City and county arts leaders,
The National Association of Counties (NACo) has announced the second round of its Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge. The program is led by NACo with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Americans for the Arts serves as the national partner providing policy and other technical assistance. There is no cost to counties to participate other than staff time.
As public funding becomes increasingly strained, counties must search for and employ new strategies to improve their communities and make healthier, more equitable places for residents to live, work and play. The Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge invites counties with populations of less than 150,000 to form multidisciplinary teams to compete in a challenge competition to identify and strengthen ways to integrate arts into solutions to local challenges. Teams that submit winning applications will attend an in-person, one-day training and peer exchange workshop in July 2022, in or around Denver, Colorado, in conjunction with NACo’s Annual Conference.
We encourage you to forward this opportunity to your county arts leaders. For more information, please see the Creative Counties Placemaking Challenge application (due February 7, 2022). Also, please check out the new website for full application details and send any questions to CreativeCounties@naco.org.
Good luck!
-Americans for the Arts