A Few Words from Debbie

#LansingPlacemakers Here We Come!

We have received an overwhelming response to our upcoming Creative Placemaking Summit. Three weeks ago, we sold out all 150 seats!  And since then, we have gotten phone calls, emails and texts from not only the Lansing area, but throughout the state, inquiring as to whether we could squeeze in just one more.

The Arts Council is proud to bring community leaders and national experts together to create a shared understanding and commitment toward making our community a better place to live, work and visit. And while there are so many positive things happening in metro Lansing, we understand that we still have much to accomplish before the scales tip in our favor. The Creative Placemaking Summit identified four key goals early in the planning process:

1. The event would educate us all, put us all on the same page and create a better understanding of what placemaking is.

2. It would showcase creative placemaking projects in other communities and bring focus to their successes and challenges.

3. It would allow us to imagine, through the eyes of some of our leaders, where we could be and what we could achieve if we found common ground.

4. And most importantly – it would enable us to take what we talk about and walk out the door and ACT–put our money, resources, time and relationships into building more creative and dynamic neighborhoods and communities.

Our objective has always been to find more ways to make all the places where people meet, mingle and gather into truly welcoming places through the power of the arts and through citizen-inspired design. We want our spaces to be lively, livable places where people want to be, and we know that art, culture and creativity is critical to this success!  We want our neighborhoods, our community, our region to be authentic, original and special –– we don’t want to be like, nor should we be like, anywhere else on earth!

For those of you joining us tomorrow, this is what you’ll be hearing. For those of you who missed out on getting a seat at the table, your consolation is that next year we’ve already booked a bigger space (mark your calendars for October 6, 2016), and we’re taping the sessions so you can view them in the future. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram by using the hashtag #lansingplacemakers

We are looking forward to a day of learning, discovering, imagining and acting! Let the Creative Placemaking Summit begin.

Deborah E. Mikula

Executive Director