creative city brand
We want to create vibrant neighborhoods with bold artistic statements! We want our communities and cities to have a reputation for being places where you meet creative experiences on every street corner.
urban art
as a transformation tool
Changing perceptions
Art has the power to change perceptions. It can change both an outsider’s perspective of the people and place - as well as a community member’s perception of themselves and their neighborhood. Art is a powerful tool for changing those narratives.
Empowering at-risk youth through contribution to the creative process
Urban art supports local crime prevention initiatives by engaging at-risk youth in meaningful ways. The rich social history of urban arts and hip hop expresses authenticity that many of these youth respond to, giving them something "cool" to involve themselves in. While engaged, opportunities for character-building arise, giving them alternatives to current anti-social patterns.
RepaIring damage and visual cues
Research suggests that there are public safety benefits to the economic development and aesthetic qualities created by revitalizing buildings and public spaces. Art projects such as light installations and muralism are impactful creative solutions in this regard. Not only do these elements address the maintenance issues, but they will also give way for increased visual safety cues. This provides a sense of caring for the area, increasing overall perceived safety for everyone.
Connecting people to place
Art spaces, events and installations can connect community members across cityscapes by serving as a magnet for social connection and foot traffic. This buzz helps keep urban spaces safe by providing helpful eyes in the street, according to the revered place activist Jane Jacobs.
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Everybody needs to feel safe in their daily environment. It’s a VERY basic need, connected to atmospheres, visual impressions and to the indivudal conception of a neighbourhood’s reputation as either safe or dangerous. Visual appeal and narratives matter!
— Steffen Gray, Chairman of Street Studies
OUR SERVICES
attract - impress - grow - buzz
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The story about a city can be told in many ways. Different types of stakeholders are looking to draw attention to their specific agendas. A Creative City Brand can attract attention, impress your audience and make the kind of buzz every city wants. Street art helps build local uniqueness and can be used to create strong themes and atmospheres.
Groups within various fields like the following will find street art a powerful tool in achieving their goals:
Commerce & business
Tourism
Property development
Municipalities & public services
Art milieus
Architecture & construction
Advertisement & marketing
In the pursuit of your desired outcomes, we will guide you on how best to develop projects or programs that include urban creativity. With our help you can build strong creative city brands, and leave the curating and facilitating to our team of cross-disciplinary specialists.
It is important for us to note that we emphasize the importance of respecting the local environment and culture in these creative city branding projects. These values are at the core of any project or program we engage in.
OUR CREATIVE CITY BRAND SERVICES INCLUDE:
CREATIVE CITY STRATEGIZING
Developing creative city brand strategies with various stakeholder aspects, targeting objectives such as cultural life buzz, tourism revenues or population growth.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Concept development and design processes relating to neighborhood identity.
COLLABORATIVE PROJECT FUNDRAISING
Fundraising partnerships, adding innovative project elements, partnerships, network and expertise to your grant applications
FACILITATING AND CURATING CREATIVE ELEMENTS
Talent and high profile recruitment of muralists, development of art spaces, street art tours, trails, urban art festivals in all formats and sizes, facilitation of artist calls and creative programs
CATALYST FOR PROMOTING YOUR CREATIVE NEIGHBORHOODS AND INITIATIVES
Creative city campaigning, communication and event consultation, dialogue, panel participation and presentation of cases from other successful and less successful creative city brand programs.
Below are 3 case examples, where you can see the potential projects to use urban arts and a creative city program to strengthen your city's brand.
1 | Urban art jury and speakers on creative city brands
Street Studies is often invited as an international urban arts representative to help qualify processes, including managing and evaluating artist proposals, bringing fresh ideas, solid knowhow, and guidance on how to approach a project.
CONSULT - CURATE - FACILITATE
Our specialists can act as an external curator/facilitator or consult cities' own curators. If looking for some of the harder-to-get profiles, we can draw on our goodwill to recruit trending names and top profiles. We offer to sit in as you qualify project briefs and consult on how to best structure proposals and selection processes.
