What kinds of arts and cultural activities can help communities?  That’s a pretty easy list to create.  Where should it happen? That’s a harder question. It’s the focus of Crowdmapping, the second workshop in the series of Creative Placemaking workshops sponsored by North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority.

Crowdmapping is a fun, social and serious practice that helps participants:

• Identify creative assets and opportunity areas in a community.
• Develop more sophisticated strategies for how the arts can address social, cultural and economic issues in a community.
• See an area in new ways, and turn eyesores into opportunity sites
• Make connections with one another, and build a practice of collaboration that is essential for sustainable creative placemaking.

In this workshop, you will learn by doing.  You and your classmates will crowdmap downtown Newark. (Wear comfortable walking shoes and clothes), then explore strategies for creative placemaking in the area.  Crowdmapping can be used in any type of community.

About the instructor: Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, Executive Director, The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking. Leo is a multiple award-winning planner who teaches and uses crowdmapping in his creative placemaking practice.  He is the principle author of Creative Perth Amboy, an award-winning plan with strategies developed, in part, through crowdmapping.

Workshop #3, the last workshop in the series, will take place in the early fall.

Workshop Program

8:30 to 9:00     Registration

9:00 to 9:15      Welcome – Zenobia Fields

9:15 to 9:45      Program overview | dialogue: Key Social, economic and cultural issues in Newark – Leonardo Vazquez

9:45 to 10:45   Making Space for Creativity

10:45 to 11:00 Break

11:00 to 11:15 Overview of Crowdmapping and selection of team and sites

11:15 to 12:15 Crowdmapping

12:15 to 1:00    Lunch – on your own

1:00 to 2:30     Review findings and planning discussion