NEA 2023NEA01OT: 2023 Our Town

A. Waller (College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture )
J. J. Barrios (Public & Applied Humanities)


UArizona may submit two proposals to this funding program.

Through Our Town, the NEA is proud to support creative placemaking projects that integrate arts, culture, and design into local efforts that strengthen communities over the long-term. The program demonstrates the ways in which artists, culture bearers, and designers can help to: 

• Bring new attention to or elevate key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or civic infrastructure;
• Inject new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy;
• Envision new possibilities for a community or place—a new future, a way of approaching a new opportunity, overcoming a challenge, or problem-solving;
• Connect communities, people, places, and economic opportunity through physical spaces or new partnerships and relationships; or
• Honor traditions shaped by the lived experience of a community’s residents, such as music, dance, design, crafts, fashion, cuisine, and oral expression.

Our Town projects engage a wide range of local stakeholders in efforts to advance local economic, physical, or social outcomes in communities. Competitive projects are responsive to unique local conditions, authentically engage communities, advance artful lives, and lay the groundwork for long-term systems change. (Systems changes can include, for example: establishment of new and sustained cross-sector partnerships; shifts in institutional structure, practices or policies; replication or scaling of innovative project models; or establishment of training programs).