Frequently Asked Questions

Civic engagement is the active participation of individuals in the political, social, and cultural life of their community. It includes both formal activities like voting, attending town meetings, and advocacy, as well as informal actions like volunteering, community organizing, showing up at festivals and events, acts of neighboring, and creative expressions in public life. Civic engagement empowers people to work together to influence decisions that affect their daily lives, fostering a culture of collective responsibility and action. In rural communities, it often involves bridging gaps, building trust, and activating local assets and resources to address community needs.

Civic arts is an artistic practice that uses art and creativity to bring people together, spark conversations about local issues, and encourage more people to take part in community and civic life. Projects under the civic arts umbrella are created collaboratively, using art as a tool to address specific social, cultural, or environmental challenges within a community. Through community engagement—whether through workshops, public art installations, or collaborative performances—civic arts projects invite diverse voices, encourage collective action, and strengthen the fabric of rural communities. These kinds of creative projects give artists, civic leaders, and their communities new ways to improve civic health.

Check out our Engage Rural: Discover track resources to learn more about arts-based civic engagement!

Eligible cohort communities will be led by a Core Team. This team is a group of 3-5 community members from different sectors who are committed to facilitating creative collaboration and seeing the initiative through to the end.

Eligible teams include at least one of each of the following:

• Artist/Cultural Worker 

• Civic Leader (Formal or Informal)

• Community Activator

Who is an Artist/Cultural Worker? 

Artists/Cultural Workers are experienced in creative problem-solving and communication techniques. An artist is anyone who is creative, resourceful, inspired, and driven to collaborate across all sectors of public, private, and civic life. This includes mediums such as visual, performance, multimedia, literary, social/civic, culinary, land, traditional, folk, textile, events, and more. We mean culture bearers, craftspeople, artisans, hobbyists, contractors, and handypeople. An artist/cultural worker on your Core Team could be an artist themselves or someone who works directly with artists.

Who is a Civic Leader? 

Civic Leaders are familiar with the systems that impact and are impacted by the civic issue(s) explored in an arts-based civic engagement effort. Civic leaders include anyone who has taken on a leadership role in civic life—elected, staffed, volunteer, informal, or formal. Anyone who has the ability to influence change at a community-wide level is a civic leader. This could be community organizers, local government officials, tribal council, nonprofit leaders, city staff, faith leaders, youth organizers, influential neighbors, aunties and grandmas, elders, and more.

Who is a Community Activator? 

Community Activators are informed about the civic issue(s) that your specific artist-based civic engagement effort is hoping to explore, and they are invested in community-based solutions. A Community Activator is anyone who is an instigator, organizer, connector, and cheerleader of this specific effort. They are the ones ready to show up first, roll up their sleeves, and encourage others to join the journey. They are actively involved in community life and the specific civic issue(s) that have inspired the project, so they help to represent the broader community (in addition to an Advisory Group).

Please review the resource, “Purpose and Make-Up of a Core Team” for more information about how to form a Core Team, and please reach out to us with questions!

The Engage Rural Civic Arts Cohort is open to teams based in rural communities—including tribal communities and Native Nations—with a population of 20,000 or fewer. 

The primary contact listed in the letter of agreement must be an entity with an EIN number and a bank account. These types of entities would be eligible because they are inherently community-driven:

• Municipal, tribal, or county governments

• Quasi-government entities like regional development commissions or regional arts councils

• Local nonprofit organizations or fiscally sponsored groups, including, but not limited to Main Street or downtown organizations, art centers, preservation groups, historical societies, or community development organizations

• Chambers of commerce

• Cooperatives, including, but not limited to art collectives, restaurant or cafe, grocery

• Public libraries

Some entities that are NOT eligible to be the lead applicant include:

• K-12 schools

• Individual businesses or LLCs that do not have a community-driven team

• Churches (programming cannot be affiliated with a religion)

• Private Philanthropic Organization or Community Foundations

No. The Engage Rural team will work together with selected cohort teams to map out budgets based on the civic arts projects designed through the cohort experience. 

Team members will work with Ash Hanson, Creative Executive Officer, and Vivian M. Cook, Engage Rural Program Coordinator. Core team members can expect to periodically work with other DoPT staff members throughout the cohort experience. All staff bios are available at www.publictransformation.org/staff-board.