The Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation is a finalist for ArtPlace America’s 2017 National Creative Placemaking Fund, an extremely competitive national grant program that will consider 70 projects!
On June 6th, ArtPlace America announced that the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation is one of 70 finalists for the 2017 National Creative Placemaking Fund (NCPF).
ArtPlace selected these 70 proposals from 987 applications, making WHRF’s project one of just 7% of the projects across the country to make this cut. ArtPlace’s National Creative Placemaking Fund is a highly competitive national program, receiving 987 applications this year. Investing money in communities across the country in which artists, arts organizations, and arts and culture activity help drive community development change across 10 sectors of community planning and development: agriculture and food; economic development; education and youth; environment and energy; health; housing; immigration; public safety; transportation; or workforce development.
The Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation’s proposed project, CoMotion, will use creative placemaking to lessen the hardship our residents experience by living in a food desert. We’re determined to use this difficult situation as an opportunity to build a welcoming, inclusive place within our $20 million Paramount Square project where people can get healthy, locally-grown produce, grab a nutritious drink with friends, hold community meetings, as well as participate in meaningful creative and social activities. “The National Grants Program is actively building a portfolio that reflects the full breadth of our country’s arts and cultural sector, as well as the community planning and development field,” said ArtPlace’s Director of National Grantmaking F. Javier Torres. “Knowing that these projects, and the hundreds of others who applied, are using arts and culture strategies to make the communities across this country healthier and stronger is inspirational.”
“We believe that these projects, when added to our tremendously strong portfolio of demonstration projects, will inspire, equip and connect members of the arts and culture field, the community planning and development field and those who are working to make healthy and equitable communities creatively across the country,” said ArtPlace America Executive Director Jamie Bennett.
The complete list of the 2017 applicants for ArtPlace’s National Creative Placemaking Fund may be found here.
About ArtPlace America
ArtPlace America (ArtPlace) is a ten-year collaboration among 16 partner foundations, along with 8 federal agencies and 6 financial institutions, that works to position arts and culture as a core sector of comprehensive community planning and development in order to help strengthen the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities. ArtPlace focuses its work on creative placemaking, projects in which art plays an intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development. This brings artists, arts organizations, and artistic activity into the suite of placemaking strategies pioneered by Jane Jacobs and her colleagues, who believed that community development must be locally informed, human-centric, and holistic.