ARC CDAP City of Fairburn Placemaking Master Plan

Project Location: Fairburn, Georgia

Project Scope: Creative Placemaking Plan

Completion Date: 2019

Creative placemaking is an incredible tool to enliven and enrich our communities. The term, while becoming more popular, is rooted in the practice of engaging the arts into our everyday places, leaving a new sense of place and community. According to the National Endowment for the Arts:

“Creative placemaking is when artists, arts organizations, and community development practitioners deliberately integrate arts and culture into community revitalization work – placing arts at the table with land use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, and public safety strategies.”

Sizemore Group worked with the Atlanta Regional Commission to create a cultural placemaking master plan for Downtown Fairburn focusing on how to transform underutilized spaces between buildings into community amenities.

The team identified an abandoned alleyway connecting public parking to the city’s theater and city hall as space for public art and pre-theater events. Sizemore Group used art to enliven the space and highlighted how it could be set up to be used for community events and outdoor functions.

The team discovered an abandoned underpass that connects the existing school to downtown and looked at how to create better connections, such as stairs, art, benches, music, to draw people to use the space.

The resulting plan includes priority creative placemaking projects, the structure/organization to implement them, and potential funding sources.

This effort included coordination and design with the Atlanta Regional Commission, the City of Fairburn and a diverse and engaged group of arts stakeholders forming a steering committee.

Services performed for the project: