Program Areas

The D.C. Office of Planning (OP) has awarded a $75,000 “ArtPlace Arts and Culture Temporium” grant to Partners for Livable Communities (Partners) to develop and manage temporiums in underutilized spaces in the Deanwood neighborhood, one of the District’s earliest African American communities.

Under this grant, Partners will develop and manage DeanwoodxDesign, a project that showcases the rich arts, cultural, historical, and green space assets of Deanwood and Ward 7 through a community-wide, intergenerational, and collaborative effort. This project engages artists and a diverse network of Deanwood institutions and stakeholders to cultivate community pride, showcase and create great art, and invigorate the creative economy. Collaborating partners include:

• Cultural Tourism DC
• Deanwood Heights Main Street
•  DC Office of Planning
• East River Family Strengthening Collaborative
• George Washington Univeristy’s Event Management Program
• The Fishing School
•  IDEA Public Charter School
• Life Pieces To Masterpieces
• Word Beats and Life
• WeACT Radio

During a four-month period beginning this summer, DeanwoodxDesign (pronounced as Deanwood by Design) will feature workshops, exhibitions, and cultural events that reflect the theme of “design” from four unique aspects: community, sustainability, multimedia, and lifestyle. This effort will illustrate how this neighborhood has historically developed and continues to nurture its creative community. (Read more about the historic neighborhood.) Ongoing and special promotion events will provide more than 15 hours per weekend of free activities that are open to the public. A call for artists will be announced in late May.

The project objectives include:

• Stimulate community building and promote neighborhoods through creative placemaking by seeding temporary arts, cultural, retail, entertainment, recreation, education, or demonstration activities in vacant spaces
• Support creative entrepreneurs and provide residents with access to unique arts and cultural activities and experiences
• Showcase the District of Columbia’s creative economy and innovative energy, by building partnerships among private property owners, city agencies, and creative stakeholders
• Highlight the long-term tenanting and creative use opportunities along corridors
• Help realize strategies identified through neighborhood planning efforts, the Creative DC Action Agenda, the Retail Action Strategy, and other citywide programs like Great Streets

Funding for this project was made possible by the D.C. Office of Planning and ArtPlace, an unprecedented new private-public collaboration, www.artplaceamerica.org. ArtPlace is a collaboration of 11 of the nation’s top foundations, eight federal agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, and six of the nation’s largest banks. The new foundation invests in art and culture at the heart of a portfolio of integrated strategies that can drive vibrancy and diversity so powerful that it transforms communities.

For more information, please contact Jessica Scheuerman, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Partners announces the launching of the City Leaders Institute on Aging in Place (CLI), a one-year, pilot program focused on making local-level changes to facilitate aging in place.

This program is funded by the MetLife Foundation and implemented by Partners for Livable Communities (Partners).

As part of this program, five Civic Teams were invited to participate as part of the 2012-2013 class. Each team has identified a specific goal for the year-long program.

• Arlington County, Virginia, aims to create a walkable, livable, urban environment that enhances welcoming connections and eliminates barriers between and among places, and enables all people to work, live, play, and visit in Arlington.
• Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, Florida, aims to identify and develop a platform to educate older people, public officials, and the community-at-large about issues related to elderly pedestrians, drivers, mass transit users, and travelers. 
• Montgomery County, Maryland, aims to develop and implement a nonprofit and faith-based summit to clarify the needs of affordable, alternative housing options for older adults.
• Phoenix, Arizona, aims to develop new and enhanced service delivery mechanisms to connect older adults with their peers and with the community, to provide relevant activities and services, and to leverage their talents.
• San Diego, California, aims to increase community health and wellness among youngsters and older adults in the City of La Mesa and the La Mesa Spring Valley School District by implementing an intergenerational Safe Routes to School program and other strategic plans focused on health and wellbeing in this community.

In early 2011, the Jamaica Youth Initiative—a working group of governmental, nonprofit and private institutions in a bustling neighborhood in Southern Queens—convened to discuss an important matter affecting their community: disengaged and idle youth. At the end of every school day, thousands of youth crowd the streets of downtown Jamaica, where after school activities are in demand. Partners for Livable Communities (Partners) views this demand as a rare opportunity to focus positive attention on the assets available to and within this youth population. With support from the Hearst Foundation, Partners  is currently collaborating the Youth Initiative, the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, and the Cultural Development Corporation to develop a framework of goals and recommendations that will expand arts-based after school opportunities. Ultimately, the goal is to provide programming that will enrich the lives of these youth, provide them with meaningful experiences, and assist them in obtaining employment.

Using the Arts to Set an Agenda

Downtown Jamaica suffers from unemployment and high foreclosure rates. At the same time, many of its public spaces are underutilized. Under these circumstances, arts and cultural resources provide an opportunity to activate the spaces with new partnerships and networks between local private, public and nonprofit resources. More importantly, this also provides opportunities for the youth to get involved through art-based afterschool activities that improve physical spaces and help to change the perception of Jamaica’s youth from a liability to a valuable resource.

Since the project began, surveys with members of the Youth Initiative and direct input from 120 high school students have paved the way for a draft framework of neighborhood-wide goals for integrating arts into afterschool programs for these students. Defined by short- and long-term action steps, these goals include: activating underutilized private and public spaces as productive gathering points for youth; increasing opportunities for funding; and increasing arts-related internships and job training opportunities for high school students.

For more information, contact Jessica Scheuerman, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Partners for Livable Communities’ 2011 publication, Culture Connects All, was featured in the winter 2012 issue of Preserving Your Memory, a magazine supported by the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation. Sam Gaines’ article, Making the Connection, outlines the publication’s key objectives, and its recommendations to arts and cultural organizations pursuing arts programs to reach out to diverse audiences. Funded by MetLife Foundation, Culture Connects All was published in 2011 to showcase cultural institutions using innovative strategies or programs to engage two of America’s fastest- growing populations: older adults and immigrants.

