Macon Magazine

October/November 2026 | maconmagazine.com 31 for arts at Knight Foundation. Springboard for the Arts has been selected as the partner in this work, an organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, a Knight community. Springboard has worked with over 100,000 artists in 22 states. "We've done these things. We're not consultants. This is about the work that we've created over the last 20 plus years," noted Zabel, who said that their organization has experience in assisting in all kinds of both arts and government work, from fundraising to board development to civic meetings. Selecting Macon was intentional, and they've already seen how artists have been integrated into economic development strategies. "There's a can-do in Macon that I really felt when I was there. There's a lot of agility," said Newman-Scott. "I got a sense that people are working together and trying to fi gure out how you can get one and one to be three. No one's waiting on "You can bring a creative process to any big challenge or opportunity that a community faces." One creative Knight grantee is the Otis Redding Center for the Arts (ORCA). Learn more about their mission at orcamacon.org W hat if we stopped thinking about the arts as a tangible product a city can provide, and started thinking about creativity as something a city can harness to accomplish its goals? "You can bring a creative process to any big challenge or opportunity that a community faces," said Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts. That concept is what powers Knight Foundation's new Creative Cities Initiative, a $3.5 million program that will help selected communities gain structured support to develop locally driven strategies for working with artists and cultural workers on city priorities. These are not priorities like, per se, creating a mural or a play, but more like how artists can accomplish priorities on public health or economic mobility. Zabel describes how a lack of creativity and collaboration often drives democratic engagement in cities: "The traditional way we have done that kind of community input is usually a sort of meeting or input session that happens in the basement of a school, and there's three dry cookies and some warm Pepsi, and the same 10 people come every single time." "Artists can create creative, family- friendly, all ages opportunities and entry points for people to express their hopes and dreams for the future of their community, to contribute their ideas." In other words, Knight and Springboard are disrupting dry cookies and warm Pepsi dynamic in favor of embedding artists into government work, who have the ability to drive more authentic ways of engaging the public. The initiative is part of Knight's evolving approach to arts and culture that intends to connect arts and creativity with broader civic issues. "Success looks like folks across Knight communities that are working at the city level, and with intersection to culture, who get it. They feel empowered to talk about it in the way that they think it makes sense to their own practice," said Kristina Newman-Scott, vice president a whole bunch of people to say it's okay." Next steps for the initiative, according to Zabel and Newman-Scott, will be fi rst listening on the ground about what's already happening in Macon, and understanding where Springboard can be most helpful. Then, based on that feedback, there will be some specifi c off erings in Macon that are some combination of training, workshops, technical assistance, and perhaps some demonstration projects. There will also be room for some learning opportunities across Knight cities, where a small group in each city will travel to one another to connect as a group and share models and tools for leadership development. This can help broaden the civic arts ecosystem, so that leaders can learn from one another what is working and what is challenging. "I think this connective tissue is going to ultimately give our cities the tools they need to feel like they can aff ect change on their own terms," said Newman-Scott. "The Creative Cities Initiative is the road mapping, it's the doing of the work to get there." Kristina Newman-Scott (fourth from left) and arts leaders represent Knight cities at the PolicyLink summit this August. Photo courtesy of Julia Morrison.

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