Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities
The mission of the Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities is to leverage the power and possibilities of ASU as the New American University to integrate arts, culture and design in community development, planning and related fields in order to help redress historic inequities and create healthy, equitable, more just communities where all people can thrive. The Studio is a collaboration between the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. The program portfolio includes Faculty Academy, Creative Placemaking curriculum integration, Senior Policy Fellows, Projecting All Voices, Creative Measurement Lab, Countermapping Arizona and the Wallace Community Orientation Research Study.
The Studio is funded by ArtPlace America, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace Foundation.
Studio Programs
Current programs in the Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities address three areas critical to building the field of equitable creative placemaking and placekeeping and working toward more just and equitable communities:
- Addressing current standards of practice in arts, design, community development, planning and other related fields.
- Strengthening the knowledge base around creative placemaking and placekeeping as a critical element of neighborhood and systems change.
- Building leaders, stewards and supporters of the work.
Creative Measurement Lab
Creative Measurement Lab is a program developed to advance more adequate and useful research, measurement and evaluation approaches that account for the roles of arts, culture and design in neighborhood and systems change. The lab is informed by an Equitable Evaluation approach that calls for the questioning of industry orthodoxies, lifting up community expertise and the acknowledgment of systemic sources of inequity.
Faculty Academy
The Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities Faculty Academy builds the bench of faculty focused on creative placemaking and placekeeping. The academy is a learning cohort connecting scholars from across ASU and in multiple disciplines to community leaders in order to inform institutional practice and curriculum related to equitable creative placemaking and placekeeping. The program is intended to help participants build the skills, personal reflections and insights needed to do ethical work. This requires interrogating the most strategic roles of universities in redressing historic inequity, shifting current dominant concepts of community engagement and building robust community alliances.
2022-23 Faculty Academy
Melita Belgrave
Belgrave has worked as a music therapist in special education, mental health, rehabilitation, hospice, geriatric, and intergenerational settings throughout Texas, Florida, Kansas, and Missouri.
Carla Bishop
Bishop is the Inaugural recipient of the MIT and Black Public Media Fellowship, hosted by the MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Deepak Chhabra
Chhabra's research includes authenticity and authentication of heritage, socio-economic impacts of tourism and spirituality and well-being of tourists, host communities, and the society at large.
Robert Farid Karimi
Critically acclaimed performer, author and social engagement artist, Robert Farid Karimi, designs interactive immersive game-performance experiences to spark players to imagine worlds of mutual community nourishment.
Felicia Mitchell
Mitchell is committed to social justice for all oppressed and marginalized peoples and is particularly focused on achieving environmental and health equity in communities of color.
Ijeoma Ogbonnaya
Ogbonnaya studies the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on mental and physical health among populations most vulnerable to IPV.
Alberto Olivas
Alberto Olivas is Founding Executive Director of the Congressman Ed Pastor Center for Politics & Public Service at ASU, and serves on the board of directors for Public Agenda, a national civic and public engagement nonprofit.
Lauren Ruffin
Ruffin is a co-founder of Crux Cooperative, an immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality.
Jessica Salow
Jessica obtained her MLIS from The University of Arizona in 2017. She also received her BA in History/Political Science from Arizona State University in 2011.
- 2020-21 Faculty Academy
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Christine BuzindeBuzinde's research focuses on two areas: community development through tourism and the politics of tourism representations.
Chingwen ChengCheng's transdisciplinary research advances the role of green infrastructure in urban planning and design to enhance resilience under the consideration of climate justice for long-term sustainability communities.
Meagan EhlenzEhlenz, a certified planner with AICP, focuses research on urban revitalization and community development, with specializations in the role of anchor institutions in urban places and mechanisms for building community wealth.
Kate FoxFox's research focuses on crime victimization, particularly among hard-to-access populations, including American Indian women, offenders and inmates, and refugees..
Kelly JacksonJackson is committed to expanding the current knowledge base of multiracial identity to help social workers and other helping professionals work more inclusively and responsibly with multiracial individuals and families.
Stacey KuznetsovKuznetsov's work applies HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and design methods to the study of current and future systems for science and technology.
Tiffany LopezLópez' research looks at the role of the arts in creating conversations about violence and trauma.
Joanna LucioLucio joined ASU in 2006. Her research explores how urban governance, planning and policy impacts diverse groups in society.
Cody TelepTelep's research focuses on synthesizing research to assess what works in policing; partnering with agencies to examine the impact of police practices on crime, disorder and citizen perceptions of legitimacy.
