making oneself 
present to the other. DCD “invites awareness, attention and imagination that are directed at our relations to 
one another, our relations to place, to practice, to economics, culture, earth, politics and the traces of history 
and so forth” (p. 14). The “dialogue” in DCD is considered a “mutual process of building shared 
understanding, meaning, communication, and creative action” (2009, p. 10). 

DCD requires attentiveness throughout the process and orients community as hospitality by 
“welcoming other people, other ideas, and other ways of thinking about community life” (Westoby & 
Dowling, 2009, p. 12). Westoby and Dowling suggest that DCD is a social practice that fosters social 
relationships, invokes multiple elements of personal and collective agency, and aims to reclaim places as 
spaces of social activity rather than the current “norm” of speculative economic activity. In order for this to 
occur, this social process encourages poetic participation “that comes when people genuinely participate in 
community life as an intimate engagement of their creative imaginations” (2009, p. 18). 

In Creating Us: Community Work With Soul, Westoby (2016) introduces the term “soul” to 
describe the animation of the individual and the collective body. This builds upon his previous work with 
Dowling (Westoby & Dowling, 2009) where they quote rhythm and blues legend Ray Charles’s 
classification of soul as “the ability to respond from our deepest place” (p. 14). Westoby (2016) suggests 
that community work from a soulful perspective is a social process to be embraced as a responsive dance, 
something Westoby and Dowling describe as: 

a quality, a dimension, a movement towards experiencing life in a way that adds depth, value, 
relatedness, heart and substance…A soulful orientation invites hospitality towards other people and 
places and other ways of being, doing, and imagining. It requires…‘another’ way, one that 
demands heart, emotion, and will. (p. 15) 

Dialogical community work with soul, then, is founded on finding deeper social and cultural meanings 
together and appreciating alternative ideas and ways of thinking, a notion that resonates strongly with the 
concept of hospitality found in the community music literature (e.g., Higgins, 2007, 2012).  
 
Creative Placemaking 
 Bennett (2014) argues that “communities consistently employ creative placemaking interventions 
to strengthen economic development, encourage civic engagement, build resiliency, and/or contribute to 
quality of life” (pp. 77-78). He suggests that as part of organic community planning, creative placemaking 
ideally engages residents in the neighborhood development process. In response to various criticisms 
highlighting issues of gentrification and displacement (e.g., Bedoya, 2012), creative placemaking has more 



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recently been deemed the deliberate integration of arts, culture, and community-engaged design in 
community development practices to expand opportunity for vulnerable populations (Borrup, 2016). In his 
chapter, “Creative Placemaking: Arts and Culture as a Partner in Community Revitalization,” Borrup 
(2016) emphasizes that creative placemaking contributes to community building in that it amplifies “local 
human, physical, and cultural assets to enhance the social and civic fabric” (p. 1). Aligned with 
aforementioned arguments concerning community development work and creative placemaking, Borrup 
suggests that creative placemakers achieve success by thinking holistically and continuously pushing to 
connect established silos of practice. 
 When done effectively, creative placemaking can arguably foster what Debra Webb, following 
Roberto Bedoya, calls an “aesthetic of belonging” through place-based arts initiatives (Webb, 2014). This 
can contribute to what The Urban Institute’s Arts and Culture Indicators Project (Jackson, 2006) calls 
“cultural vitality.” Cultural vitality is considered “evidence of the creation, dissemination, validation, and 
support of the arts and cultural activity as a dimension of everyday life in communities” (Jackson, 2006). 
While admittedly limited in scope and aspiration, the creative placemaking activities described in this article 
sought to enact soul, hospitality, an aesthetics of belonging, and cultural vitality by respecting and 
capitalizing on local people, places, and spaces. For purposes of analysis we have borrowed from Webb 
(2014): (a) placemaking that is guided by civic engagement activities that foster cultural stewardship; (b) 
placemaking that spurs systemic social change and youth empowerment; and (c) placemaking that 
articulates a shared aesthetic of belonging.  
 

