YOUR TOWN: THE CITIZENS’ INSTITUTE ON RURAL DESIGN

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS, 2007

We are pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Arts will be funding four Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design workshops and are seeking your interest in producing a workshop between now and November 2007. This is an opportunity to bring design professionals to your community to help you tackle critical regional planning and design issues. Up to $22,000 will be available from the Endowment for each workshop.

The Faculty of Landscape Architecture at SUNY Syracuse directs Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design in partnership with the Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi State University and consultant Shelley Mastran.

Since 1991, workshops have been produced in all regions of the country with the intention of bringing together approximately 35 community leaders (who are not design professionals) to learn the importance of design in building a future for their communities. The workshops, which take place over two and a half days, are organized according to a specified format. They expose participants to experts in a range of planning, landscape architecture, architecture and historic preservation issues and challenge them to work in small groups to solve a series of design problems. If you are selected to produce a Your Town workshop, a Coordinator’s Manual will guide you through the planning process, and you will receive limited technical and logistical support from the program’s co-directors.

Your Town workshops may bring together participants from one community or several communities in a geographic region. They may focus on design problems in a real community; or a hypothetical, representative community may serve as the model for problem solving. The workshops should address specific regional planning and design issues that have a rural impact—for example, downtown revitalization, growth management, transportation, greenway development, and subdivision design.

Ed McMahon, Senior Fellow at the Urban Land Institute, has agreed to be a keynote speaker for each Your Town workshop, so long as scheduling permits. Ed’s speaking fee of $1,500 as well as his travel expenses are paid out of the $22,000 from the Endowment.

Typically, all the participants’ expenses (food, lodging, materials) are paid for, except transportation. Participants are expected to attend the entire workshop and must agree to full attendance before being accepted.

If you are selected to produce a Your Town workshop, the funds will be provided through a fee-for-service contract with SUNY Syracuse. Although $22,000 should cover most expenses, workshop organizers should demonstrate a match for the Endowment funds. Past successful applications have included matches of approximately $10,000. The contribution may take the form of funds raised or donated by local organizations, including goods and services (food, printing, space, staff time, etc.). You will be expected to maintain budget records for all expenditures. If substantially fewer than 30 participants attend the full workshop, funding from the Endowment will decrease accordingly. Securing committed attendance at the workshop is critical.

We are particularly interested in workshops that produce substantial results and want to know the follow-up activities you propose—public meetings, educational sessions, publications, photo documentation, creating Web site forums or listservs—for extending the impact of the workshop. The funds you receive from the Endowment and other funds you raise may be applied toward follow-up work, including hiring students to produce publications or Web-based materials, but these costs should not exceed 10 percent of the total project costs.

If you are interested in organizing a 2007 Your Town workshop, please submit a brief proposal that includes the following information:

  1. Sponsoring Institution/Organization
  2. Principal Organizer/Contact (Name, Address, Phone, Fax, E-mail)
  3. Proposed Location of the Workshop (Facility, Town, State)
  4. Principal Issues and Problems to be Addressed. Describe both the general rural community issues and proposed design problems that the workshop would address. Why is the timing of this workshop important?
  5. Proposed Faculty and Speakers. List key individuals you propose to be involved as faculty, speakers, and/or resource persons. For each, describe his or her area of expertise in a sentence or two. For the most important speakers, please provide some indication -- even a simple email message -- of their commitment to attend the workshop if their schedules permit.
  6. Proposed Strategy for Recruiting Participants. Describe the audience for the
    workshop and explain how you would invite them to apply.
  7. Organizer Experience. Briefly describe the experience of the principal
    organizer/organization with the Your Town program, the rural community or
    communities proposed, and rural community issues.
  8. Statements of Support. Include statement(s) of endorsement from your local governmental entity and other partners. Please send no more than five (5) such statements of support. Statements should indicate a commitment to provide logistical, technical, or financial support and a willingness to participate in the workshop or send a representative.
  9. Logistical Support. Briefly explain the available clerical and computer support for preparing the workshop and producing a Your Town notebook (a suggested format for the notebook will be provided). If you want to see a version of the notebook online, please contact Richard Hawks at rshawks@esf.edu.
  10. Proposed Source(s) of Matching Funds or In-Kind Services and Materials. Please indicate which funds are committed and secured versus those that are simply proposed.
  11. Follow-up to Workshop. Describe what follow-up work you propose in order to carry the results of the workshop forward. If you have previously held similar workshops, describe any implementation that resulted.

Please organize your response to this RFP according to the 11 elements above, and address all 11 elements in your submittal.

You may send a maximum of 3 digital images of places or locations in your community that the Your Town workshop would address.

If you need more information about Your Town, you may contact one of the following previous workshop coordinators.

Glenna Booth, Eureka Springs, Arkansas – ACE@cityofeurekasprings.org Pratt Cassity, University of Georgia – pcassity@arches.uga.edu Mike diPaolo, Lewes (DE) Historical Society – info@historiclewes.org Valerie Gaumont, Louisiana Main Street - vgaumont@crt.state.la.us Michelle Jones, Mississippi State University -mjones@caad.msstate.edu Paul Kennedy, USDA, RC&D, Alabama – Paul.Kennedy@al.usda.gov Emily Neely, Upstate Forever (SC) -eneely@upstateforever.org Peggy Pings, National Park Service, mpings@wvu.edu Jeff Raykes, Indiana County, Pennsylvania - jraykes@ceo.co.indiana.pa.us Doug Self, Driggs, Idaho – pzdriggs@pdt.net

Please send e-mailed or mailed proposals to each of the following for receipt no later than Friday, December 22nd .

Richard Hawks

rshawks@mailbox.syr.edu

Chair, Faculty of Landscape Architecture, CESF/SUNY, Syracuse, NY 13210

and

Shelley S. Mastran

shellmast@comcast.net

11454 Hollow Timber Court, Reston, VA 20194

and

Jane Britt Greenwood

jgreenwood@caad.msstate.edu

Interim Director, Carl Small Town Center, Mississippi State University, MS 39762