An Update from the Creative Placemaking Lab

We’re pleased to bring you this update regarding a few things the Creative Placemaking Lab has been working on this fall:

• Artscape hosted Spaceworks at our head office for a two day visit this September. Spaceworks is a “non-profit real estate organization dedicated to expanding the supply of long-eterm, affordable rehearsal and studio space for artists in New York City”. Spaceworks staff Paul Parkhill, Josh Rowe and Preeti Sodhi spent time meeting with Artscape senior staff, touring our projects, and also presented their work to our staff here to share ideas and inspiration.
• The Creative Placemaking Lab held the third of four webinars in our 2013 series on October 2. Shared Spaces, Shared Values: Building Partnerships for Community Cultural Hubs” featured Noël Raymond, Co-Director of innovative community cultural hub Pillsbury House in Minneapolis as well as Artscape’s own Seema Jethalal and Tim Jones to learn about Community Cultural Hubs and the role of partnership building and community engagement in Creative Placemaking projects. Our fourth and final webinar for the 2013 series will be held November 6th. Titled “School’s Out: Repurposing Surplus Schools as Cultural Spaces”, this webinar will hear from Artscape’s Executive Vice President, Celia Smith and Wendy Holmes, Senior Vice President, Consulting & Strategic Partnerships, Artspace USA for a discussion on unique approaches to the adaptive reuse of surplus schools for arts and cultural uses. Spots are still available – register here!
• We are pleased to be hosting an intern from the University of Toronto during the 2013-2014 academic year. Francesco Petrisano is a fourth year student at the University of Toronto’s Urban Studies program, and will be busy contributing to the CPL’s programs and activities throughout the year.
• Creative Placemaking Lab’s Pru Robey is busy instructing the second session of Creative Placemaking. Designed and written by Artscape for the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Cultural Planning and Development, this course helps students acquire the knowledge, skills and inspiration required to investigate, develop and implement creative placemaking projects in their own communities. This semester’s session includes students from all across Canada, the US, and beyond!
• Artscape is leading the Creative Spaces Outside the Core initiative, working with several partners across Toronto neighbourhoods to better understand cultural space needs in underserved areas. We are in the midst of roundtable meetings and will be posting meeting summaries. We are also crowd sourcing potential creative space developments, so lease tell us about projects you’ve heard about, and we will add them to our growing list of potential projects. All of this can be found on Artscape DIY.

If you’d like any information about any of the above, please get in touch!