Partnership 
 The community music projects discussed in this article were the result of a collaboration between 
the instructors of a school of music graduate course entitled “Music and Community Engagement” and an 
undergraduate course entitled “Leisure and Quality of Life” in the university’s community resources and 
development school. Students in the school of music class were partnered with selected students in the 
community development class and tasked with planning, facilitating, and evaluating community-based 
music projects overtly described as “creative placemaking,” and deliberately placed within a “community 
cultural development” frame. While this collaboration occurred in both 2015 and 2016, we wish to highlight 
the evidence from the inaugural year of the project to set the stage for how these projects illustrate the 
benefits for students within the contexts of creative placemaking, DCD, and AEE. 
 The overarching goal of the collaborative project assignment was for each school of music student 
to organize a “one-off” event with the potential of being sustainable for future engagements. The school of 
music students functioned as the music leaders and content specialists. The community development 
students served as “community development officers” responsible for researching and coordinating 
logistics. As instructors, we decided not to impose too much structure, enabling each project to be as broad 
or as narrow as desired. Criteria were listed in the course syllabi as follows: 

● event should occur no later than the last day of the semester 
● event should be at least 30 minutes (but may be longer) 
● should involve as many community members as feasible/reasonable; advertising and “recruitment” 

will be important 
● must be self-supported [i.e., no course money available] 
● must involve some form of documentation (i.e., pictures, video, post-event interviews with 

participants, etc.) 
 In order to provide the greatest latitude for creative thinking, assessments were intended to focus 
attention on reflection without becoming overly prescriptive. The music students were required to submit a 



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short write-up that provided: (a) a brief description of the event (e.g., Where and when did it take place? 
How many people did it involve? Who were they?); (b) evidence of success that involved some sort of 
indicators or metrics (e.g., 7 of 10 people said afterwards they were satisfied or very satisfied and would do 
this again); and (c) brief thoughts on what might be changed or improved if one were to do the project again 
in the future. The community development students were required to submit a short reflection paper that 
identified: (a) how the project was personally, socially, and culturally beneficial to quality of life of the 
participant; (b) how it may have impacted the quality of life of participants personally, socially, and 
culturally; and (c) considerations for the future facilitation of these community programs. The community 
development students also offered a short class presentation after the completion of the program that 
illustrated how the event contributed to quality of life through photos, video, and other participant accounts.  
 We initiated this partnership with the hope that students would listen to each other, as well as the 
participants from the community, throughout the creative process in order to address tensions and 
complexities collaboratively. As such, a goal was to offer an opportunity for students to step outside of their 
comfort zones in unfamiliar surroundings to think critically and cultivate new ideas with people they had 
never met. The results of this vision manifested through seven unique creative placemaking projects in 
2015. 
 

The Projects 
The seven projects for this experiment in creative placemaking took place in fall 2015. Serving as 

examples for the discussion to follow, they are presented in no particular order.  
 
Community Garden 
 The community garden project connected the music student, a low brass player, and the community 
development students with volunteers from a local community garden, as well as some other community 
members. The community garden volunteers explained the work they do and gave tours to the students. The 
event was a potluck style luncheon formed in appreciation for the volunteers of the garden, and included a 
tuba quartet playing polka music. There were about 20 people in attendance. At the conclusion of the event, 
the students drove the leftover food to the local homeless shelter.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 Figure 1.  
                                             Community Garden 
 
  



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Heritage Hallelujah 
 The Heritage Hallelujah event, named after the school and the famous chorus by Handel, was an 
opportunity to bring together people of all ages in song. The idea was sparked from a desire to create an 
annual tradition to invite alumni of the school, a private charter school with a circumscribed community, to 
actively participate in their December concert by joining the choirs on stage to sing a final number. There 
were a total of 50 people in attendance, 30 females and 20 males. Of the 34 attendees who completed the 
exit survey offered by the student event hosts, all except for one indicated they would like to do this event 
again and 25 relayed that the event motivated them to pursue participating in similar music events in the 
future. 
 

 

 

 

              
 
 
 
 

     Figure 2.  
                    Heritage Hallelujah 
 
“Beat Lab” Workshop for Girl Scouts 
 The Beat Lab was a collaboration between the music student, a local museum, and the Girl Scouts 
organization. The activity fused acoustic and digital music-making in an effort to educate and encourage the 
participants to create their own musical arrangements (subsequently uploaded to the cloud for later sharing 
with their parents) and perform live in front of their peers. Approximately 100 Girl Scouts attended the 
event, necessitating the school of music student to involve three other music students from the university to 
“apprentice.” Over 85% of the girl scouts said they enjoyed the lab. This particular event was the launching 
pad for the music student’s startup business that now travels the local area facilitating activities and 
workshops similar to those offered at this initial event.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
            Figure 3.  

