Last month, a group of 24 transportation officials, engineers, planners, artists, policymakers, and advocates from around the country gathered together in Indianapolis to sweat and scheme about how to use arts and culture to build support for more equitable transportation infrastructure.
Twenty-four leaders, ArtPlace America and T4America gathered in Indy for a rare opportunity to talk transportation and creative placemaking.
Twenty-four leaders, ArtPlace America and T4America gathered in Indy for a rare opportunity to talk transportation and creative placemaking.
Transportation for America (a program of Smart Growth America) and ArtPlace America co-hosted this working group, which was graciously hosted by Big Car Collaborative and the Harrison Center for the Arts, two of many incredible organizations working at the intersection of arts, culture, and community development in Indy.
We chose Indianapolis partly because Indy voters approved a 0.25 percent income tax hike back in November 2016 to drastically improve bus service. The new tax will raise more than $54 million annually for the construction of three bus rapid transit lines, new buses, increased route frequency and new sidewalks and bus shelters. But the devil is in the details, and Indy-based transportation, community development and arts organizations and individuals are keen on ensuring that these new investments serve existing residents by centering community input through arts and culture. Local organizations like Transit Drives Indy, LISC, House Poem, Big Car, IndyGo, and others have invested in creative placemaking practices to tackle the role of transportation in improving access and quality of life for everyone in the Indianapolis region. (T4A will also be working closely with Transit Drives Indy over the coming year as part of the Cultural Corridor Consortium.)
Geoff Anderson, President of Smart Growth America, welcomes the working group.
During our time in Indianapolis, the working group visited a few sites including a complete streets project at Maple Crossing, part of Great Places 2020, and Big Car’s Artist & Public Life Residency, an artists’ housing and community land trust development. We also heard from leaders of creative placemaking projects around the country; working group participants Amanda Newman, Joseph Kunkel, Alan Nakagawa, and Peter Svarzbein shared stories from their roles as the creative instigators behind incredible arts-driven transportation projects in Takoma Park, MD, Kewa Pueblo, NM, Los Angeles, CA, and El Paso, TX, respectively.
We ended our time together by breaking into four groups — federal, state and regional, local municipal, and local advocacy — to brainstorm specific ideas and initiatives to further support the adoption of arts and cultural strategies as crucial to solving challenges within the transportation sector.