Resources for Your Art

Deepen Your Creative Practice

Look and listen. We’re not here to tell you how to do your creative work. We’re here to support. We’ve been learning from your fellow creatives, and below you’ll information about community engagement, an area that can deepen the impact and sustainability of your creative practice.

• Community engagement

  What is Community Engagement? 

  Community engagement is an active, two-way, ongoing relationship between the applicant and community in the planning, participation, and evaluation of the proposed activity(ies), which includes intentional strategies for diversity, equity, access, and inclusion.  A community may be defined by geography (place), identity (attributes) or affinity (what we like).

  Why Community Engagement?

  Because it works. Community engagement is a powerful tool for increasing support for your work by developing deeper, meaningful relationships with individuals and communities. As a publicly-funded agency, it's important to the Indiana Arts Commission that all can benefit from arts opportunities. Inclusionary practice that comes with community engagement is an important tool for doing just that.

  Need to keep thinking about it? Here are some more resources to ponder over.

  Watch "For Artists: Defining Community Engagement"

• Equity and your creative practice

  Consider your suppliers, collaborators, or vendors. Does your practice make the world more or less equitable?

  • Directory of black artists and freelancers 
  • Artists Thrive Rubric - (see Power section)
• Creative placemaking

  Interested in creative placemaking? Know these organizations.

  • Placemaking Indiana
  • National Endowment for the Arts
  • ArtPlace America
  • Project for Public Spaces
  • National Consortium for Creative Placemaking (NCCP)

  Podcasts and books

  • National Endowment for the arts: How to Do Creative Placemaking
  • How to do creative placemaking, National Endowment for the Arts
  • Free Handbook for Artists Working in Community
  • Resources and toolkits

  Training and conferences

  • NCCP Certificate in Creative Placemaking