What is a Pop-up Event? Unlike a mural, sculpture, or public-art project defined by material, pop-up events are a bit difficult to define. However, they do have three characteristics in common: they are public, temporary, and unexpected. Pop-ups also provide opportunities to build connections and enhance the quality of life in your community.

In this toolkit, you will find information about:

• Benefits of pop-up events
• Material, site, and space needs
• Community engagement strategies
• Potential funding strategies
• Evaluation methods
• A “Taking Action Checklist” and a “Best Practices Cheat Sheet”
• Many project examples to get your creative juices flowing

This toolkit aims to show that creative community collaborations are so much more than the final product itself: the process can aid in building bridges among diverse groups and create stronger networks wherever you live.

To supplement this toolkit, consider downloading POW!: A Plan of Work Template for Creative Community Projects. POW! will help you organize your goals, tasks, budgets, and track of your project success. Our Community Mural Toolkit and Yarn Bomb! A Toolkit for Community Fiber Projects are great sources for sparking ideas for a pop-up event.

What is a Plan of Work? In a nutshell, a POW is a plan of work that makes you feel like a superhero. It is a step-by-step approach to systematically build your project, program, or event from the ground up. Creating a POW can lead to goal clarity, better engagement and follow-through, and a much more effective final outcome. In other words, it helps you manage the tasks needed to be accomplished to get the job done.

This POW template is tailored for creative community projects and events (digital and IRL) but can be used in any capacity. This interactive document provides prompts, tips, and tables for you and your collaborators to design a thoughtful, effective, and ethical community project.

If you are an artist beginning to explore collaborative work, community engagement, or social practice, this is for you.

If you’re a community member with little to no experience in organizing creative projects, this is for you.

If you’re someone who just wants to learn more about community engagement and leadership, this is for you.

Looking for creative community project inspiration? Download the Community Mural Toolkit.

This guide offers an introduction to the nuts and bolts of community yarn bombing and provides suggestions for strengthening your community’s goodwill in the process.

In this PDF, you will find:

• several community benefits of yarn bombs
• an overview of material and site needs
• examples of fun community engagement strategies
• a sample budget
• some potential funding strategies
• basic evaluation methods
• and a few project examples from across the country

Above all, this toolkit aims to show that community art is so much more than the product itself: the art-making process can aid in building bridges between diverse groups and can help build stronger communities wherever you live.

To supplement this toolkit, consider downloading POW!: A Plan of Work Template for Creative Community Projects. POW! will help you organize your goals, tasks, budgets, and track of your project success.

This introductory pamphlet describes the origins of the Design Dialogues (DD) project and provides some information about the original partners. The pamphlet also gives an overview of the DD curriculum, which makes up the next 10 pamphlets in the series.

The DD curriculum provides activities that are intended to engage youth in thinking critically about their neighborhoods as places where they live, work, play, and learn; articulating their shared visions for community change; and then identifying pathways for actualizing those visions.

This is the second curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet provides information and strategies for effective facilitation of small groups. Readers will learn the stages of facilitation from preplanning through closure, strategies to effectively engage participants in small groups, and strategies to manage difficult situations or behaviors during small group activities.

This is the third curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet teaches project leaders how to create a reflective learning environment and peer support system for youth facilitators who are leading small group activities. Readers will learn how to use role playing to solve problems as well as three different reflective learning practices that they can teach and use.

This is the fourth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet provides youth with the opportunity to examine and articulate their sense of self. The activities presented here teach youth about the concepts of representation and identity while asking them to create a unique self-portrait. In the final exercise, participants use their self-portraits to identify similarities and differences within their group of peers.

This is the fifth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet helps youth define community while introducing them to the concept of a mental map. The activities presented here lead youth through a process to identify the essential elements of their community while they create both individual and collective community mental maps.

This is the sixth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet introduces readers to the concept of learning places and uses mental mapping activities to provide youth with the opportunity to identify the essential learning places in their lives and in their community. The activities presented here provide youth with the opportunity to identify the essential learning places in their community while they create both individual and collective mental maps.

This is the seventh curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. The activities in this pamphlet encourage youth to share their experiences and perspectives of a community-based organization. Readers will explore how events from everyday life can become stories, apply the concept of a learning place (from Document #6), identify strengths of a community-based organization, identify opportunities for improving a community-based organization as a place to learn, and communicate collective perspectives and experiences.

This is the first curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet presents a process for building partnerships with community based organizations (CBOs) and local schools. Readers will learn strategies for starting a new partnership, identifying common interests with their new partner organization, and collaboratively planning an activity.

This is the eighth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet provides youth with the opportunity to articulate their experiences and perspectives of their schools as particular kinds of learning places.

The activities presented here enable youth to understand how a school can be a place with unique meanings – like “home,” to understand how a place can have different meanings for different people, to identify strengths of a school as a place to learn, to identify opportunities for improving a school as a place to learn, and to communicate collective perspectives and experiences.

This is the ninth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet provides youth with the opportunity to prepare and lead a tour of the learning places in their neighborhood.

The activities presented here enable youth to identify formal and informal learning places in their community, articulate what makes these places learning places, plan a tour of the important community learning places, lead a community learning places tour, and communicate collective perspectives and experiences.

This is the tenth curricular pamphlet of the Design Dialogues series. This pamphlet provides youth with the opportunity to share their ideas with decision-makers and people in authority regarding ways to improve and/or enhance their learning environments.

The activities presented here enable readers to demonstrate learning outcomes, engage is making sense of materials from previous sessions, identify themes within youth projects, connect themes to ideas for change, and articulate ideas for positive change to school and community partners.

The Community Mural Toolkit aims to show that community art is so much more than the final product itself: the art-making process can aid in building bridges between diverse groups and add to building stronger communities wherever you live. This guide offers an introduction to the nuts and bolts of community mural making and an invitation to consider and explore your community's goals for creating community art.

This publication helps community development specialists prepare for collaborative community assessment activities. It discusses characteristics of such an assessment, steps involved, and practical implications.