                                                      “Beatlab” Workshop for Girl Scouts 



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Musical Maps 
 The Musical Maps event involved members of the community listening to live music while making 
art. Significantly, the event occurred at a geographic area striving to become known as another arts corridor 
in the city’s downtown, emulating a successful example of one two miles away. The event was advertised 
using social media (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) for a local nonprofit organization leading up to the 
event. During the three-hour event, approximately 40 community members attended. Collaborative efforts 
were supported by donations from a local for-profit music venue that provided compensation for the live 
performers, as well as food and drink donations by a company known to one of the community 
development students.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Figure 4.  
                                      Musical Maps 
 
Music and Art Making Workshop 

This event was in some ways very similar to the musical maps event, except that it occurred on the 
university campus and involved only eight participants, most of whom were from the university’s 
international community, and it involved structured activities. The stated goal of this event was to mix music 
with visual arts in order to improve the quality of life for participants. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                       
                                             Figure 5.  
                                            Music and Art Making Workshop 



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Epic Instrument Maker Challenge 
The Epic Instrument Challenge was modeled after the Musical Hackathons held in New York and 

was inspired by what is often referred to as “maker culture.” Student facilitators created the event with the 
notion that it might promote creativity and participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009). Because the local 
geographic area is dispersed due to urban sprawl, they hoped that it would bring together like-minded 
people. Even though the event had fewer participants than anticipated, a young boy illustrated the ethos of 
the project with a wooden cigar box acoustic guitar he built with his father. He was rewarded for his 
innovative instrument and conjunctive performance with a small collection of records donated by a local 
record store. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Figure 6.  
Epic Instrument Maker Challenge 

 
Instrument Making out of Recycled Materials 

This event took place at a local community center that focuses on providing life skills and an 
accommodating environment for underserved youth. Eight girls from the nearby community attended the 
event. The students facilitating the activity brought recyclable materials (i.e., water bottles, empty toilet 
paper rolls, etc.) to the center in order to work with the children to create their own instruments. The event 
also involved customizing a song from The Sound of Music by using lyrics made up by the participants. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
           

        Figure 7. 
            Instrument Making out of Recycled Materials 



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Discussion 
As is hopefully evident, the projects undertaken by the students illustrate the value of community 

development and arts entrepreneurship beyond strictly economic factors. Pictures of the events illustrate 
how the projects were soulful experiences for participants per Westoby’s (2016) definition of soul as the 
animation of the individual and the collective body. As discussed below using Webb’s (2014) three 
framework components, we hope to provide a more intimate association between AEE and DCD that 
amplifies the “dialogue” component of DCD, considered as a “mutual process of building shared 
understanding, meaning, communication, and creative action” (Westoby & Dowling, 2009, p. 10). 
 
Civic Engagement Activities that Foster Cultural Stewardship  

While the elements of DCD as a soulful approach to building community were evident in some 
capacity across all community music events, the aspects of civic engagement were showcased, despite their 
obvious dissimilarities, most prominently in the community garden, Heritage Hallelujah, musical maps, and 
recycled instruments projects. Each of these individual events foregrounded a sense of hospitality and ways 
of being, doing, and imagining that helped to build a sense of community. As one of the community 
development students wrote in her reflection about the community garden event:  

A social benefit of this event was that I...was able to communicate my passions and future goals 
with [the community garden volunteers]. A cultural benefit was that we are all a part of a group 
small or big and we were able to come together and share our common goals...As students, we were 
able to make a difference and do something positive in other people’s lives. 
Although the Heritage Hallelujah event occurred within a physical and social context that in some 

ways stretches the definitions of “public” and “civic,” it most certainly engendered a sense of cultural 
stewardship, one that helped to ameliorate differences of age and class. At the same time, the cultural and 
ethnic/racial homogeneity in this event was striking, highlighting the paradox in community development 
that, while communities are lauded to the extent they represent a genuine sense of belonging and 
participation, they are also defined according to in-group and out-group membership. When cultural 
stewardship promotes hierarchies and exclusion, civic engagement becomes just another mechanism 
whereby the already-advantaged entrench their dominant positions in society. In this respect, the recycled 
instruments event and, to lesser extents, the musical maps and community gardens events represented 
creative placemaking engagements that did not further enshrine economic and socio-cultural privilege. 
 
Systemic Social Change and Youth Empowerment  

Social change entails that people in a community have the capacity to engage with and feel as part 
of the participatory process. We felt this aspect most overtly in the beat lab, recycled instruments, music and 
art making workshop, and the epic instrument maker challenge. The capacity for community music projects 
to facilitate a sense of empowerment was recognized by one of the community development students, who, 
in reflecting on the recycled instruments event, remarked, “This project was something that anyone could 
do. It didn’t matter what age, gender or social class.” In an environment where waste tends to be overlooked, 
particularly relevant to the urban environment in which these projects took place, the recycled instruments 
project highlighted the notion that innovative use of materials can encourage creative solutions. It allowed 
for creative placemaking to be carried out in a no-cost, eco-friendly, and fun manner that helped the 
underserved youth to recognize their inherent musicality and their capacities to be creative.  
 Validation can also be empowering for youth as they attempt to “feel out” whether or not 
participation is acceptable. This was borne out in the epic instrument maker challenge, where the young boy 
with the wooden cigar box acoustic guitar was rewarded with a small collection of records donated by a 



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local record store for not only working with his father to create his instrument, but also performing classic 
rock songs to the receptive audience in the music-maker project. Notably, the impact of the community 
music projects was as impactful on the students as it was on the participants. As one community 
development student remarked: 

Working with youth that have bad home lives or struggle for their next meal was new for me. It was 
very eye opening to see these kids that have some type of struggle in their lives but they still had 
smiles on their faces and a positive attitude. 

