The Creative Policymaking Lab is an applied initiative advancing a central question:
How can the lessons of creative placemaking inform public policy at scale?

Building on the conceptual framework articulated in Creative Democracy: Applying the Lessons of Creative Placemaking at Scale, the Lab explores how arts, culture, and community-centered design can reshape governance, public investment, and civic participation.

Creative placemaking has demonstrated that when artists, cultural leaders, and residents co-create solutions, development becomes more inclusive and locally grounded. The Lab extends these insights into the policy arena — investigating how cultural practice can influence:

• Public decision-making processes
• Equitable capital allocation
• Participatory governance structures
• Cross-sector collaboration
• Community-led systems innovation

Rather than treating policy as a technocratic domain, the Creative Policymaking Lab positions it as a cultural and relational process — one shaped by imagination, power, and collective meaning-making.

Through research, convenings, and applied experimentation, the Lab works to integrate cultural intelligence into institutional design, strengthening democracy as a lived, creative practice.

This initiative reflects CSC’s broader commitment to aligning culture, governance, and structural transformation — ensuring that public systems are shaped with and by the communities they serve.