Ann Markusen is Director of the Arts Economy Initiative and the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and Principal of Markusen Economic Research. She is a researcher, frequent public speaker, and advisor to public agencies, policymakers, businesses, economic developers, and nonprofit organizations across the US, in Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and Brazil. Her expertise is in economic development at the state and local level, where she brings analytical skills to bear on the ways that industries and occupations shape possibilities for creating good work. Markusen is currently serving as research and writing consultant for the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Living Wage Jobs. Markusen’s research and policy work has also been directly toward pressing economic development issues at national and local scales, including business tax incentives (Reining in the Competition for Capital, 2007), minimum wage legislation, military industrial conversion (Arming the Future: a Defense Industry for the 20th Century, 1999; Dismantling the Cold War Economy, 1992; The Rise of the Gunbelt, 1991) high tech job growth (High Tech America 1985), energy boomtowns, and state/local public finance. Over the years, her op eds have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and many regional dallies, and she has been a frequent radio and television commentator.

1. Creative Placemaking:
How do We Know it Works?
Ann Markusen
Arts Economy Initiative
Humphrey School
University of Minnesota
Markusen Economic Research
annmarkusen.com
Art of Placemaking
Conference
Providence, RI
November 8, 2013
Creative Communities
Artist Data User Guide
Ann Markusen
and
Greg Schrock

2. What are the Place-based Missions of Arts and
Culture?
Instrumental missions: art/culture as a means to
other ends
Economic development:
arts activities produce output, jobs, incomes,
and neighborhood revitalization
Educational:
arts competence improves children’s
mathematics performance

4. Creative placemaking:
*animates public and private spaces
*rejuvenates structures and
streetscapes
*improves local business viability and
public safety
*brings diverse people together to
celebrate, inspire, and be inspired
with arts and culture at its core!

5. Intrinsic missions: unique
contributions of art/culture:
Beauty
Emotional insight
Innovation
Social and political critique
Spiritual aspiration
Bonding: cherishing and passing
tradition on
Bridging: learning about other cultures
and sharing
Expression: Bill Ivey’s “the right to an
expressive life”
McCarthy, Kevin, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, Laura Zakaras, and Arthur Brooks. 2004. Gifts
of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts.
www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG218/
Ivey, Bill. 2008. Arts, Inc: How Greed and Neglect have Destroyed our Cultural Rights. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

6. Analogy with community health clinics
We don’t ask community health clinics what
impact they have on surrounding businesses or
property values
We want to know if they are improving
community health!

7. Question 1:
From your own experience or from
other cases you know, what are ways
of demonstrating the unique,
intrinsic contributions of arts and
culture as features of placemaking?

8. The Challenges in Evaluating the
Results of a Creative Placemaking
Project

9. International Journal of Urban Sciences
forthcoming. Published on-line, September
2013:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1
080/12265934.2013.836291

10. Question 2:
How are you dealing with the
problem that even if your creative
placemaking efforts are bearing fruit,
other forces in the same area are
undercutting (or contributing to)
overall success?

11. 100%
87%
287%
383%
133%
179%
0%
50%
100%
150%
200%
250%
300%
350%
400%
450%
1980 1990 2000 2005-2009
Population Growth: Riverside's Neighborhood vs. Reno and Washoe County
Riverside Neighborhood Reno Washoe County

12. A closing future-looking question:
How can we and other creative placemakers
generate more conversation and reflection
on the place-targeted missions of arts and
culture ?
…and how can we best evaluate, improve and
share the remarkable practices currently
bubbling up everywhere?

13. Ann Markusen
Director, Arts Economy Initiative
Humphrey School of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota
http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/pri
e/index.html
markusen@umn.edu
Principal, Markusen Economic
Research
annmarkusen.com
Creative Placemaking Arts.gov
New and forthcoming:
Creative Cities: A Ten-Year Research Agenda
Journal of Urban Affairs, Spring 2014
Diversifying Support for Artists
GIA Reader, Fall 2013
Artists Work Everywhere
Work and Occupations, Fall 2013
From Audience to Participant
(With Alan Brown)
Theater and its Audiences, 2014
Spatial Divisions of Labor:
How Key Worker Profiles Vary for the Same
Industry in Different Regions
(With Anne Gadwa Nicodemus)
Handbook of Economic Geography and
Industry Studies, 2013