ASU Herberger Institute receives NEA Our Town grant

Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town grant, as recently announced by NEA chairman Jane Chu. The 89 awards, totaling $6.89 million to support projects across the nation, included a $100,000 grant to support the Creative Placemaking Policy Fellows program at ASU's Herberger Institute.

The NEA received 274 eligible applications for Our Town this year and will make grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.

“The arts reflect the vision, energy and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” Chu said. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support organizations such as the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, to cultivate vitality in their communities through the arts.”

The Herberger Institute will partner with the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, which is led by Herberger Institute Professor Michael Rohd, to establish a Creative Placemaking Policy Fellows program with practitioners who have led successful partnerships between the arts and community development fields. Fellows will work together to identify potential barriers to successful creative placemaking and strategies for overcoming them and to find ways to infuse the work across the community development field. They will also produce training tools, such as a podcast, video or piece of writing, for dissemination.

For a complete list of projects recommended for Our Town grant support, visit the NEA website at arts.gov. The NEA recently relaunched the creative placemaking web page, which has multiple resources.