Creative Placekeeping: Using Story and Performance to Strengthen Community Networks

Keywords: place, landscape, narrative, performance, urban ecology, storytelling, community organizing, environmental justice, sustainability
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Progress on environmental and social issues at the local level requires strong and enduring networks of neighborhood advocates. To be effective these networks need to be broad, vibrant, and diverse with high levels of creativity and commitment. My research explores how to create, cultivate, and strengthen local sustainability and environmental justice networks by piloting an organizing process called creative placekeeping in the neighborhoods of Pasadena, California. Creative placekeeping uses research, storytelling, and performance to build relationships with the landscape, give people a sense of belonging, and counter the legacies of displacement that cast shadows on our lives. As a practice, it contributes to a growing dialogue about the role of arts and culture in community development, an approach that has garnered significant investment over the past decade from foundations and the federal government. One important question for creative placekeeping is how to determine whose stories, issues, ideas, and identities to amplify within public spaces and social programs. Too often the stories of the land and those of disenfranchised groups are left out of this planning process. My paper will share a process for putting diverse community narratives into conversation with one another. This process of narrative analysis and synthesis can help diagnose the story dynamics operating within and across neighborhood boundaries and lead to potentially transformative solutions that networks of creative placekeepers can then put into practice.