What do you think?
Rate this book
Designing Creative Communities: Your Town is Your Canvas. Learn How to Make Your Mark
We all want to be a part of a thriving community. But few of us know how to meaningfully contribute to the places where we live, work, learn and play.
Whether you dream of launching a community innovation center, want to enhance your town with colorful murals, or are simply looking to strengthen relationships with your neighbors, Designing Creative Communities is the guide for you.
Award-winning community builder, Spud Marshall, coaches emerging leaders and community members alike through a simple process for how to transform your town into a creative place to call home. Filled with stories from Spud's work over the past decade, Designing Creative Communities teaches you how to actively create change and have a lot of fun along the way.
The book will introduce you to the CANVAS Framework where you'll learn how
- Chart your path (and avoid getting an RV stuck in the mud).
- Ask probing questions (by jumping into an inflatable ball pit on the street).
- Name early adopters (and create a secret society).
- Visualize a prototype (while ensuring that bees don't escape into your home).
- Articulate your story (using a giant blue chameleon car).
- Sustain efforts with partners (without harming a single piano).
Whether you dream of launching a community innovation center, want to enhance your town with colorful murals, or are simply looking to strengthen relationships with your neighbors, Designing Creative Communities is the guide for you.
Award-winning community builder, Spud Marshall, coaches emerging leaders and community members alike through a simple process for how to transform your town into a creative place to call home. Filled with stories from Spud's work over the past decade, Designing Creative Communities teaches you how to actively create change and have a lot of fun along the way.
The book will introduce you to the CANVAS Framework where you'll learn how
- Chart your path (and avoid getting an RV stuck in the mud).
- Ask probing questions (by jumping into an inflatable ball pit on the street).
- Name early adopters (and create a secret society).
- Visualize a prototype (while ensuring that bees don't escape into your home).
- Articulate your story (using a giant blue chameleon car).
- Sustain efforts with partners (without harming a single piano).
- GenresArt
360 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 28, 2021
40 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 25, 2022
As a budding community builder, this book is exactly what I needed to figure out a sense of direction….and validation that it is possible to change my corner of the world.
Spud is someone I’d love to spend time with and learn from. It is difficult not to feel inspired after reading the book. His passion oozes out of the pages freely.
Highly recommended!
Spud is someone I’d love to spend time with and learn from. It is difficult not to feel inspired after reading the book. His passion oozes out of the pages freely.
Highly recommended!
November 18, 2021
Full transparency: I’ve known Spud since we were both in college. I participated in the naming team for 3 Dots, a central project explored in the book. My name is specifically mentioned as an early adopter for Trailhead. I volunteered at New Leaf in its early days. I also edited a few short sections of the book. Bias and personal experience inform this review.
The framework outlined here is one I wish I’d had ten years ago. I’ve created, hosted, and led many local communities in that time to varying degrees of success. The ingredients that made or broke those endeavors are all explored and NAMED systematically in this book along with numerous examples that explicate those steps. Which makes them accessibly to repeat with intentionality in the future!
I found new insight in looking back on these projects through Spud’s analysis. In particular, the idea that “scaling impact” does not mean “scaling size” was so good! I'll be recommending this book to all kinds of people in my network because the progression and learnings are so hard won and actionable.
The thing I most wish I saw in the book is a greater acknowledgement of the mental and emotional cost of these projects. There’s a shine to recounting these tales: the unexpected partnership, the time a cardboard prototype won over the city council… and I know that my experience as a community leader has included deep bouts of self-doubt, fear, and loneliness.
There can be a Sisyphus experience to creating in any community—great effort followed by great failure. Spud addresses that briefly at the beginning and gestures towards it in the final pages but never really explores the cost this kind of work takes. “This kind of work” meaning born of deep love for a place and a specific community and big vision for how that love can express itself.
There’s a strong argument to say that was out of the scope of this book project.
But its absence meant that some stories can come off as more individualistic than I knew them to be in reality. We don’t make it through the mental and emotional head game without other people carrying us through. I would have liked to have seen more of those relationships and emotional quagmires brought into the processes and frameworks outlined.
The framework outlined here is one I wish I’d had ten years ago. I’ve created, hosted, and led many local communities in that time to varying degrees of success. The ingredients that made or broke those endeavors are all explored and NAMED systematically in this book along with numerous examples that explicate those steps. Which makes them accessibly to repeat with intentionality in the future!
I found new insight in looking back on these projects through Spud’s analysis. In particular, the idea that “scaling impact” does not mean “scaling size” was so good! I'll be recommending this book to all kinds of people in my network because the progression and learnings are so hard won and actionable.
The thing I most wish I saw in the book is a greater acknowledgement of the mental and emotional cost of these projects. There’s a shine to recounting these tales: the unexpected partnership, the time a cardboard prototype won over the city council… and I know that my experience as a community leader has included deep bouts of self-doubt, fear, and loneliness.
There can be a Sisyphus experience to creating in any community—great effort followed by great failure. Spud addresses that briefly at the beginning and gestures towards it in the final pages but never really explores the cost this kind of work takes. “This kind of work” meaning born of deep love for a place and a specific community and big vision for how that love can express itself.
There’s a strong argument to say that was out of the scope of this book project.
But its absence meant that some stories can come off as more individualistic than I knew them to be in reality. We don’t make it through the mental and emotional head game without other people carrying us through. I would have liked to have seen more of those relationships and emotional quagmires brought into the processes and frameworks outlined.
October 23, 2021
The story telling aspect of how Spud began working in his community opened my eyes to what is possible and ways to improve my local community. I found the information interesting and informative. While I read this book, I was thinking about others who would benefit from Spud's story and the CANVAS method.
October 1, 2022
I liked it, I found it to be a very fun and exciting trip, his story has moved me to the places and I have been part of that life story that he tells, I discovered my passion for community change, reading these pages has filled me of creative ideas on how to build a community is that we are all part of communities.
October 24, 2021
Interesting ideas diluted by countless narratives.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews