CREATIVE PLACEMAKING: A CASE STUDY EXPLORATION OF HOW CREATIVE ECONOMY STRATEGIES CAN PROVIDE POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR REVITALIZATION IN DOWNTOWN CHICOPEE, MA

Chicopee, a former industrial center in western Massachusetts, is experiencing a stagnant economy, high vacancy and a steady loss of population. City of Chicopee wants to increase downtown visibility and bolster its economy by attracting in the area people constituent of creative class. This research represents an attempt to identify creative strategies to develop the neglected downtown of Chicopee. After more than a century of economic blight, vacancy and declining population, the city wants to research and exploit the potential of arts and culture as means to a physical, social and economic revivification of its downtown. A key aim of this study is to formulate a set of best practices and recommendation based on relevant literature and case studies. These evaluations and recommendations would assists the city of Chicopee to craft policies, as they would find appropriate, to help increasing the downtown area economic performance and at large the city economic growth. The recommendations could also serve to the community groups, such as artists, entrepreneurs, students and young professional that want to join their forces to promote community values and redevelopment

The memory space: Exploring future uses of Web 2.0 and mobile internet through design interventions.

The QuVis Quantum Mechanics Visualization project aims to address challenges of quantum mechanics instruction through the development of interactive simulations for the learning and teaching of quantum mechanics. In this article, we describe evaluation of simulations focusing on two-level systems developed as part of the Institute of Physics Quantum Physics resources. Simulations are research-based and have been iteratively refined using student feedback in individual observation sessions and in-class trials. We give evidence that these simulations are helping students learn quantum mechanics concepts at both the introductory and advanced undergraduate level, and that students perceive simulations to be beneficial to their learning.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in the American Journal of Physic

THE GALLERY AS A SITE OF CONVERGENCE: THE ROLE OF CREATIVE ENVIRONMENTS AT POSTSECONDARY INSTITUTIONS

Not enough research explores the role of creative environments at postsecondary institutions. In response, this qualitative research study focuses upon university galleries believing them to be exemplary artistic spaces within college campuses. Using a theoretical framework of place-consciousness, the researcher examined the functions of the Mary and Carter Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco (USF), paying close attention to the ways it engaged the academic community in terms of scholarship and instruction. Informed by grounded theory and phenomenology, this study interviewed five professors who integrated a gallery visit into their curriculum during the 2021-2022 academic year. Collecting these first-hand perspectives and experiences, the study arrived at a collective understanding of the gallery’s role at USF concerning its pedagogical, aesthetic, spatial and social dimensions

New Urban Decorum? City Aesthetics To And Fro

From the municipal and civic perspective, improving the environment responds to the idea “to make a more beautiful city”, answering to the jump from the industrial city to the metropolitan one, and then to the different attempts for ordering cities during the twentieth century. To and fro refers to the journey into the past and arriving in the present. Urban decorum raises the question of What? Who? Where? but especially the How? The issues raised by the “urban decorum” are not new. They emerge, firstly, from boredom inherent in urban life with the consequent need for self-expression and, secondly, from the grass-root processes based on mutual support that intend to take part in improving the quality of the built environment, of the urbanscape, in the city, empowering citizens in the process of “city making” and decision-making

The Role of the Creative Economy in Sustainability Planning and Development

This paper reviews Creative Economy theory and practice and attempts to intersect the author’s findings with Sustainability Planning and Development theory and practice. An extensive literature review, including over 40 publications (articles, reports, white papers, conference proceedings and books) as well as interviews, personal observations and website reviews was used to develop this paper and the author’s conclusions. Current Creative Economy and Sustainability theories are explained and analyzed as well as the role of the artist, the entrepreneur, the city and cultural organizations. The author provides recommendations for the City of Portland, Maine and concludes that the qualitative benefits of the non-commercial creative economy such as clean air, beauty, cross-cultural communication, and community capital must be balanced with the predominant efforts geared toward developing the quantitative benefits of the creative economy’s commercial sector and measures of GDP

LAGI Glasgow. [Exhibition]

LAGI Glasgow was an exhibition, held 9 June - 29 July 2016, The Lighthouse, Glasgow. It demonstrated the potential for artists, designers and architects to contribute to renewable energy infrastructure and integrate it into a place-making approach. The project undertook research and development integrating art and interdisciplinary creative processes into the conception of site-specific, solution-based public art interventions which also function as innovative renewable energy power plants

Art as Infrastructure: An evaluation of civic art and public engagement in four communities in south Los Angeles County

This report is an evaluation of a range of outcomes at the four sites in the Creative Graffiti Abatement Project in Los Angeles County. This report evaluates the success of arts-based strategies in shifting perceptions, increasing positive activity, reducing graffiti vandalism, building a sense of community ownership and building capacity for future arts and culture activities at the sites. While this report takes a summative approach to evaluating outcomes, the evaluator was embedded in planning and public engagement activities throughout the project, combining elements of a developmental evaluation approach with strategies from ethnographic inquiry. The report offers detailed recommendations for public art commissioning agencies, arts organizations, artists and evaluators implementing similar projects