Rural Placemaking Grants
Maintaining and improving the quality of rural places, to help people feel connected, invested, and proud of where they live.
What is Rural Placemaking?
Placemaking is a comprehensive approach to community development that encourages residents to connect and contribute toward a shared vision for their community, and work toward achieving that vision. It can include creative and cultural activities, community-centered design, and lively gathering spaces – helping people feel connected to one another and their community.
Placemaking should engage across sectors of the community including public, private and philanthropic organizations, and include residents often overlooked, such people with lower incomes, young people, and community members from Native and other cultural communities. An inclusive process builds trust and increases a community’s capacity to take action around shared values, ultimately leading to greater community well-being.
Placemaking projects may be as simple as new playground equipment or bathrooms at the park, renovations to a community center or other public building, a mural on the side of a building, or converting an empty lot into a pop-up park. These activities, though seemingly minor, can make a huge difference in the character of the town, and draw people together to use the amenity. It can help promote connections between people, foster community pride, help residents see that they can make change, and their place is worth investing in.
The Case for Rural Placemaking
Studies demonstrate that placemaking activities such as public arts and events, revitalization and community development build connection and civic pride, along with confidence in creating opportunity, a voice in decision-making, a sense of community self-determination, respect for diversity, cooperation and community attachment, which is significantly correlated with economic growth.
Placemaking originated as a way to increase urban vitality, and Rural Placemaking initiatives, while gaining ground, are often adaptations of urban practice. One objective of Blandin Foundation’s Rural Placemaking grant program is to gather data from non-metropolitan placemaking activities that will more deeply inform rural practice and impact — particularly in communities under 5,000.
Focus Areas
Rural Placemaking grants should fall into three overarching categories:
Building placemaking skills and resources.
Build (or research) the skills and resources of local arts, government (including Tribal government), and community development organizations to engage in Placemaking, or to support the local or regional creative economy.
- Fundraising/Grant-writing assistance.
- Consulting expertise.
- Leadership skill-building.
- Employing the arts and creative sector to address civic challenges and opportunities.
Planning for Placemaking initiatives.
- Engage community members around evaluating community assets and potential to inform placemaking activities.
- Plan for quality public spaces that contribute to community connectedness and wellbeing.
- Research to support placemaking planning efforts.
- Planning community arts and culture initiatives, including Tribal, cultural preservation, and food sovereignty initiatives.
Executing a placemaking initiative or project.
- Engage in a Placemaking process.
- Community art projects.
- Piloting new arts and culture event.
- Facilitating gatherings and discussions to promote change on critical issues.
- Strengthening sovereignty – Tribal governance and cultural revitalization (including powwows).
- Creation, design, or enhancement of indoor and outdoor public gathering spaces: community, cultural, and multipurpose centers, ceremonial grounds, downtowns/main streets, parks, and libraries.
Capital expenditures such as building projects may be considered in communities that demonstrate the greatest need, especially in communities under 5,000 residents.
Outcomes We Seek
Placemaking should enable positive economic, physical and social changes in the community, increasing civic engagement, pride in place, and/or nurturing the creative economy.
Projects should demonstrate how community participation in decision making around improvements to physical spaces will result in:
- New or strengthened capacity for local community development, including seeking artist and cultural perspectives when addressing civic challenges and opportunities.
- Improve the quality of civic discourse around issues that affect a community’s ability to thrive, such as an increased number of people engaged in community conversations, including typically under-represented populations, or improved ability of community members to take productive action around an issue.
Or involve making visible improvements to community gathering spaces, including increased visibility of arts and culture in the community:
- New or upgraded indoor and outdoor public spaces and/or community amenities.
- Increased number of community art installations and/or cultural activities.
- New or strengthened arts and cultural organizations.
- Increased number of community members participating in arts and culture activities.
- Boost impact of the creative economy in rural communities.
Our Commitment to Reducing Disparities
Rural communities and Native Nations face systemic discrimination because of place (where we live), race (who we are), and class (economic status). The Foundation will consider these disparities when making funding decisions.
What that means is that proposals for amenity upgrades or beautification projects from communities that are small (under 5000), more remote, lower income, and with greater racial diversity will be considered more favorably than similar projects from larger rural hub communities. In larger communities and population centers (county seats), projects should be more sophisticated and/or innovative, build capacity of the community to engage in placemaking, and include an explicit strategy to engage people who are often underrepresented in the community.
Timeline
Milestone | Date |
---|---|
Letter of Inquiry Opens | March 7, 2025 |
Letter of Inquiry Closed | March 21, 2025 |
Proposal Opens | March 31, 2025 |
Proposal Closed | April 21, 2025 |
Application Review Period | April 22 - May 23, 2025 |
Organizations Notified of Grant Award | May 23 - 26, 2025 |
Grant Agreements Issued | May 30, 2025 |
These dates may change depending on the volume of applications received.
Eligibility & Applications
Current grants are available for Itasca County Area non-profit organizations.
Contact Us
We encourage you to reach out to our Grants team members at any time with questions.



