A New Frontier: Archaeology and Heritage Management Meet Urban Planning and Creative Placemaking

Summary

Heritage Placemaking is a thing - embrace it! Learn from our mistakes. The DC Office of Planning received a grant from the Kresge Foundation to engage in creative placemaking by artist/curators with the goal of activating underused public spaces. The DC Archaeology Program saw this as an opportunity to engage in a novel form of public outreach funded by someone else. Despite best intentions, false starts, permitting issues, need for cultural sensitivity, and last-minute directives, the archaeology- and heritage-themed intervention "If YOU Lived Here" was a smashing success. Incorporating African American archaeology and history of the post-Civil War Barry Farm Freedman community, the artist/curator came up with a moving public art installation, and pushed us out of our comfort zone into a new and scary realm with its own vocabulary, processes, metrics, and requirements. Our partners included the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum and the NPS.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22596