Artists' Contested Community Development Practices

Abstract

Creative placemaking has been widely promoted as a strategy for integrating arts and culture into community development, yet it has also faced critique for its ties to neoliberal development practices, including the instrumentalization of art and processes of exclusion. While existing literature often focuses on policy frameworks and outcomes, less attention has been paid to how artists themselves understand and navigate these dynamics. This study recenters artists by examining how they conceptualize and enact community-engaged practice within creative placemaking. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eight artists who participated in the Nashville Metro Arts Learning Lab, this research explores how artists define their roles and how these roles relate to critical approaches to community practice. Findings show that artists move between multiple orientations—professional, artistic, and community-oriented—rather than occupying fixed roles. These orientations reflect tensions between institutional expectations, creative autonomy, and commitments to community engagement. While creative placemaking often frames artists as “change agents,” participants engage more variably and reflexively with community development work. By foregrounding artists’ perspectives, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of community-engaged arts practice and highlights the need for more equitable and critically informed approaches to community development.