In late 2017, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and the town of Natick partnered to develop a creative placemaking strategy for Natick Center, a downtown hub of the town. As part of the strategy development, MAPC and the town implemented a series of temporary creative placemaking demonstration projects to test potential recommendations for the strategy. Part of the impetuous of the Natick Center creative placemaking strategies is to provide information and resources to the American Planning Association’s (APA) current National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)-funded development of a Creative Placemaking KnowledgeBase to support planners implementing creative placemaking initiatives around the country. The APA project also included partnerships with Americans for the Arts (AFTA) and The Townscape Institute. AFTA’s role in the Natick Center portion of the project was to evaluate the impact of the creative placemaking demonstration projects to see if the artworks addressed the goals outlined below.

 

This document, prepared by AFTA, is the final report outlining the evaluation of the temporary creative placemaking demonstration projects that were installed for the weekend of November 3rd, 2018 for a two-week run until the week of November 12th. Six creatives, or artists, were selected to design and install their projects through a request for proposals (RFP). The proposals were reviewed by an artists’ selection committee with the final selection approved by the Natick Public Art Commission. The projects once installed were evaluated based on the impact of the temporary projects on Natick Center and how the projects were able to address the Natick’s creative placemaking goals. This report does not specifically address the selection of the creatives or the development of the projects and focuses on the impact and success of the installed projects.