It’s been a busy year for the director of graduate studies for the Arts and Cultural Leadership and Civic Engagement master’s programs: Tom Borrup contributed three chapters to edited volumes and coedited a 16-chapter book.
The first chapter he wrote appears in the Oxford Handbook of Arts and Cultural Management, a resource that analyzes contemporary research in arts and cultural management and suggests directions for future work. Tom’s chapter is called “Cultural Planning and a ‘Community Turn’ in the Arts: Maximizing Cultural Resources for Social Impact,” which appears in the Cultural Policies, Diplomacy, Cultural Planning, and Legal Concerns section.
For The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning, Tom contributed a chapter called “Identity and Place Attachment in Cultural Planning.” As a guide for planning for arts and culture in cities, this book features chapters and case studies from across the globe.
He also cowrote a chapter called “Placehealing in Minneapolis: Before and After the Murder of George Floyd,” in Trauma-Informed Placemaking, an introduction to understanding trauma and healing in place. He wrote it with colleague Teri Kwant, a designer who has worked with hospitals and medical clinics to design healing spaces. In their chapter, they assess the trauma of what happened in during the Minneapolis protests and propose new ways to approach healing and placemaking for people and places that have experienced trauma.
From his home, Tom can see some vacant lots where buildings burned down during the uprising. He says that often the immediate urge is to try to get everything “back to normal” as quickly as possible. But rebuilding too quickly is not always the best option.
“(Stepping back) enables people to process some of what took place,” he says. “Many properties along Lake Street and Chicago Avenue have been acquired by nonprofits that are taking their time to try to do what's right for the community. The point is acknowledging what happened and not just covering it up.”
Using the Arts as a Tool for Everyday Democracy
The book Tom edited this year with Andrew Zitcer, a colleague at Drexel University, is titled Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life. It offers arts-based solutions to the threats to democracies around the world. A total of 36 writers, artists, activists, curators, and academics from seven different countries contributed to the book. They share their creative and cultural practices to foster democratic ways of working and interacting in communities.
“They're all … helping to build up the individual and social muscles of democracy,” says Tom. “It's more than going to the ballot box every couple of years: democracy is in everyday life. It's … how we live, work, interact, and organize with other people.”
These artists are helping change the culture by engaging people in more democratic ways in the making of art and the experiencing of art. The book asks, “How do we practice democratic strategies in doing that? Are we doing things in more authoritarian kinds of formats? How do we learn and practice democracy?”
Even if the content of a piece of art, like a play, is about democracy, we need to consider how it was made. Was the audience involved in the process? How do people experience the play? “That's where democratic practices come in,” Tom says.
This is not always easy when it comes to building cities. “The urban planning profession in the United States is so locked in,” he says, “which is really kind of ironic given the more multi-ethnic nature of the United States versus many other countries.”
He adds that his 2021 book, The Power of Culture in City Planning has gotten more traction and interest in countries outside the United States. Recently, it was translated into Persian and published in Iran.
“Creative expression of heritage through artistic practices is a part of culture, but culture is a much larger thing, and in the United States it just gets lumped together so much that people don't like to think about its broader implications.”
What is cultural planning, and how do we get it right?
In Tom’s words, cultural planning is an approach to understanding human cultures in urban or town planning in which culture, and the multiple cultures of the people living there, provide a lens through which to see and understand the community.
It is a more people-centered approach to addressing the issues of a city or community, whether it's housing, transportation, public parks, education, and so on. It's viewing the community through a cultural perspective in order to better address those concerns.
Many people see the role of cultural planning as to advance the interests of the arts and culture sector, or more specifically, the institutional and professional practice of the arts. And that's how it's been practiced historically.
“That's not cultural planning as I've tried to address it,” he says. “The chapter I have in the cultural planning handbook focuses on a sense of identity and belonging and what's called place attachment. So to me, one of the fundamental things to address in cultural planning is, who is in this place? How do they relate to it and feel about it?”
There are ways to conduct planning processes and outcomes that help to foster greater stewardship of place and a sense of attachment and belonging. Roberto Badoya, a friend of Tom's who wrote a different chapter in the handbook, notes that cities have strategies for housing, transportation, parks, etc. Why don’t they have strategies, institutions, or departments that advance people's sense of belonging or connection to a place?
A comprehensive cultural plan, Tom believes, should touch on contemporary arts and culture, as well as heritage and historic preservation. It should address how people engage in using recreation, parks, and green spaces, including pedestrian and bicycle activity. It should consider not only the architectural design of buildings but how housing is organized and put together.
“People from different parts of the world have different orientations as to how they relate to their neighbors, for example. Cultural planning can help to open up and create places that are welcoming to more and diverse people.”
Tom is planning his next book as a critique of this practice, addressing the principles and core practices that can make important contributions to cities.
Tom and his coeditor of Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life, Dr. Andrew Zitcer, will be featured in the Humphrey School’s Master of Urban Planning (MURP) Speaker Series on February 20, 2025, 3:45–5:15 p.m., at the Humphrey Forum. All are welcome!
Mia Boos is a writer and content strategist with the College of Continuing and Professional Studies, covering the College’s graduate programs and undergraduate individualized degree programs. She joined the CCAPS Marketing team in 2014 and has worked for Thomson Reuters and New York University. Connect with her via LinkedIn.
