Cultural Planning & Policy
We help communities, governments, and organizations create cultural plans, public art strategies, policy frameworks, and implementation roadmaps that connect arts and culture to broader civic goals.
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Community & cultural planning · Creative placemaking · Evaluation & research
Integrating arts and culture into the ways we create our cities.
Civic Arts is a community planning and creative placemaking organization specializing in arts-based engagement, policy creation, project design, and evaluation. We work in neighborhoods, rural communities, and mid-sized cities by supporting the public agencies and creative organizations that serve them.
What we do
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Three integrated services. One methodology.
Community Engagement & Research
We design thoughtful engagement processes based on qualitative and arts-based research methods that help communities name what matters and shape what comes next.
Learn more →Evaluation, Learning & Field-Building
We support evaluation, learning, and knowledge-sharing by creating toolkits & convenings, providing technical assistance, and developing communities of practice that strengthen both individual projects and larger fields of work.
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Our approach
The Practice of Place
An arts-focused engagement, project design, and evaluation methodology that embeds belonging and community-building outcomes into the planning processes municipalities already run. Practice of Place is not a separate service — it’s the orientation we bring to every engagement.
Explore the five principles →
Recent work
Where the practice meets the place.
A look across our three services.
Creative Placemaking & Belonging at Live+Make
NEA-funded research with artists with disabilities at Imagine Art’s facility, Austin, TX. Active 2026–2027.
Austin, TXView project →
York County Public Art Toolkit
A planning toolkit and community of practice model for 72 small municipalities across York County, Pennsylvania.
York County, PAView project →
Rundberg Alliance
Project-based arts education and family engagement work in three Title I schools in Austin’s Navarro feeder zone.
Austin, TXView project →
Our foundation
A methodology house working at the edges of arts, planning, and civic life.
Civic Arts is a community planning and creative placemaking organization. We help municipalities, arts organizations, and public agencies embed belonging into the plans, projects, and programs they are already building — translating across the sectors that rarely speak the same language. The through-line is accompaniment: community agency stays at the center of everything we make together.
Our partners
For cities and regions working closely with communities to build on their strengths.
Civic Arts works with
- Small and mid-sized municipalities, community development partners, and rural county governments.
- Arts organizations, design professionals, and faith-informed organizational partners.
- Public agencies working across housing, health, transportation, sustainability, and education.
We’re built for clients who want to connect their communities more deeply with the places they live, grow their understanding of their programs, and deepen a sense of belonging.
Let’s discuss
Have a project, a plan, or an evaluation in mind?
We welcome early conversations where we can explore possibilities together.