JOURNEY TO CREATIVE PLACEMAKING: LESSONS AND INSIGHTS
Reflections, learnings and insights on Creative Placemaking are shared in this series of white papers from The Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture team in concert with partners from different fields and sectors. The goal is to help illuminate the foundation’s multi-faceted approach to grantmaking, share lessons learned, identify challenges and opportunities encountered, and encourage conversations in the field. 

MAGNETIZING NEIGHBORHOODS THROUGH AMATEUR ARTS PERFORMANCE
There is a significant correlation between the amount of amateur, informal arts activity in neighborhoods and neighborhood stability and/or improvement. This correlation is evidence of magnetization - an increase in the desirability, commitment, social integration, and quality of life in a community area. Arts create shared experience, they encourage intergenerational activity and make public spaces enjoyable, among other effects. For those reasons, components of comprehensive community development should include space for amateur and semi-professional activity.

MAKING SENSE OF MEANING: HOW CREATIVE DOCUMENTATION ENHANCES OUR UNDERSTANDING OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
The effort to document and research the Community Development Investments initiative grew up alongside the program itself, and the analytical approach reflects a balance between conveying the unique features of six distinct experiences and producing lessons of broader relevance to various fields of practice. This essay describes the ways in which the PolicyLink team, in close consultation with ArtPlace America, the grantees of the program, and a number of advisors, created and carried out an approach that was suited to the unique features and dimensions of the initiative.

SAFE ROUTES PARTNERSHIP
The Safe Routes to School National Partnership is a national non-profit that advances policy change and catalyzes support for healthy, active communities, starting with walking and bicycling to school. They are dedicated to creating livable, sustainable communities where all people can be healthy and physically active. This is their resources page.

STRENGTHENING AND CONNECTING TO THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF COMMUNITIES
This is the fifth in a series of briefs that describe the changes, insights, and lessons when arts and cultural strategies are deployed in service of comprehensive community development and planning. During ArtPlace America's Community Development Investments initiative, six participating organizations which had not previously focused on the arts developed creative placemaking projects and cultural strategies that could help them more effectively achieve their missions. PolicyLink conducted a research and documentation project to measure the progress, immediate outcomes, and impacts of those projects. This brief examines how artists have worked with community developers to weave a stronger social fabric, enabling marginalized communities to pursue changes that lead to greater equity, resilience, and authentic local democracy. 

THE RISE OF CREATIVE PLACEMAKING
This article situates the emergence of the “creative placemaking” policy initiative as the coordinated continuation of longstanding artistic practices and a reaction to scant funding in the United States. In contrast to creative class policies, creative placemaking proposes a broader set of outcomes, attempts to directly address issues of inequality, and expands the role of artists in society. However, these characteristics entail several challenges for stakeholders: difficulties in devising recognized outcome metrics due to the wide variety of projects; inadvertent reproduction of inequities; and limited opportunities for scaling due to inter-occupational competition. The article concludes with implications for future research.