Community Progress is issuing a call for artists, arts organizations, design agencies, or similar entities in the St. Louis region to develop an interactive, temporary indoor arts and placemaking installation as part of RVP 2024. View the full RFP.

About the Arts & Placemaking Installation Opportunity 

The Center for Community Progress encourages the integration of creative placemaking into community revitalization strategies. 

Community Progress seeks an artist, arts or design organization, or other similar entity to create an interactive installation to showcase the value and impact of creative placemaking, collaboration between artists and local government, and/or incorporation of artmaking into revitalization policy and practice.  

The installation will be temporary and will be constructed and displayed indoors during RVP in a 20’ x 30’ space in the grand foyer. 

A key component of the installation should be to create an interactive experience for conference attendees that celebrates and elevates the role of creative placemaking in community revitalization. This may include engaging conference attendees to participate in a visioning project, artists’ office hours, performances, interactive activities, a “mock vacant lot” arts project, and more.  

The goals of the installation are to: 

• Spark conference attendees’ interest and understanding of creative placemaking. 
• Provide attendees with an interactive experience that celebrates and elevates the role of creative placemaking in community revitalization. 
• Inspire participants to explore creative placemaking in their home communities. 

The selected applicant will be responsible for setting up the art installation on October 8, providing staffing during the conference, and tearing down the art installation on October 11. The selected applicant will be provided a complimentary conference registration as part of this engagement. 

Community Progress has budgeted up to $5,000 for the arts installation, inclusive of all staff and materials costs.  

Qualifications 

Community Progress is interested in proposals from artists representing a broad range of cultural and artistic practices, including those with expertise in visual, performing, folk/traditional, and digital/media practices. Given the theme of the conference, Community Progress encourages organizations and practitioners to apply that center their work around principles of equity, including those that feature or draw attention to historically under-represented classes like women and people of color. Preferred applicants have demonstrated expertise or commitment to creative placemaking, inclusive community engagement, and/or community revitalization.  

Anticipated Timeline

Applications Due: July 1, 2024
Artist Selected and Notified: July 12, 2024  

Application and Deadline

Interested artists should prepare the following information:

1. Name and contact information 
2. Relevant experience and background information.  This can come in the form of a resume, short bios, organizational background and mission statements, and links to Instagram, YouTube, or other content currently available online that may serve as a portfolio. 
3. Responses to the following questions.  Feel free to include pictures or links. Please limit responses to 250 words for each question. 
4. Please describe your experience with temporary arts installations, creative placemaking, or community engagement through arts.  
5. Please explain how you plan to approach this commission and its connection to the conference theme of equitable community development. 
6. Example scope of work feasible within the stated budget, inclusive of all design, personnel, materials, and other costs. 

Applications should be submitted as a single document (e.g., Word or PDF) to Julia Zimmerman at [email protected]. The deadline for submissions is July 1 at 6:00 PM ET. 

Questions? Please reach out to Julia Zimmerman at [email protected].