CREATIVE CITY NEWSLETTER: JANUARY 2003

ISSUE 7: TRANSITIONS

ISSUE IN FOCUS: Publication Guide
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Blue Banana
CREATIVE CORNER: Seeking Support for Green Roofs
Creative Cities in the News
Articles of Interest
Upcoming Events


A message from Laura Durham, Creative City Program Officer

Greetings Creative City Participants!

Hello Creative City Participants, and welcome to this seventh edition of the Creative City Online Newsletter. As 2002 comes to a close and we delve into holiday celebrations and New Year festivities, I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the hustle and bustle! With the New Year comes a number of transitions in the Creative City project. Many of our active participants are taking on new roles, including myself. I hope this edition of the newsletter will help to explain both programmatic and participant transitions, as well as provide the usual updates and interesting Creative City information.

First, as you all know, with the end of the year the Creative City project will be moving from a focus on technical assistance and agenda development to a focus on our Creative City publications and the final conference. Thus we are finished with the "service phase" of the Creative City. Our visits to participating communities and our participation in your ongoing work were both exciting and a great learning experience for Partners. Though work on the Creative City publications has been ongoing, now Partners will be shifting its efforts entirely to the development of these pieces. A description of the Creative City publications series is included in this newsletter. I would like to personally thank all of you who helped Partners’ interns and me to document your best practices. This component of the series provided our interns with a wonderful learning opportunity, and has resulted in great illustrations of your efforts and successes.

As Partners makes this move from service provision to documenting and publishing, another transition will occur. My work here, especially with the Creative City project, has enabled me to have great hands on experience in our participating communities. With a move to focusing on the Creative City publications, I will also be moving on to a different position that will allow me to continue to work directly with the community. In this case, I will be working with one community in particular as an Urban Planner for the City of Alexandria. Working with each of our participating Creative Cities has inspired me to be more directly involved in community planning, and I have learned a lot from my work here. Though I will miss the partnerships we have formed through this project, I am looking forward to this transition. Of course I will always be keeping my eye on the project as an "outsider".

Along with me, there are quite a few of our participants who are making some transitions as well. Mayor David Armstrong, our host for our Louisville event, is leaving office. Milton Dohoney, also in Louisville, will be taking a new position as well. Commissioner Tom Argust of Rochester is retiring after many years with the City. Erich Mische of Saint Paul will be leaving City Hall to work with Senator Norm Coleman. Mayor Rout of Shelby County, TN has left office. Governor Glendenning of Maryland will also be leaving office. We look forward to hearing from each of you as you take on new endeavors. If I have missed anyone else on the "transition list", please let us know!

As usual, this edition is full of additional links. Our Issue in Focus is the Publication Guide, and I have compiled a list of articles and news of interest to Creative City participants in the same format. Other regular features such as a list of upcoming events, links to news highlights in our participating communities, and our regular features: News You Can Use and the Creative Corner, are also found in this issue. I hope you will find these both useful and interesting in relations to your Creative City endeavors.