Culture Connects All, a benchmark report by Partners for Livable Communities, and funded by MetLife Foundation includes research and interviews with arts and cultural organizations in six cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Phoenix and Tampa).  The report briefly describes the state of the arts and culture sector, followed by in-depth examinations of immigrant and older adult populations in the six cities.

Gaines’ article includes an interview with Partners’ Penny Cuff, who explains the purpose of the report and the role of Partners as a provider of technical assistance to cultural organizations. Also featured are a list of the report’s “Top 10” recommendations to arts and cultural organizations to reach-out to new audiences as well as a more detailed look at several best practices showcased in the report. Meet Me at MoMA, a program of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, provides Alzheimer’s disease patients with the opportunity to experience the full range of the Museum’s displays in a quiet environment. Meet Me at MoMA effectively shares similar objectives to the Alzheimer’s Research Foundation. Gaines states, “Culture Connects All offers real-world examples of [outreach] principles in its pages…ultimately, community engagement and outreach is a win-win for all concerned.”

Preserving Your Memory magazine offers support to caregivers, family members and individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease by featuring enlightening and entertaining articles about healthy aging versus unhealthy aging. It presents readers with the latest research on Alzheimer’s, where to go for help, what to expect, and strategies for healthy living. Approximately 100,000 issues of the magazine are published on a quarterly basis and distributed to physician’s offices throughout the United States. 

For more information please visit:

http://www.livable.org/livability-resources/reports-a-publications/520-culture-connects-all-

Rarely does the subject of water inspire poetic phrases or passionate dedications. While we may occasionally recognize its importance, this appreciation is usually offset by the size of the water bill at the end of the month. Regardless, I’m going to ask an odd question: have you ever celebrated water? If I got a single “yes” I would be very surprised, for the simple reason that there are few formalized occasions for the public to appreciate water. This year, a multitude of civic and non-profit organizations have teamed up to give individuals the opportunity to celebrate their “love for water” in the annual Rachel Carson Sense of Wonder Contest.

2012 marks the 40^th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Although it was originally enacted in 1948, the Act was significantly reorganized and expanded in 1972 to regulate discharges of water pollutants and monitoring water quality standards in the United States. The Annual Rachel Carson Sense of Wonder Contest is honoring this anniversary and renaming itself the “Sense of Water Contest” for 2012.

Tuesday August 9^th will be a big day of change for former Mayor of Youngstown, Ohio and Partners Trustee Jay Williams. Williams will be taking up his new appointment by President Obama as the Director of the Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers which assists areas of the country negatively affected by the retrenchment of the auto industry to identify federal resources that may be used as part of their recovery efforts. By virtue of his being mayor of the largest community in the Mahoning Valley, Williams has had a front-row seat to the reorganization of the auto industry. 

Jay Williams was instrumental in helping Partners develop its Institutions as Fulcrums of Change program strategy; which focused on how we can use libraries, museums, performing arts centers, boys and girls clubs, and chambers of commerce to reposition communities that have suffered devastation in the downturn and in the new economic order, and how can they use their creativity and neutrality to be centers of excellence, i.e. fulcrums of change. With the focus on utilizing anchor institutions as centers of redevelopment in Youngstown, Williams worked with Partners to spear the Ten Living Cities Network, a consortium working for identity preservation and economic resurgence in the Ten U.S. Cities most affected by the post-industrial age.

Prior to his appointment to the Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, Jay Williams was the City of Youngstown’s first African-American mayor, and being first elected at 33 years old, was also it’s youngest. Under the leadership of Mayor Williams, the Youngstown 2010 Vision/Planning “right-sizing” initiative has been recognized and rewarded by a number of notable organizations including, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, the American Planning Association, and Governing Magazine. In August 2009, Entrepreneur Magazine listed the city of Youngstown among the ten best cities in the United States to start a business. Mayor Williams was also recognized in 2009 as one of Governing Magazine’s public officials of the year. He was also the recipient of the 2007 John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award.

You can read more about Jay Williams appointment from the U.S. Department of Labor

This document builds on the planning and research efforts that were reported on at the 2010 M. Powell Lawton Conference on Urban Aging and serves as testimony to the agenda's current success. It is intended to outline the reasons behind the initiative, highlight current collaborations, and provide opportunities for new involvement.

Click here to read the report online.

Click here for a printer-friendly version.

This year, the first of the Baby Boomers turn 65. But this milestone birthday may not be so eagerly celebrated, as our nation realizes the drastic impact this huge generation will have on our communities. Six years ago, the first edition of  “The Maturing of America,” a report undertaken by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging with groups representing local governments and city planners, found that most communities were not properly prepared for the impact of an increasing aging population: the age 65-plus population is expected to double by 2030.

The Green Plus Sustainable Enterprise Awards 2011: Recognizing Sustainability Today

Building a Green economy is critical to our future—sustainability is imperative. The 2011 Green Plus Sustainable Enterprise Awards announce the winners of its annual Green Plus Community and Green Plus Chambers from throughout the United States, that are leading in sustainable economic development practices. This event took place on June 16, 2011...click here to read about the awardees

Undoubtedly the turn of the 21^st century has been a crossroads for communities across America. Planners are becoming more uncertain of which road to take to towards livability, the latest and most thought out models of revitalization being thrown into disarray by constant redevelopments in technology and the unforseeable factors that mediate the outcome. But as the unfolding of the digital age propels us into the unknown, there is one thing that is certain—education is a key to building a more vibrant and sustainable community.