Creative Placemaking

[Music]

my name is blair williams

and i am a creative placemaker

and i’m so excited to finally have a

name

to this thing that i’ve always been

doing this is a new relatively new field

if you will when it comes to a title

really the the term creative place

making is maybe three years old

but for many of us it’s what we’ve been

intrinsically doing in our communities

for centuries

and it’s nice to see that there’s

finally a movement behind it

so what is creative place making well

creative place making

is when members of a community come

together

and they use arts and cultural

strategies to enact

change and investment into a place or a

space

usually that change

is brought to a place or a space that we

might consider blighted

now here’s the part where my husband

last night said you’ve got to describe

blighted better

blighted is not a space that is falling

apart

that is necessarily economically

poverished that is

is uh lacking in water or roads

blighted districts can be someplace

that’s just not engaged

that doesn’t have that life force or

that energy that’s really

causing it to be a special and memorable

place that we want to visit

or go or use and that’s why

i enjoy creative place making i love

bringing that energy

not my energy but the authentic energy

of the people who are going to use that

space

and enact it and grow it and make it

change and make it special

for where they live so i want to give

you a couple of examples

of creative place making that i’ve been

a part of and that were really

fun and memorable but also really easy

and cheap the first one

when preparing for your speech you know

you have to have words that sort of help

you remind your sections remember your

sections or

your transition words and i got to

thinking as i was

teaching myself this section or

remembering it

the four words for me were chairs

music film and asking permission

now for those of you who know me well if

you see a few of you here in the

in the audience i don’t like asking

permission

and i even like asking forgiveness more

so

so i like to just go in and get stuff

done and

hope that it is meaningful that’s a

great part of creative placemaking so

back in 2008

i and some investor partners purchased a

building in downtown helena montana

i don’t know if you heard this but 2008

was not a great time to buy a piece of

real estate

and think that you would invest in it

and tr turn it into

let’s say livable space but we did so

why did i do this well i had done a

building

a few months earlier i’d taken on the

redevelopment of a project

and the truth is it was a building that

my husband and i would pass

for about seven years and every time we

would pass by it i would say

you know somebody otta you know that’s a

great space if somebody would just

and one day looking out the window of my

office at this

old brick building four stories high

in what would be considered a blighted

district

i called my husband and i said i think

we’re going to do that building

and he said do you have an account i

don’t know about

i said i think i can figure this out now

that particular project i’m not going to

talk about it became sort of my master’s

degree if you will in what to do and

what not to do

which isn’t always a good it’s always

good to have those projects

but because of the energy that i brought

to that district and through that

building

by the way i’m an arts administrator and

i owned a public relations firm

not a developer but the energy that i

was able to bring to that district and

began to see that district changed

created an opportunity wherein owners of

another building reached out to me and

said

we no longer want to own our space we’ve

been partners for a number of years we’d

like to move on

and we only want to hand it off to

somebody who has great energy

and great ideas and we think that you’re

the person

now again i work in the arts

and i am a public i worked in public

relations i didn’t have a lot of money

this was a four million dollar building

but lo and behold i was able to put it

together

but why did i take on this project

because it was in a blighted district

that was the part that excited me so

this was a

an area in downtown where they had

blocked off the street in the 1970s to

create a walking mall

hoping that it would create this

vibrancy and excitement

the problem is it didn’t because the

culture at that time was

driven no pun intended by their

automobiles and where they could pull

right up to and so this became a space

that people just traversed through

and could hardly wait to get to the next

place it wasn’t anything special

so a few days after we purchased the

building i began the process

of asset mapping which is my favorite

part of creative place making

and it’s when you go out and you

determine what are those things that we

already have

or what are those things that are at our

disposal that we can

instigate and cultivate and energize to

make this space

what it needs to be so i stood for a few

moments in front of the

building out on the walking wall and i

said we’ve got pocket parks they’re

already here

beautiful trees we even have a space

right next door to the building where a

building once stood but had burned down

and the city had invested in

redeveloping it into a stage

and a performance center but there were

never any performances there

because people didn’t know how to use

public space that’s a great part of

creative place making

is reminding people that they don’t have

to ask for permission

to use those public spaces we’ve all

invested in them

we’ve all created these places in these

spaces these sidewalks these

these are um parks these these open

areas but we don’t know how to engage

with them

and so using arts and cultural

programming skills and strategies i get

to bring those into these spaces and

figure out

how to to engage that energy

so i talked to you a little bit about

chairs music and film

those are the three strategies that we

used to

totally bring this district back to life

when we took it on 87 of the commercial

real estate on that block

sat empty

my first choice my first option or skill

we bought chairs adirondack chairs 30 of

them

every morning i’d have my husband and my

building manager drag those chairs out

and i said don’t put them just in front

of our building drag them all down the

block

and just put them into little gatherings

of twos and threes

for the first three days we began to see

people’s pace slowed

as they were walking through our

district of course they were looking at

