Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice

Cara Courage is an arts and placemaking academic and practitioner and is Head of Tate Exchange, Tate’s programme and spaces dedicated to socially engaged art and the role of art in society. Her book, Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (2017), presents case-study research on social practice placemaking. Cara has also completed a project as Research Adjunct on the metrics of creative placemaking with Thriving Cities, an initiative of University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and continues her own social practice arts in place projects.

Anita McKeown is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and researcher working in creative placemaking, Open Source Culture/Technology and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education. Anita works for Art Services Unincorporated (ASU), an itinerant strategic platform which co-creates local-scale interventions that are context-responsive and ecologically sensitive, arising from extended relationships with people and place. ASU’s interventions are underpinned by the permacultural resilience framework and practical toolkit, a critical praxis for Creative Placemaking, trialled in London, Dublin and New Mexico (2008–15). Anita’s current research includes codesres: Co-designing for resilience in rural development through peer-to-peer networks and STEAM.