What is Placemaking?
by Melody Moody Thortis
Placemaking example: Pike School of Art received a Mississippi Arts Commission Building Fund for the Arts grant for the renovation of the former Pike County Youth Detention Center in McComb and its conversion into a community art center. There is currently no brick-and-mortar contemporary visual arts center in Southwest Mississippi. PSA-MS will transform the former Pike County Juvenile Detention into a multi-use center including three gallery spaces to exhibit art and the cultural heritage of Southwest Mississippi, present work by PSA-MS resident artists, and host community exhibitions and workshops. Photo courtesy the Pike School of Art.
As the Mississippi Rural Placemaking Summit approaches, some of you may or may not be familiar with the term “placemaking.” Let’s dive into what placemaking means to us and what you might learn during the summit next week.
What is placemaking?Placemaking, if you’ve never heard of it (or even if you have!), is a very broad term that means different things to different people. Yet, they share one thing in common: a lens that focuses around the idea that residents, governments and community-based organizations can collectively reimage public spaces, celebrate their community assets, and work collectively together to engage in representational, place-based community improvements that reflect the needs and desires of the people who call the “places” home. It’s also important to know that people come to placemaking from all walks of life – an idea we will explore at the Summit during our opening discussion with different professionals around the question, “What is Placemaking?” We will talk to professionals who do this work every day, from those working in the arts and its intersections with tourism, community development and social justice to those working to build bike trails, sidewalks and healthier communities. Participants will also learn how to “start small” using easy-to-implement temporary pop-ups that can lead to transformative change in small towns, even on a tight budget.
So, why is a community foundation hosting a placemaking summit? At the Community Foundation for Mississippi, our focus is place-based philanthropy, which means investing in local communities and collaborating with donors, nonprofits and residents to create meaningful, lasting change. In our support for local residents as well as nonprofits, local businesses, community organizations and municipal leaders, we celebrate the field of placemaking as an approach that encourages these entities to come together to co-create and celebrate the strengths, stories, and identity of what makes their communities unique. If you aren’t familiar with what community foundations do, we align donor intent with community needs, strengthen nonprofits, amplify impact through strategic management of endowed funds and award competitive grants. But, what makes community foundations across the nation different from others is the focus on place. We specifically serve a dedicated area and work in collaboration with the communities we serve to invest in local community-based organizations and changemakers and partner with local committed donors to support inclusive and authentic solutions for long-lasting local impacts. We connect people to causes they care about and work to connect those in need to resources that matter – which is the very core of this summit.
Why rural?The Community Foundation for Mississippi’s service footprint stretches across twenty-two counties in central and southwest Mississippi. The cities and towns within these communities, outside of the Jackson metro, are considered rural communities, based on their population. We recognize the unique challenges faced by many of our small towns and believe that those in small and rural communities deserve dedicated opportunities to connect to the resources they need to improve the communities they love.
Placemaking is one of our grantmaking focus areas, which you’ll see in our upcoming Community Impact Grant round (which opens on August 5th!). We have also made new investments in rural communities throughout southwest Mississippi through our Rural Leveraging Matching Grants, available year-round to help small towns in our service area to match up to 50% of the matching funds they may need from grants they’ve received from other sources.
What can expect at the Mississippi Rural Placemaking Summit?
The summit is centered around the “take-home.” It is our intention that the summit is not just a place where Mississippians and experts come together for one day. We are focused on what comes after our attendees leave. Panelists will help instruct participants on how they can leave the summit equipped with ideas and connections to use placemaking tools and techniques to see projects come to fruition in their communities. The summit will connect attendees to toolkits, like those offered by our partners at the Fred Carl, Jr. Small Town Center. The Funder’s Roundtable session will allow participants to learn about potential funding sources for projects across the state, such as funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Mississippi Humanities Council, and support for Main Street communities from the Mississippi Main Street Association. Mayors and elected officials (who are invited to attend the Summit at no cost, thanks to the Mississippi Municipal League) can connect with national and local experts who are eager to help small towns in Mississippi use placemaking to center community-based planning and revitalization within their communities.
The Mississippi Rural Placemaking Summit will also feature keynote speaker Carlton Turner, an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) where he and his team use arts, agriculture, food and story to support rural community, cultural, social and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi. While based out of Utica, Turner is known for being an expert in placemaking nationwide through his work with Sipp Culture and in his former position as Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS. He also is a former Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow and former Cultural Policy Fellow at the Creative Placemaking Institute at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design in the Arts. Learn more about our speakers here.
We encourage you to join us at the Palace Theater in downtown McComb on Thursday, August 1st to explore how your community might use placemaking to better your community.
Sessions will include everything from community storytelling to creating a healthier community, implementing public art in your community, repurposing and preserving historical spaces and case studies on innovative tactics for community-led engagement. Learn how you can enhance your public spaces, increase community participation and how the arts, culture, and community-led change can drive economic growth and holistic change in the place you call home. See the full list of sessions and register today here.
See you in McComb!