 Despite their seemingly positive impacts, the one-off events undertaken by the students clearly do 
not qualify as systemic social change. That said, change is reliant upon empowerment, a concept that can 
take many forms beyond its socio-political implications. The beat lab, for example, provided not just a sense 
of confidence for the Girl Scouts, but demonstrable and tangible evidence of their creative capacities. Exit 
tickets and student reflections all point to a very powerful event for everyone involved. The music and art- 
making workshop, while it involved primarily older youth, was also seen as a valuable and empowering 
learning experience for everyone involved. As one of the community development students revealed: 

This project was personally beneficial to me because I got to learn different aspects of music and 
visual arts that I did not know before. I got to learn how to play a song on the piano and I got to try 
and learn how to draw. Take in mind, I am not the best at drawing, but I gave it all I had. 

 
Shared Aesthetic of Belonging 

Contributing to the sense of belonging that comes from creative placemaking, the community 
garden and Hallelujah events were both potluck-style events. As a result, the structure of these projects was 
inherently participatory in nature. In both cases, the provision and donation of food contributed to the overall 
sense of sharing, togetherness, and belonging. The participants were not merely consumers of the creative 
placemaking activities but were also active producers of the experience. 

The feeling of belonging is a key component to building community. One of the community 
development students from the music and art project conveyed her feelings that being in a safe and 
hospitable environment, coupled with encouraging dialogue, added to the experience in a positive manner: 
“Throughout the entire event, all of the participants exchanged laughs and words of 
encouragement...Everyone seemed to enjoy each other’s company, which benefitted each of the 
participant’s quality of life personally.” The reciprocal exchange of humor and positive dialogue support a 
soulful approach to community work. It helps establish a better sense of situational trust and acceptance, 
especially in an environment comprised of individuals from an array of cultural backgrounds. As another 
participant in the music and art project remarked: 

We all got to be in a comfortable setting where everyone became friends. They were also culturally 
benefitted because we all come from different places, so we got to learn about each other and we all 
got to learn about music and visual arts.  

The fact that both music and visual art were utilized in various fashions to bridge language and ethnic 
barriers and propagated creative placemaking suggests that it was an effective strategy for navigating these 
potential constraints.  
 Webb’s (2014) notion of aesthetics of belonging builds upon the work of Bedoya (2012), who 
interrogates the notion of dis-belonging as it arises from creative placemaking work and its potential for 
displacement. We would argue that, while none of the events undertaken by the students reached the level of 
impact that might effect/affect long-term belonging or dis-belonging (and might go so far as to argue that 
belonging and dis-belonging are two sides of the same coin where both, by definition, co-exist), sensitivity 
to the aesthetics of belonging is critical to ethically-conducted creative placemaking work. While our 



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geographic area does not currently contain a large Black/African-American population relative to national 
figures, it does contain a relatively high percentage of Native Americans; participants in all the creative 
placemaking events were primarily white and Asian, with a few observably classified (particularly in the 
recycled instruments event) as Hispanic. Although demographic category is but one variable by which 
belonging might be measured, it is a primary one. 
 
Utility  

Together, students from two units of the university helped to facilitate experiences that offered a 
platform to illustrate resourcefulness and innovation towards creating value for themselves and the 
community. Public (i.e., community garden, community center) and private (i.e., museum, local business) 
spaces were animated via music and art in these creative placemaking projects. Local business viability was 
integrated through partnerships to provide food and drink, as well as getting more foot traffic through places 
of business. This said, the actual impacts of the project engagements were clearly limited, reflecting the 
scale and scope of the collaborative pedagogical experiment.  

In our opinion, the most useful aspect of this exercise with respect to creative placemaking and 
AEE was its utility for fostering what Pollard and Wilson (2013) call “an entrepreneurship mindset,” or 
what Essig (2013) describes as “habits of mind for arts entrepreneurship.” As mentioned earlier, musical 
instances of creative placemaking and arts entrepreneurship are rarer than with other art forms. As a result, 
existing capacity for creative placemaking in the music field pales in comparison with, for example, visual 
art, dance, and drama. Although our community music projects were mostly the result of partner pairings 
(sometimes 3 in a group), their collaborative and applied nature responds to Essig’s (2013) call for 
collaborative team projects and experiential learning. If initiatives such as this one were scaled to other 
universities, perhaps entrepreneurial habits of mind might become as commonplace among musicians as 
they are among other artistic disciplines.  
 