BUILDING LONG-TERM COMMUNITY SUPPORT
We can assist in adding democratic decision layers and community sourcing to the process. This creates deeper understanding from locals, better tools for them to evaluate future projects and a broader support base. This can help justify multi-faceted decisions and minimize project risk, while it helps argue the project's soundness if challenged.
With us, you can make processes more nuanced, adding expertise knowledge and international organizing experience. As your ambassador, we help you connect your creative city program with other international networks, opening up opportunities for collaborative efforts.
Case Example: Helsingborg City
2 | Curated Street Art Corridors
Want to attract visitors looking for extraordinary experiences? Let us help you turn your tunnels, passages and corridors into artistic spaces worth experiencing. Locals will tell friends and family about the impressive artworks. Visitors will travel to see the area, drink coffee and do a bit of shopping and maybe eat dinner before going home. If they are already in town, they will linger in the city, benefiting the same cafés, restaurants and retailers.
URBAN ARTS POWER HOUSE
These artistic spaces worth experiencing don't happen without a thorough plan for branding the neighborhood as being creative and buzzing. We will assist you in making the plans, developing concepts and bringing it to life. We will build a program of changing artworks or specifically curated artworks, from international and national artists. Our exceptional portfolio of street artists are among the biggest in the world, including top trending profiles and new portfolios every year. With our selection of styles and nationalities we will be able to provide you with a diverse artistic profile specifically catered to your wants and the area.
BIG NEWS AND CULTURAL ENRICHMENT
While working on a new piece of art, why not tell the world about it? It can be big news, telling the stories of visiting street art international superstars. This is definitely something worth communicating. Not only does it bring new buzz to the city, but the artists themselves also bring about cultural richness to the local environment. People will want to meet the artist, hear her or his international perspectives and know more about the artistic commentary it opens up. Let your corridors be unique places to tell stories about! We can help you on your own artistic journey towards a more creative neighborhood rich in experiences.
Using artistic elements in your passages can also have a stronger focus on social and crime prevention aspects. Read about how we work to make safe and inspiring urban spaces in our urban safety section.
Case example: Ringsted Municipality
3 | Documenting how neighborhood conceptions change
We always encourage decision makers to prioritize giving us time to work thoroughly both with the initial gathering of information, as well as documenting the process.
Our specialists help you with the documentation process:
Our urban planners and urban sociologists observe flows and uses of the neighborhood, including the voice of locals and minimizing risks for local decision makers.
The media team snaps the right photos and video of the process, giving you amazing content to tell meaningful stories about your city.
The international research team sums up relevant learnings from it, providing important insights for future projects and attention from key researchers in the related fields.
These materials will help neighborhoods with a negative reputation tell more colorful stories – In order to challenge stigmatizing narratives. In more well-balanced neighborhoods, authentic stories about colorful artworks, can help build a specific brand specifically catered to that area. This will provide better promotional opportunities, attract more visitors and generally provide a good case for other cities to learn from.
Case example: Greve trygge tunneler, Greve municipality
Transforming public spaces and tunnels happens to be our specialty. If you have a project in mind, don't hesitate to contact us!
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Read more about our RESEARCH
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Urban arts experts - trusted by municipalities
SPEAKerS AT THE H22 CONFERENCE
street studies receives the RINGSTED cultural award
helsingborg EXPERT JUROR
On the topics social and cultural entreprenurial ways to increase urban safety, through sparking local initiative. Other speakers included New York Criminal Justice, The Mayor of Helsingborg and many more.
For innovative ways of rethinking art into urban spaces - Resulting in more vibrant, democratic and safer hotspots in the city.
And sparringspartner for Helsingborg (Sweden) urban planning department, in their urban art competitions. These competitions uses urban art for a multitude of purposes,
our services are 100% based on NONPROFIT PRINCIPLES
Meaning we:
work actively and passionately with UN’s SDGs
reinvest our net income from new projects within our mission statement,
consume according to a strict spending-policy,
engage in research to increase our overall understanding of and benefit to society and public spaces.
And much more.