Benjamin TimpsonTimpson is an artist specializing in interdisciplinary mediums, including photography, painting and sculpture.
- 2019-20 Faculty Academy
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Grisha ColemanColeman is a time-based artist working in performance and experiential media. Her work explores relationships between physiological, technological and ecological systems.
Paul CoseoDr. Coseo examines the intersection of urban climate and design through 1) ecological, 2) climate justice, and 3) social learning lenses. He teaches landscape architecture courses on urban ecological planning and design.
Miki GarciaGarcia joined ASU in 2017. Prior, she was the executive director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
Bridget HealeyBridget Healey directs strategic initiatives in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions on behalf of the Dean, Jonathan Koppell. Her primary areas of responsibility are 1) homelessness, working with the Ph
Richard KnopfMuch of Knopf’s teaching and research has focused on the role of community development in life quality enhancement and economic growth.
Johanna TaylorTaylor's work is grounded in a core value of art as catalyzing force in advancing justice in daily life, and her research explores questions of cultural equity through the intersection of art, community, policy, and place.
Evan TobiasTobias focuses on innovation and transformation in music education and how music learning and teaching might make a positive impact on people's lives and society.
Kevin WrightWright's work focuses on enhancing the lives of those living and working in the correctional system through research, education and community engagement.
Milagros ZingoniMilagros Zingoni is an Associate Professor at The Design School, at Arizona State University. Originally from Argentina, Milagros believes that innovation comes from communication between disciplines and collaboration between
Curriculum Integration
The advancement of equitable creative placemaking and placekeeping into areas of study such as community development, urban planning and design, and social work as well as traditional arts and design disciplines is a critical element of the Studio’s work. Our work includes the creation and co-creation with practitioner and community partners of courses, field facing scholarship and teaching resources for integration into new and existing degree programs.
ASU now offers an online seven-week course on the Principles of Creative Placemaking (HDA/ CRD 598). The course was co-created by ASU and ArtPlace America. It focuses on the roles of arts, culture and design in more effective comprehensive community planning and development, especially in low-income and historically marginalized communities. Find more details in ASU's course catalogue.
Senior Policy Fellowship
The Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities Senior Policy Fellowship provides selected seasoned creative placemaking and placekeeping practitioners and scholars with time and resources to harvest their insights and experience for the benefit of the field. The six current policy fellows have played an advisory role in the development of programs of the Studio for Creativity Place and Equitable Communities and are pursuing their individual work on a range of topics ranging from the role of festivals in building more equitable communities to considering whether creative placemaking is a human rights movement or a property rights movement.
Publications and Articles
Beyond the Ladder of Participation: A Trellis For Community Power by Laura Zabel
What structures are required to build durable and regenerative power in communities? How can the urban planning field move from simply inviting people into existing structures to supporting the creativity, ideas and expertise that already exists in communities? What can community development practitioners learn from artists, culture bearers, and organizers? Senior Policy Fellow, Laura Zabel, proposes that we move from using a Ladder of Participation to a Trellis for Community Power.
- Previous fellows
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Maribel Alvarez
Maribel Alvarez is an anthropologist, folklorist, and curator. Among other roles, she is the executive director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance, an affiliate nonprofit of the University of Arizona, which produces the annual Tucson Meet Yourself folklife festival. She joins ASU as a Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities Policy Fellow to explore the role of festivals in community. What new dimensions of community health and equity could be apprehended if festivals could be seen from larger frames of social cohesion, stewardship and placemaking? What happens when we replace the extant narratives and analytical lenses of "festivals" with accounts of "neighborhood rituals?" During her fellowship, Alvarez will convene a working group of ASU art professionals as well as designers, planners, sociologists and economic development experts to explore these questions.
Carlton Turner
Carlton Turner works across the country as an artist, activist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant and facilitator. Turner is also founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (MCCP). The MCCP uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife, Brandi, and three children. Building on his recent essay in an NEA publication, he wants to expand on the idea of history and stories of place and their impact on design, development and function of creative placemaking projects in the South. Over the course of the fellowship, he will work in digital mediums of audio story, photos and video to develop a prototype online digest under the frame of The Living History Project.
Roberto Bedoya
Roberto Bedoya is the cultural affairs manager for the City of Oakland. He also holds significant experience as executive director of various arts organizations, art consultant, thought maker and critic. He has consistently supported artists-centered cultural practices and advocated for expanded definitions of inclusion and belonging throughout his career. During his fellowship, he looks to explore two separate but related topics: first, the dramaturgy of public policy in creative placemaking practices and how this might be useful for artists and neighbors. Second, a question: Is creative placemaking a human rights movement or a property rights movement? He will explore how the entanglement of these visions shape art making practices, urban planning, community cultural development and government.
