SPOTLIGHT: The Dignity Museum shares stories of the forgotten

A traveling exhibit, “The Dignity Museum”, created by Love Beyond Walls, an Atlanta-based non-profit shares the stories of the forgotten. Through interactive technology, storytelling and thought-provoking questions, visitors confront their ideas of homelessness and what it takes to escape it.

The Cultural Placekeeping Guide

The Cultural Placekeeping Guide: How to Create a Network for Local Emergency Action introduces a network-building approach for safeguarding and strengthening local arts and culture communities. These self-help emergency action networks supplement and coordinate with the existing disaster management system to foster community cohesion and connectedness when a crisis strikes. 

SPOTLIGHT: Drawing Good at The Sketch Effect

The Sketch Effect make ideas understandable and actionable through awesome visual communication. They partner with non-profit organizations in underserved communities in Atlanta, GA in a project called “Drawing Good”.

Sharpsburg Youth Design Camp How-to-Guide

The Youth Design Camp was a 3-day immersive program in Sharpsburg, KY that aimed to equip students with design principles and how those can be applied to community life.

Paint Your State

By incorporating watercolor painting into a community conversation or planning meeting, you can reduce technological distractions such as people responding to emails or scrolling on social media.

Where I’m From

George Ella Lyon’s poem helps open up conversations about our unique lives and shared life experiences.

Found Poetry

Found Poetry allows us to “flip-the-script” on narratives that only tell a negative or one-sided view of an issue.

Chalk & Talk

‘Chalk and Talk’ seeks to engage people in a creative and accessible way about their feelings, thoughts, and views on their city’s downtown.

POW!

This free toolkit created by Iowa State University Extension & Outreach is a one-stop resource for planning and implementing community art projects.

Community Collage

Community Collage encourages activity, creativity and dialogue with neighbors by asking participants to envision ways to create a more safe, welcoming, interactive or fun community.

SPOTLIGHT: The What’s Good Project

Artist Jennifer Drinkwater’s The What’s Good Project curates creative conversation around asset-based community development in a digital space.

SPOTLIGHT: Higher Ground Community Theater

Higher Ground uses oral histories, music, visual art and community conversations as the inspiration for dialogue, created and shared by local actors from diverse walks of life, about specific issues in Harlan County, Kentucky.

SPOTLIGHT: Urality’s Story Maps

Urality's Story Maps provide curated, interactive experiences within your community by merging location, media, and narrative to tell a story through a platform for building well designed, interactive map-based content.

SPOTLIGHT: Aria Strategies’ City of Rochester Neighborhood Safety Plans

Aria Strategies teamed up with The Office of Neighborhood Safety to establish and implement a community-based intervention and prevention strategy to combat and eliminate violence in the City of Rochester through public meetings and group engagements.

Story Circles

A story circle is a structured engagement technique to promote deep listening & productive conversation.

SPOTLIGHT: Maryland SBDC supports Bekoz Strategic Marketing

Maryland Small Business Development Center (SBDC) provides ongoing support for local small businesses like Bekoz Strategic Marketing, who in turn, dedicate their business endeavors to community enhancement and social improvement through event management, campaign creation, and creative conversation strategies.

SPOTLIGHT: Yes And… Laughter Lab (YALL)

The Yes And… Laughter Lab (YALL) is a competitive incubation lab, pitch program and showcase that lifts up the best comedy writers and performers creating new comedy about topics that matter, with a focus on BIPOC, immigrant, Muslim, LGBTQ, and female talent and bringing people together to connect about urgent topics like racial justice, gender equity, climate change, and Islamophobia.

SPOTLIGHT: Black in Appalachia: the Podcast

Through historical and contemporary stories of people, places and experiences, hosts Enkeshi El-Amin and Angela Dennis interrogate what it means to be Black in Appalachia, creating space where under-told stories can be heard and Black identity can be reclaimed.