We unleash the creativity of artists to create welcoming, human-centered places.
Art Builds Community is a women-led, public art planning, consulting, policy, curation, and community engagement firm that brings critical thinking and artists’ perspectives to the creative design of cities, buildings, and infrastructure.
Our StorY
This firm was founded in 2020 by three like-minded and passionate women who are multidisciplinary and diverse within their cultural, generational, and professional backgrounds and experiences. Barbara Goldstein, formerly of Barbara Goldstein & Associates, has worked as a public art planner, architecture critic, and teacher which allows her to examine how government policy, economic forces, and environmental issues shape our lives. Amanda Rawson is a seasoned arts advocate with a background in art history. She has sat on the boards of arts and cultural organizations, arts advocacy groups, and has facilitated many conversations that support artists in a thriving ecosystem. Quynh-Mai Nguyen is a multidisciplinary social practice artist with a background in design, community organizing, and creative production of cultural arts relevant events, programs, and projects. She uses the power of art and storytelling to help create access and promote the voices of underserved communities. Together they formed Art Builds Community because they valued people’s ability to give voice to the places they wish to inhabit and how they want to be represented.
Our MissioN
As cities and towns develop, it is critical to facilitate a balance between new development and existing cultural assets. Working with public agencies, community groups, and private developers, we devise frameworks that empower artists to participate in shaping changing environments. When artists participate in design, places become more dynamic, engaging, and culturally responsive. Our work builds upon existing cultural assets, valuing the past while welcoming the future.
Our Services
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From project management to public art master plans, our planning process involves working closely with clients and community stakeholders to develop a series of recommendations that reflect both national best practices and local circumstances and concerns. We help create frameworks that emphasize on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion so that our clients can be successful in leading their public art programs and projects with confidence.
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Our team is multidisciplinary and diverse in our experiences, backgrounds, cultures, and generation. We are not just public art consultants. We are arts advocates, art historians, policy makers, community organizers, respected leaders, creative producers, and working artists. Our work and investments in the cultural arts span nationally and internationally. We can help consult on your public art projects and programs, artist management, community outreach, operations, policy, events, galleries, and more.
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Public art has the ability to honor the past, inspire the future, catalyze discourse, and transform and anchor a place with art and storytelling for/by/about the communities who call it home.
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Our methodology combines traditional forms of outreach from surveys, focus groups, and community meetings with a multidisciplinary arts-based engagement within a social practice lens. We empower artists to be community connectors while also engaging communities through art making. It is important to meet people especially those who are hard-to-reach where they gather, knowing that there are many barriers such as language, access, and transportation that may limit their participation in the planning process.
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We have extensive experience in placemaking as well as placekeeping, a term that many people are not familiar with but often advocate for when it comes to preserving their communities and culture in the face of development. When we work with community organizations, community members, and artists, we are able to reimagine overlooked spaces to become places that honor the past, welcome the future, center around healing, inspire creation, while also being a catalyst for discourse.
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Let us help you curate engaging and educational experiences around public art and planning. We have experience in facilitating panel discussions and board retreats, interviewing and hosting artist talks, presenting hands-on placemaking workshops and community engagement activities, mentoring emerging artists and student artists, delivering presentations for businesses or conferences, and more!
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Art Builds Community
info@artbuildscommunity.com