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Session Resource 1

How Creative Placemaking Builds Community Capacity

Monday, October 6, 2025
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM ET
Location: Congressional

    Speaker(s)

  • Joyce Pisnanont

    <strong>Chief Strategy & Impact Officer</strong>
    National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD)

  • Elena Arakaki

    <strong>Policy & Planning Manager</strong>
    Friends of Little Saigon - Seattle

  • Mary Anne Ligeralde Quiroz

    <strong>Executive Director</strong>
    Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center

  • Yue Nakayama

    <strong>Interim Arts Director, Blue Sky Center</strong>
    National Urban League

  • Maren Colon

    <strong>Community Development Divisional Manager</strong>
    Woodforest National Bank

Neighborhood organizations have long leveraged arts, culture, and storytelling strategies to build community, cultivate economic development, and encourage connection, healing, and empowerment. Join this session to learn about current research that examines how community arts initiatives (including placemaking and place-keeping projects) can expand a community's capacity to address socioeconomic and cultural well-being, and historical and structural disparities. While focusing on Asian American communities, this research offers an emerging framework for building community capital in a multifaceted way that can potentially be applied in other diverse communities.

This session will share this framework and will feature examples of creative, culturally aligned strategies that engage residents with their neighborhoods, foster a sense of belonging, and promote long-term community stewardship. Participating speakers will share their insights on the applicability of this framework, representing a range of rural and urban, multi-ethnic and multi-racial communities across the United States.