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    Grants for Non-Profits

    Creative Communities Initiative

    The Creative Communities Initiative (CCI) provides multi-year funding for place-based, community-driven, arts-based projects that serve as catalysts for social cohesion, livability, and community and economic development. 

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    About the Creative Communities Initiative 

    The Creative Communities Initiative (CCI) provides multi-year funding for place-based, community-driven, arts-based projects that serve as catalysts for social cohesion, livability, and community and economic development. Commonly referred to as creative placemaking, these projects are rooted in deep community engagement and authentically engage artists, culture bearers, designers, and community members through conversation, cultivation, and creation activities to address community needs, challenges, and opportunities.

    Creative placemaking explicitly works to solve problems or take on a sticky challenge in our communities. Working together, artists, residents, grasstops and grassroots organizations identify community needs and create innovative solutions to the issues at hand. - LISC, Creative Placemaking Toolkit

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    CCI Program Contact

    Interested in learning more about CCI? Contact Sarah Merritt, Director of Pennsylvania Creative Communities and the Creative Economy.

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    Apply to CCI

    CCI application guidelines and deadline information

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    What are the requirements of CCI projects?

    • Projects must be place-based.
    • Projects are managed by at least two community organizations, one of which serves as the lead applicant.
    • The lead applicant organization must be a unit of government, nonprofit (501(c)3 or 501(c)6 organization).
    • The lead applicant organization must be located in the community.
    • Projects have the support of the community's local government via an adopted resolution and pledge of at least 10% of matching funds (in-kind or cash).

    What makes a great CCI project?

    The PCA recognizes that each community is unique with its own history, traditions, assets (people and places), traumas and triumphs, and opportunities, and challenges. For this reason, CCI projects are also unique to each community. Successful projects are of, by, and for the community and can utilize any artistic discipline to create change by addressing a wide variety of community issues including, but not limited to, economic development, the environment, safety, transportation, housing, health, beautification, social justice, and social cohesion.

    Key elements of successful CCI projects:

    • Projects are of, by, and for the community.
    • Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.
    • Projects that include, amplify, and support diverse populations that have been historically marginalized, misrepresented, and ignored.
    • Projects are community-driven employing deep and inclusive community engagement practices throughout the project.
    • Authentically engage artists, designers, and culture bearers in planning and implementation of projects.
    • Strength of the partnering organizations. Partners have shared values and can demonstrate a history of successful collaborations to execute impactful community work.
    • Projects have a beneficial impact on the community.
    • Projects engage existing community assets (people and places).
    • Partners leverage additional sources of funding (government, private sector, foundation).