Wilmington Renaissance Corporation (WRC) has been recommended for an award of $75,000 to support Creative District Wilmington’s Vacant to Vibrant: Pocket Parks and Passages. The award is one of 64 announced by National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu totaling $4.3 million supporting projects across the nation through the NEA’s Our Town program.

The Our Town grant program supports creative placemaking projects that help to transform communities into lively, beautiful, and resilient places with the arts at their core. The NEA received 240 applications for Our Town this year and will make awards ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.

"The State of Delaware congratulates WRC and Creative District Wilmington on their NEA Our Town Award," said Paul Weagraff, director of the Delaware Division of the Arts. "This exciting community development project acknowledges the role the arts can play in addressing critical social issues and envisioning new possibilities within Wilmington’s creative landscape."

Creative District Wilmington’s Vacant to Vibrant: Pocket Parks and Passages is an initiative to re-imagine and re-design four vacant, blighted and underutilized areas in the City’s Creative District. The placemaking project centralizes the arts in a planning process that fulfills the community’s vision for the area, builds upon community-driven programming to transform these challenged spaces into vibrant, attractive community gathering places filled with public art, performances and civic events.

Vacant to Vibrant will partner with the City of Wilmington, neighborhood residents and award-winning placemaking design firm, Groundswell Design Group.

The final plans will then be utilized to secure the necessary funding to implement the new vision for these four areas.