Your Place. Our Place.
#LansingPlacemakers
Placemaking is CREATING enticing spaces! Anyone can envision a creative place and collaborate to make it happen. Here are 75 ideas to get you started!
- Create small inviting seating spaces that encourage conversation and engagement
- Transform alley space into beer gardens or picnic areas with artsy picnic tables and murals
- Install fire pits and seating areas for chilly days near public gathering spaces
- Build community urban garden spaces with art pieces and benches
- Use pallets to build a pop-up library on the street
- Use chalk to make a number of hopscotch boards on the sidewalks
- Make “parklets” in front of your place of business to create activity on the street
- Put a piano outside of your business and have an artist paint it and a musician play it
- Paint a crosswalk and invite residents to participate in the painting
- Put chalk out on the sidewalk to encourage people to create their own street art
- Paint blighted buildings with graffiti art to improve the appeal in a district
- Build a life-size chess board and encourage individual or tournament play
- Place easels and canvases out in a scenic space to encourage people to paint
- Start a front-porch concert series
- Organize free yoga in the park or street
- Invite neighborhood residents to artistically paint trash cans
- Hang bird cages, umbrella’s or paper lanterns in alleyways to create a unique exhibit
- Make a sense fence
- From fallen trees, create wood sculptures and seating
- Activate old newspaper kiosks with works of art
- Create a food-truck court
- Invite artists/musicians to your local farmers market
- Show movies in a park, parking lot or storefront window
- Take a picture--leave a picture
- Hire a busker to occupy a street corner or other sidewalk space
- Paint a blank wall with chalkboard paint and invite people to use it
- Create a yarn-bombing exhibit
- Have a pumpkin decorating contest in front of your business
- Have a scheduled community weeding and outdoor store-front clean-up
- Paint and decorate benches in the neighborhood
- Turn stop signs into flowers by yarn bombing a stem and petals on the pole
- Go Christmas caroling to local businesses and in densely populated areas
- Host a live poetry/spoken word event in a park
- Put a piano keyboard mat at a bus stop
- Make a walkway out of tiles that people in the community can paint
- Make hanging art from recyclable materials to hang from trees
- Grow an environmental labyrinth
- Install swings at bus stops
- Put twinkle lights in trees and bushes along walkable areas
- Place outdoor ping pong tables near your business or food truck
- Illuminate windows in tall buildings with cool designs
- Creatively paint electrical panel boxes
- Host a multicultural community dinner on a public street for neighborhood residents
- Place human “mannequins” in empty storefronts
- Create a beach on the street with sand, pails, folding chairs and umbrellas
- Schedule an event for dancing in the streets
- Flood the sidewalks (Freezeways) or a plaza for winter ice skating
- Set up a community holiday tree display in a local park
- Create a curiosity project; place something out of the ordinary on the street that causes a reaction
- Start a sidewalk poetry program, stamping poetry into fresh cement
- Install a community-post wall for people to share why they love where they live
- Create a garden of botanical living sculptures
- Create a free-hug campaign with people in funny costumes holding free-hug signs
- Build a life-size scrabble board
- Organize a story time in the park event
- Host a conversation on creative community enhancements
- Hold a treasure or scavenger hunt to find public art around the city
- Invite the community to stargaze in the park and make lanterns of recycled materials
- Host photo meet-ups in designated areas
- String lights in alleyways
- Attach simple large picture frames to outdoor walls (with room to stand behind) to encourage photo opps
- Host an outdoor market in front of your business
- Make outdoor stairs fun by artistically painting them
- Let Sunday morning be times in which certain streets in the city become pedestrian only
- Host a porch or block party
- Put out tables with chess board/checker board tops
- Add first-floor commercial window boxes to storefronts and plant flowers or vegetables
- Hold a storefront window-painting event during holiday seasons
- Add picnic tables to parks that encourage residents to color on them
- Create a “corn maze” in a parking lot
- Create a makeshift dog-washing station near a dog park, serve coffee
- Host a chilly-morning coffee huddle for local cyclers on their way to work
- Work with urban planners to create a communal fruit orchard
- Host a sand-castle competition
- Set up a pop-up living room of recycled furniture in a walkable neighborhood
Need more placemaking ideas?
View our Placemaking board on Pinterest for more ideas!
View our Placemaking board on Pinterest for more ideas!