Conclusion 
Universities have evolved from traditionally being considered as detached from the community to 

now having a significant role in the cultural development and social fabric of communities (Chatterton, 
2000; Langston & Barrett, 2008). It is important for institutions of higher education to be embedded within 
their local communities to bridge AEE and community development efforts. Evidence of positive 
community planning and community building is carried out by and with communities (Bennett, 2014) and it 
can be facilitated by embedding university-driven initiatives within the communities in which they are 
situated. This amplifies the need for universities to consider the effects of bridging campuses and 
educational levels in order to present students with optimal opportunities for engaging with one another to 
learn (Gartner et al., 2015).  

At the heart of the experiences described here was a desire to extend beyond the dominant 
paradigm of both AEE and community development in relation to economic development of the individual 
(AEE) and collective (community development). In so doing, we argue that these projects represent a 
soulful approach to learning and community building (Westoby, 2016; Westoby & Dowling, 2009). 
Although not necessarily life-changing in any respect, the individual events reflected a genuine sense of 
poetic participation for everyone involved. With respect to AEE, the three areas of mentorship, collaborative 
team projects, and experiential learning were integrated within each of the community music projects. The 
projects also exemplified, at least to some extent, Pollard and Wilson’s (2014) five goals of AEE (i.e., the 
capacity to think creatively, strategically, analytically, and reflectively; confidence in one’s abilities; the 



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ability to collaborate; well-developed communication skills; and an understanding of the current artistic 
context).  

Despite being located within a university coursework, the projects articulated here presented the 
students, per Gartner et al.’s (2015) recommendation, with a “non-curricular space” in which they could 
work with community members and students from other disciplines to co-create their own learning 
environments. Although not public-facing, the reflective aspects of the projects help to build the capacity to 
respond to Jackson et al.’s (2014) call for greater documentation of community dynamics. Our 
interdisciplinary collaboration implemented creative placemaking activities in these non-curricular spaces in 
an effort to connect AEE and community development. Creative placemaking activities provided 
opportunities for students to participate in civic engagement as community/cultural workers. The events 
themselves can be considered examples of cultural vitality in that they present “evidence of the creation, 
dissemination, validation, and support of the arts and cultural activity as a dimension of everyday life in 
communities” (Jackson, 2006). 

Lest our presentation be read as overly rosy, we must acknowledge that there were many 
challenges, frustrations, and mistakes that arose throughout the 2015 semester (many of which, incidentally, 
continued in the 2016 semester). Communication between the graduate and undergraduate students was not 
always smooth, and the open-ended nature of the assignment, while certainly consistent with the “spirit of 
entrepreneurship,” was not necessarily something comfortable for students accustomed to the kind of 
explicit, narrowly-proscribed assignments and curriculum that have become commonplace throughout 
much of the education system.  

At the risk of over-generalizing, programs of study in music at the higher education level have 
historically focused on performance preparation, not community engagement or community development. 
Based on anecdotal appraisal, the music students were, with maybe 1-2 exceptions, most certainly out of 
their comfort zone with these events. Programs of study in community development, while perhaps more 
flexible than music study, do not typically feature arts entrepreneurship as prominent subject matter, as the 
community development field, for the most part, has not explored the possibilities of arts entrepreneurship 
for community development. This lack of attention to arts entrepreneurship education in community 
development practice and education is exactly why creative placemaking has become such a popular 
approach for garnering interest and integration into the discourse. The reflections from the community 
development students evidenced more surprise and recognition of the possibilities of arts entrepreneurship 
for community development. This is noteworthy to instructors in the community development field and like 
fields such as tourism and public policy, as it highlights the significance of arts and culture being amplified 
in the name of urban development.   

Community development has figured prominently in the creative placemaking discourse practically 
since its inception. While there may have been a pragmatic aspect intended to marshal political support 
through economic rationalization, many creative placemaking discourses have, in our reading, moved in a 
more socially-conscious direction. Although there may be other instances of collaborations between arts 
disciplines and the field of community development beyond what we were able to uncover, we argue that 
such synergies represent under-realized potential for AEE. We hope that through greater sharing of 
examples, especially theorized examples, AEE can continue to effect greater change for the benefit of both 
practitioners and the communities they serve.  

 
  



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