SYSTEMS GRANTMAKING RESOURCE GUIDE
The Systems Grantmaking Resource Guide will help you unpack a systems approach so you can apply it to your work and, in doing so, break through obstacles, craft new habits and change your processes to successfully transform systems.

TALKING POINTS: PUBLIC ART AND THE CHALLENGE OF EVALUATION
A blog post from the Talking Points series by Katherine Gressel that discusses public artwork’s role in economic revitalization and the difficulties of evaluation. It asks: Is there a reliable framework that can be the basis of all good public art evaluation? And what are some simple yet effective evaluation methods that most organizations can implement?

THE OVERLOOKED ANCHORS
The Overlooked Anchors: Advancing a New Standard of Practice for Arts and Culture Organizations to Create Equitable Opportunity in America’s Cities is based on a rigorous assessment of anchor strategies and 125 arts and culture organizations in 57 U.S. cities, to offer recommendations on how arts organizations, anchor collaboratives and funders can work together to increase social and economic opportunity in disinvested communities. Anchor strategies designed to drive significant growth in cities by leveraging the scale of universities, hospitals and other large institutions emerged over 20 years ago. Yet despite the documented contributions of arts and cultural organizations locally, the sector is often excluded from anchor collaboratives. The report was authored by the Initiative for a Competetive Inner City and supported by The Kresge Foundation.

THE THEORY BEHIND OUR TOWN
In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts launched Our Town, a grant program that invests in projects that bring together diverse community partners to integrate the arts and culture into community revitalization work. Since then, more than 500 projects have been funded via Our Town in rural, tribal, suburban, and urban communities. The moment felt ripe for the agency to delve into past Our Town projects to better document, assess outcomes from the overall program and establish a theory of change.

VALIDATING ARTS & LIVABILITY INDICATORS STUDY
Commissioned from the Urban Institute, this report describes the methodology and findings of a study to validate the NEA's proposed Arts & Livability Indicators. These metrics use national, publicly accessible data to track outcomes of interest to communities engaged in creative placemaking activities. The report includes a draft "user's guide" to the indicators and their appropriate use.

TRENDS IN CREATIVE PLACEMAKING ON PROBLEM PROPERTIES
In the last decade, philanthropic and government entities have invested millions of dollars into creative placemaking endeavors. Within this broad, growing field exists a subset of creative placemaking efforts: those taking place on vacant, abandoned, and underused properties which face unique challenges of their own. This 2019 national survey and resulting report shares trends, case studies, and survey responses from practitioners, residents, government officials, nonprofit leaders and many others. It offers insight into how communities across the country are using creative placemaking to address problem properties and advance community-centered revitalization—and the challenges that sometimes stymy these efforts.