One hundred and twenty-seven organizations in 68 cities have been named finalists for support from ArtPlace, an unprecedented private-public collaboration of nine of the nation’s top foundations, eight federal agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, and six of the nation’s largest banks. ArtPlace supports creative placemaking with grants and loans, research and advocacy.

The selected projects represent the best of the more than 2,000 applications from across the country. Finalists were chosen for their potential to have a transformative impact on community vibrancy. Proposed projects run the gamut from temporary art spaces to permanent performance venues, from music festivals to art walks and from streetscaping to artist residencies.

Here’s how KTSC describes the plan and process:

Fourteen strategic actions are presented in this strategic plan which builds upon the documented accomplishments generated by Kentucky’s 1999 Science and Technology Strategy. This new Strategy is the result of over a year-long collaborative process involving a broad group of advisors and input providers.

The Strategy should be construed as a living document which provides highly reasoned actions to build an innovation-based economy within Kentucky. While actions are restrained by the current economic environment, they can catalyze transformative change. Comments and further constructive input are welcome.

You can download the main report here. The appendices can be accessed here.

The second is Growth from the Ground Up: Community Colleges and Sustainable Food Systems, a conference report from the Alliance for Sustainability, a creation of RTS to network community colleges, held in September 2011 in Pittsboro, NC.

Lastly, we’ve added a report from TA3, an international network of community and technical colleges, that details the information and best practices found during a study tour of Denmark that demonstrated their commitment to sustainability and green building and the technical training supporting it. The full report is available here.

Below are some photos from the TA3 report on the study tour of Denmark that demonstrated their commitment to sustainability and the technical training supporting it. The full report is available here.

Student craftmanship at EUC-Syd

Sheep & solar panels at EUC-Syd

Our founder Stuart Rosenfeld has been working with the state of Mississippi over the last couple of years both looking at their creative economy as an economic and cultural engine but also at designing programs and policies to build a stronger creative economy within the state. Stu’s new article in the Daily Yonder gives a great overview of the creative economy in Mississippi and how it weaves into the state’s economy. A must-read for those interested in the creative economy.

A juke joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It’s part of the annual Juke Joint Festival.

With members in 33 countries, the focus is on best practices in innovative economic development. The latest issue of their Cockatoo newsletter highlights our recently released work for the State of Mississippi on its creative economy. There is a link to the CraftNET Sketches here.

You can subscribe to the Cockatoo Newsletter by email at apdcockatoo@iprimus.com.au.

In this issue
Community College News: Kentucky School of Crafts at Hazard Community & Technical College, Haywood Community College, Montana Arts Council, Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College, Western Piedmont Community College
Research, Events, and News: Mississippi Creative Economy Summit, South Arts Reports, Creative Economy Assets in Rural Communities, Culinary Improvisation, the Science of Guitar Building, EU Capitals of Culture Evaluation
CraftNet Member Profile: Western Piedmont Community College

About CraftNet:
CraftNet is an international alliance of community colleges in North America, Europe, and Africa that work together to enhance their own arts and crafts-based teaching programs and to develop local and regional artisan-based economies. It was conceived and is managed by Regional Technology Strategies.

And we say all this not just because they partially funded and devote a page to the work we did on the creative economy in Charleston.

While the report focuses mostly on the 4-year and graduate degrees our research and discussions with companies also finds that STEM skills are increasingly needed for those in manufacturing production occupations that do not require a 4-year degree. Manufacturers consistently describe the need for STEM backgrounds in the increasingly high-tech environment of modern manufacturing, whether in reading blueprints, working in production teams or solving problems within the production process.

A proposed policy response is to push the STEM focus further down into the k-12 system with geometry and algebra introduced in general middle school classes.