A new wave of creative placemaking is underway as part of ArtPlace, an innovative partnership model of foundations, corporations and government agencies that supports community building through the arts. Irvine is pleased to support this unique program for the second year in a row, having contributed $2 million to ArtPlace to support California-based projects among those supported nationally by the initiative.

ArtPlace was created in 2010 as a partnership among 11 foundations, six banks and eight federal agencies (including the National Endowment for the Arts) to transform urban and rural communities throughout the country by using the arts as an economic driver. To date, the initiative has raised more than $50 million in support of the various projects. The most recent cycle of grants, announced Monday, provides $15.4 million in support of 47 projects that were chosen out of more than 2,200 letters of inquiry. Six of those 47 projects will take place in California.

The approach being taken by ArtPlace, known as “creative placemaking,” has emerged over the past 20 years as a promising way to increase the vitality of communities and help them grow. Irvine is pleased to support this partnership because of ArtPlace’s resonance with our belief that the arts create meaningful ongoing “bridging and bonding” connections among Californians, fostering a vibrant, inclusive society. In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts built on its two decades of work in creative placemaking by announcing the first grants in its new Our Town program, designed to support public-private partnerships to strengthen the arts while energizing the overall community. ArtPlace takes this movement a step further, as the first major public-private partnership to encourage creative placemaking across America.

The full list of 47 projects includes the following in California:

• Illuminating Downtown – $600,000 – City of San Jose Public Art, San Jose. The artist-led llluminating Downtown Program combines art, high-tech strategies and environmental sustainability to physically manifest San Jose’s aspirational goals for creating a more engaging downtown that looks, feels and acts like the Capital of Silicon Valley.
• Esperanza’s Cultural Continuum – $290,900 – Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Los Angeles. Through Esperanza’s Cultural Continuum project, Mercado La Paloma will become a place to explore and experience the indigenous cultures of the diverse residents of South Los Angeles with fixed media exhibits, film screenings, music performances, dance, workshops, cooking classes, tastings and lectures, creating a cultural focal point in this south Los Angeles neighborhood.
• The Hunger Cycle – $342,500 – Cornerstone Theater Company, Los Angeles. Advancing the local food movement, Cornerstone Theater Company will produce a series of plays developed with local communities that transform unusual spaces into theatrical venues while connecting community members with farmers and fresh local foods to stimulate new consumer chains.
• Broadway Cultural Quarter - $470,000 – City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles. Famed architect Thom Mayne and Morphosis Architects will provide pre-development work on the Broadway Arts Center, a mixed-use facility featuring affordable artists’ housing and studios, performance, rehearsal and exhibition space in L.A.’s historic Theater Row.
• Building Imagination in California’s Central Valley – $176,177 – California State University, Stanislaus College of the Arts, Modesto. The Imagination Center activates a stagnant downtown Modesto strip with a new exhibit space for time-based media, featuring indoor and outdoor video screenings, training and art-making activities, and a visual art exhibition space.
• SCI-Arc Arts District Anchor Project – $400,000 – Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles. SCI-Arc is reaching out into the emerging Los Angeles Arts District around its new facility by constructing two new public performance/lecture spaces and managing programming for a third public programming venue in a new development across the street.