ABCNews: With ABC's help, Long Beach Island gets NEA grant for creative placemaking

About ABC

Arts Build Communities provides expertise in how arts connects economic and community development. We help communities and arts organizations make better and more cost-effective choices in creative placemaking. We do this by conducting useful research, providing capacity building and thought leadership services, and providing continuing education This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

With ABC's help, Long Beach Island gets NEA grant for creative placemaking

By Leonardo Vazquez

The Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts & Sciences got a $25,000 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop a creative placemaking plan for the island on coastal Ocean County. Arts Build Communities helped the Foundation in its proposal by developing an outline for a planning strategy. The Foundation, Long Beach Township, ABC and other partners expect to work together to put together the plan, which will be designed to impact the entire island.

Work on the plan is expected to begin in September and continue into 2013. To develop the plan, the partners will reach out to residents and artists, explore existing conditions on the island, and identify and address opportunities and challenges for strategies that will improve the climate for creativity, enhance quality of life in the community, and promote greater prosperity on the island.

Long Beach Island is one of two communities in New Jersey to receive an Our Town grant. The other is Rahway, in Union County.

Our Town is a federally-funded program to support creative placemaking, which works to build stronger communities and local economies through the arts.