the chairs like

who put that there and why should i sit

and i don’t know and who and where

that was okay you know it was quite the

fun social experiment by day

7 to 10 they were sitting in the chairs

they were

they were utilizing the chairs walking

their dogs and

taking a break but again still waiting

for somebody to tell them that they

weren’t supposed to sit there

that chair was just for looking at

by day 15 to 30 people

were clamoring for the chairs 11 o’clock

lunch

time they’d be running out to pull three

or four chairs together and to sit in

them and have their lunch

and look up and look at the architecture

that had been there for over 100 years

but they had never really taken a chance

to take it in

or to look at those pocket parks or to

look at that square

or to look at that empty storefront by

the second month we had people walking

into our office

and saying ah i hate to bother you but

i’ve always

wanted to open a knitting shop and i see

that there’s a space over there and

we were armed and ready we had the lists

of the

contact information for all the

landlords some of them even gave us keys

and we were giving tours

we had uh information from the sba or

bankers or the downtown association the

chamber whatever it would take

to get them energized to begin to invest

their energy their time their soul

their authenticity into this place

chairs

that’s all we used

the second was music twice only twice

did we pay musicians to play on this

walking wall

not on a saturday not on a sunday middle

of the week

people stopping to dance people starting

to look around bringing their blankets

to have their lunch in these pocket

parks and watch the music

why do i say that we only paid for it

twice because it only took twice and

then we had musicians coming to us and

again knocking on our door and saying

is it okay if i play music that’s your

space

play the music yeah but don’t i need a

permit or don’t they need to talk

no just play the music it’s not gonna

kill anybody

you know we started to see music pop up

more and more

the third way film we bought a cheap

projector

a blow up screen and we started offering

film in that little empty square

coffee shop right next door to the

square they used to close every day at

one o’clock why

because there was nothing going on then

in that district they started staying

open later

next thing you know they were staying

open until nine or ten o’clock because

we had our films and offering free

popcorn

they began to thrive by the end of our

first year

we’ve gone from 87 percent down to 13

percent

vacant retail spaces we shot we saw

knitting shops book stores coffee store

shops

galleries all of those things none of

them we curated

we let the community curate them for

themselves but we provided

the creative place making energy to

redesign that space

and how exciting and how many people

would come up to us and say

why are you doing this you don’t gain

anything

we all gain when we creatively place

make

right we all create a stronger more

connected community when we create those

gathering places that we can

share our ideas and our thoughts and our

dreams

and grow our community

did you know that last year

the investment made by the national

endowment for the arts

in our country returned a 60 billion

dollar economic impact

did you know that the idaho commission

on the arts has a two million dollar a

year

budget and last year that two million

dollars of investment

in our state had a return of 62 million

dollars

that’s a 31 return i mean come on

where are you going to get that right

and most of it was just energy and

excitement

and investment of people into place

the other example i want to tell you of

creative place making

was when i was young here in coeur

d’alene

and it was through my mother and it’s

where i really think i began to learn

this process so we had just moved back

to coeur d’alene

hayden really living in out by avondale

my father was an avid golfer and on the

board of directors for the

golf course at avondale and came home

one night and said to my mother

by the way we’ve taken over the

management of the club

and she said who’s we and

they needed to try to figure out a way

to get people to connect to that place

now that used to just be by the way a

little original log cabin

out there on the golf course and

neighbors moving in

but neighbors more and more

disconnecting from one another

and so on a day not unlike today with

the snow falling and deep

my mother called together people in our

district

who had skills or had resources or

assets remember asset mapping

to pull them together to create a

gathering place

for all of us to invest ourselves again

and meet one another the woman across

the street used to be an ice capade

she said jenny grab your skates meet me

down at the uh

lake you’re going to be at avondale lake

at noon you’re going to be teaching ice

skating

she called a couple down the fairway and

said i know you’ve taught your six kids

how to

cross-country ski grab all the cross

country skis meet me at the clubhouse

she called the woman down the lake who

made

homemade marshmallows she called the

gentleman who had a horse ranch but also

had a horse sleigh

and a guitar and had him come out by the

afternoon we had 85 families gathering

together and sharing these experiences

with one another

in this place that was about to close

down because nobody knew how to use it

and when they gathered and came together

they themselves began

to say to themselves you know it might

be nice if we had some weddings here

sometime or what if we did this

or what if we did that and they sat back

and let the space

expand upon its own that day is still

one of my most favorite childhood

memories

ice skating driving around in a

horse-drawn sleigh and singing songs

making homemade marshmallows

but most importantly gathering with

people

creative place making allows the

opportunity for us to gather

and for us to share and when we have

those shared experiences

we take them back into the veins of our

city

and we continue to expand upon the idea

of gathering together and sharing these

experiences not unlike this today

and that’s why creative placemaking is

so important to what we do

so i’m inviting you all to leave here

today

and to become a creative placemaker

yourself

asset map your neighborhood the district

that you work

your town and figure out how you can

make those places that you drive by or

see or encounter and you say to yourself

you know somebody otta

i’m challenging you all to otta

thank you