Leveraging Local Arts and Cultural Assets to Create Community Vibrancy and Economic Growth

Client Story: Thrive Regional Partnership

Challenge

How might we leverage our local arts and cultural assets to create community vibrancy and economic growth? This was the challenge facing the four regional community teams selected to be part of the second cohort of Thriving Communities, a program designed to support cities and towns to “grow from within.”

Solution

Bridge Innovate® partnered with Thrive Regional Partnership and the Lyndhurst Foundation in the design and delivery of a 10-month community accelerator program. Thriving Communities is a powerful intersection between design thinking and creative-placemaking to enhance leadership and community development. Participating teams learned strategic approaches to leverage their artistic and cultural assets in order to spark economic vibrancy. Ideas were incubated, tested, and iterated in each individual community to foster continual feedback from fellow citizens and neighbors. As a result, the final strategies were authentically shaped by the people who live, work and play in these communities.