Minneapolis, Minnesota

Creative CityMaking (CCM) is a multi-year civic innovation initiative embedding community artists within City of Minneapolis departments to advance the city’s “One Minneapolis” vision — eliminating disparities so all residents can participate and prosper.

Stewarded by Intermedia Arts and the City’s Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy program, CCM pairs artists with public servants to reimagine how policy, planning, and community engagement are designed and implemented.

The initiative began with artists embedded in the City’s Long Range Planning Division, where artist-planner teams developed new engagement tools that expanded participation in transportation, land use, and neighborhood development processes — reaching residents historically excluded from conventional planning systems.

As the program expanded across additional City departments, it sought to deepen understanding of how arts-based approaches can strengthen trust between government and community while reshaping institutional practice.

CSC served on the Evaluation Advisory Team, supporting the design and ongoing refinement of CCM’s comprehensive evaluation framework. The role focused on:

• Advising on evaluation design and methodology
• Supporting collective meaning-making as patterns emerged
• Examining how arts-based engagement shifted relational dynamics and institutional norms
• Identifying structural implications for long-term civic practice

Rather than measuring outputs alone, the evaluation explored how embedding artists within public agencies transformed how government listens, learns, and collaborates.

This engagement reflects CSC’s broader commitment to integrating cultural practice into governance — strengthening the relational and structural conditions necessary for equitable and participatory civic systems.