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Call for Sessions

Creative Placemaking Communities and South Arts invite you to submit a session proposal for the peer-to-peer exchange sessions for the upcoming South and Appalachia Creative Placemaking Summit to held in Atlanta, Georgia, March 5-8, 2024.

The deadline to submit proposals is Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 11:59pm ET.

 

The theme for this year’s Summit is People, Prosperity, Place. With a tie to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the Summit will address how creative placemaking and placekeeping can address vital and important issues by recognizing how our planet and our people can prosper and create a sense of place that is equitable, inclusive, and sustainable.

 

Although you are welcome to submit any topic related to creative placemaking, the Summit is specifically seeking sessions on the topics below:

  • Environment and Infrastructure: Creative placemaking interventions that address climate change, disaster planning, environmental sustainability, flood mitigation, vacant land use, affordable housing, and urban development, and transportation.

  • Adaptive Reuse and Creative Use of Spaces: Projects or programs that focus on places and spaces for cultural and artistic community benefit. This can include historic preservation of beloved buildings, reuse of vacant buildings and parking lots, creation of new architecturally built environments, and affordable housing for creatives.

  • Community Engagement: Projects led by grass-roots community efforts that include collaboration with artists (visual and performing) and members of a specific geographic community. These can be public art, working with ethnic and cultural communities, cultural districts and downtowns, new community arts policies and systems change.

  • Rural and Appalachia specific programs, policies, and projects: Any project within the Appalachia region or a community of less than 50,000 people.

  • Arts and Health: The use of arts as an intervention and strategy to support local, state or federal health crises, arts programs that address health inequity in communities, and arts programs in collaboration with health and human services.

  • Real Estate Development: Policies and projects directly related to real estate development which could include public art, artist/real estate developer collaborations, artists who specifically work commercially on real estate development projects.

  • Artist-led Projects: Artist collaboratives, new artist-led organizations that use creative placemaking as part of their organizational structure, ‍or projects conceived and managed specifically by visual or performing artists.

 

Session Formats

The Summit is offering the following formats to choose from for your session. Please review thoroughly to make sure your session proposal and content fits into one of these formats. Sessions should be approximately 70-75 minutes in length and can include media.

  • Hands-on Workshop (1-2 facilitators): Interactive workshops focused on teaching practical skills, strategies, and techniques. This would not be a lecture-style session

  • Panel Presentation (2-3 panelists, can include a moderator): Presentations of projects past, current and future. Panels should include a diverse set of voices, featuring perspectives from multiple disciplines, projects, backgrounds or cultures. We cannot accept a panel where all speakers are from the same company/organization. 

  • Research or Case Study Presentation (1-2 presenters): A presentation on research or a case study on one of the specific topics requested by the Summit. This can include presenters from the same organization.

 

Proposal Submission & Review Process

Please submit your proposal through the online form. We cannot accept proposals submitted through email.

 

Requirements

‍Your proposal should include a brief summary as to how your session aligns with the goals of the Summit of creating new learning opportunities, showcasing unique projects, policy and systems change, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and community engagement.

 

Acceptance will be based on completeness and quality of the application, as well as the following scoring criteria:

Total of 100 points

1. Relevance to the Summit Theme and Goals as well as the United Nations Sustainability Goals – 10 points

2. Relevance to the preferred Summit topics – 40 points

3. Relevance to the requested Summit format – 20 points

4. Collaboration (to include multiple voices and perspectives) – 10 points

5. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access (DEIA) – 10 points

6. Originality – 10 points

 

Review Process

Proposals will be evaluated and scored by the Summit Program Committee, which includes creative placemaking practitioners located in the Southeast region.

  • Please submit one proposal per applicant(s)

  • Applicants will be notified of final decision by December 18, 2023

  • If selected to present, you will be expected to register for the Summit. Selected speakers will receive a discounted rate and honorarium. There are limited scholarships available through South Arts if you can show demonstrated need for financial support.

 

Questions about the Proposal Process

The Summit will host two live Zoom meetings to answer any questions about the submission and selection process. You do not need to pre-register for the Zoom meetings and can join directly from the links below.

Monday, November 20, 2023 9:00 am PST/12 noon EST 

Monday, November 20, 2023 12:15 pm PST/3:15 pm EST

Click here to add to Google Calendar

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Please refer to the proposal FAQs on the Summit website if unable to attend the Zoom session. The Summit may add additional zoom sessions.

 

We look forward to receiving your submission!

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