Chris Walker
Chris Walker is an independent research consultant specializing in community development. He has led research programs at Urban Institute as well as Local Initiatives Support Corporation and has published many studies on topics related to community development and creative placemaking. During his fellowship, Walker is exploring arts-based research for social inquiry to find the particular contribution of artists as researchers into topics important to creative placemaking. Arts-based research may be a particularly good way to uncover aspects of the deep structure of community, including the meanings they attach to their physical communities. Further, he aims to understand what kind of rules to assess validity and reliability may exist in this research.
Jules Rochielle Sievert
Jules Rochielle Sievert is an artist, a legal educator, a community arts educator and a social justice advocate. Currently, Sievert is the Creative Director at Nulawlab at Northeastern University School of Law, transforming law and the way people interact with the law through creative and cultural approaches. Originally more centered in the arts, Sievert plans to use the fellowship as an opportunity to reflect on what has taken place at Nulawlab over the past 4.5 years. Also to be explored and shared is what new knowledge has been gained through a recent collaborative project, Stable Ground Boston, which embeds artists, legal designers and trauma experts into community/municipal settings to generate outcomes that contribute to local visual/performing arts exhibits and art-making events.
Laura Zabel
Laura Zabel is executive director of Springboard for the Arts, which supports artists, neighbors and businesses working together toward stronger communities. They also operate Creative Exchange, a national platform for sharing stories and resources. An expert on the relationship between the arts and community development, Zabel has shared her wisdom as a speaker and writer in a wide range of settings. She is now working on a book to frame and advance a participatory, equitable, holistic and replicable model for community health by centering people and creativity. This framework draws on Springboard’s work as well as the work of other organizers, artists and groups that draw on ecosystem/holistic approaches to community development. During her fellowship, she will dive deeper into the thinking and research around local economic opportunity, small business development and the new economy movement, as well as how this connects to artists and creative placemaking.
Ascala Tsegaye Sisk
Ascala Tsegaye Sisk is an independent consultant providing strategy assistance, coaching and facilitation in the areas of equitable community development, affordable housing, creative placemaking and climate resilience. Ascala is experienced at supporting diverse, multi-sector groups to use policy, investment, and community organizing to advance shared priorities and d raws on recent experience as Deputy Director at the Center for Community Investment at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Vice President of Community Initiatives at NeighborWorks America in this work. During her fellowship, Ascala will explore learning and evaluation frameworks that foster more just and equitable policy and community investment practices and the experimentation, curriculum and pedagogy that encourage the adoption of these practices.
Projecting All Voices Fellowship
The Projecting All Voices Fellowship supports racial equity and inclusion in the arts so that our nation’s cultural life honors and represents the full creative diversity of our country’s population. The fellowship provides opportunities for artists and culture workers to advance ideas and projects that investigate race, identity, cultural heritage, power, policy, ability and/or place and community. Fellows are provided unrestricted financial support, mentorship, professional development experiences, opportunities to develop and present their work, and connection to experts in the field. Find more details on the Fellowship on the Projecting All Voices page.
What is equitable creative placemaking and our role?
Our definition of creative placemaking is the strategic integration of arts, culture and community engaged design into comprehensive community planning and development.
We believe:
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All communities have cultural assets--including the creativity, imagination and wisdom of residents—from which to build.
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Art, culture and community engaged design are crucial elements of strategies for building more just communities. They contribute positively to a range of inter-related community conditions and dynamics such as strengthening community fabric and stewardship, physical transformation of place, changes in community narrative, civic engagement, health and economic development, and many more.
Creative placemaking and placekeeping shows up in many ways, including, but not limited to:
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Artists, designers and culture bearers being at decision making tables helping to frame policy and planning issues and define solutions.
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Initiatives to reclaim cultural and aesthetic and design practices among populations that have been historic targets of assimilation.
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Efforts that encourage all community residents to activate their creativity in service of short-term and long-term efforts towards social change and well-being.
ASU’s work to advance equitable creative placemaking and placekeeping is led by the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions through the Studio for Creativity Place and Equitable Communities. We are currently engaging with faculty, staff, students and community members who have interest in this work and in building opportunities for collaboration.. You can email us at creativeplacemaking@asu.edu.
Creativity and Place podcast
In our Creativity and Place podcast series, field leaders and scholars explore key questions and issues.