Marshalltown’s Arts Master Plan: A Blueprint for Creative Placemaking

The Arts & Culture Master Plan was an initiative that started over the last couple of years, as we have seen an evolution of public art in our community. The Arts + Culture Alliance leads the city’s public art program, and in the past, we were coming in on the tail end of major infrastructure projects to do the creative elements. As we were wrapping up a few projects and thinking about our role in the community for redevelopment post-storm (a tornado in 2018 caused extensive damage to the community), we saw an opportunity for the development of a master plan that addresses how to make Marshalltown unique and distinct and a place that authentically reflects the people who call Marshalltown home.

We partnered with the City of Marshalltown to create a plan for our city, and we helped drive the development and creation of it by forming a steering committee to lead the way. We spent a lot of time doing community engagement and understanding the needs and desires from the community along with challenges and, hopes and dreams for the future. And through that, we came out with five placemaking themes: revitalize and restore, build bridges, activate hope, elevate you, and heritage of innovation.

We can point to the 13th Street District as our local example of successful creative placemaking. The redevelopment of the area was a grassroots effort spearheaded by neighbors and people living in the area, people who had businesses in that area. They really did it in a way that was meeting the needs of those individuals while also keeping the uniqueness and the special, different, “you can’t get it anywhere else” vibe at the forefront of everything they did.
We’ve seen tons of development of unique gathering spaces, recreational opportunities, public art, and it’s really boosted that area to be thriving.

It’s truly addressing the needs and, challenges and hopes and dreams of our community. When we can invite the community to be a part of that, obviously, they’re more excited about it, and they’re going to engage more with the project. Then afterward, ultimately, they have a buy-in because it’s a reflection of the community.
We have a couple of projects that we’re working on with the city where we’ve intentionally brought artists to the table at the very beginning to allow for a creative approach to design, creative approaches on how we get input from the community and creative solutions on how we address some of the challenges.