A “relationship guide” to forging strong and sustainable creative partnerships between local governments and artists.
Municipal-Artist Partnerships are collaborations between local governments and artists that use creative processes to rethink and improve spaces and systems for their communities. To support growing interest in these collaborations, this new practical resource was created to guide city employees, artists, and arts agencies to achieve positive and powerful artistic and civic results. Created over the course of three years of research, the Municipal-Artist Partnerships guide is the first publicly available platform of its kind designed to answer common questions about how to approach, structure, and evaluate these collaborations. The MAP guide gives focus to the risks, responsibilities, and rewards that arise when artists and municipalities work together. It helps users visualize a spectrum of partnership models and projects to demonstrate the diversity of this work, and to develop a unique model for their municipality. The guide features:
- Models for integrating artists’ work in municipal settings
- Guiding principles, values & quality practices, and reflections on common challenges and ways to approach them
- Value-add and impacts of engaging artists in municipal settings
- Profiles of partnerships across the U.S. that portray a spectrum of municipal-artist partnership structures and projects
- Model documents, tools, and frameworks to guide planning, implementation, and evaluation
- Links to multimedia examples that provide a picture of this work and the voices of partners
Funding for this guide to Municipal-Artist Partnerships has been provided by Our Town, the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program, and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.
