A community arts handbook is a collection of illustrated methods to aid arts councils at various stages of the planning and design process. Setting up a new arts council or improving an existing requires a visioning process that offers community participants opportunities to make their arts concerns known, as well as planned actions to achieve desired outcomes. The effectiveness of an organization depends upon a relationship to its constituents, who may be actual members or the broader public. The transparency of the councils' goals can influence the way that media is used to keep the community informed. Consequently, a well-planned communications program delivers information translated into the language of the audience. Assessing community assets through workshops and surveys of arts activities provides the basis for identifying facility space requirements—and such requirements determine the suitability of existing facilities for use as an arts center.

The Community Arts Center Handbook publication is available for download here.

Henry Sanoff, AIA, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Architecture, North Carolina State University (NCSU), studied architecture at Pratt Institute. He came to the College of Design in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor. Known for books such as Democratic Design, School Building Assessment Methods, Schools Designed with Community Participation, Programming and Participation in Architectural Design, Community Participation in Design and Planning, Creating Environments for Young Children, Visual Research Methods in Design, and the Arts Center Workbook, he is the former US editor of the Journal of Design Studies, and founder of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). He has lectured at more than eighty-five institutions in the United States and abroad and has been a visiting scholar at the University of London, Tokyo University, the University of Sydney, the Royal Danish Academy of Art, the University of Thessaloniki, Seoul National University, and the Polish Institute of Architects. Sanoff is the recipient of the NCSU’s Holladay Medal of Excellence, the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Achievement Award, the ACSA’s Architecture Distinguished Professor citation, the Distinguished Fulbright Award to Korea, Fulbright Senior Specialists Award to Peru, and the EDRA Honor and Service Awards.

Evrim Demir Mishchenko is an associate professor of architecture at Mersin University in Turkey. She received a fellowship from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) to work at NCSU with Prof. Sanoff on this publication. She earned her BArch and MArch degrees from METU in Ankara, Turkey and a PhD in design degree from NCSU. Demir Mishchenko’s studies received several awards including ARCC’s King Student Medal for Excellence in Architectural and Environmental Research, First Place in research category in EDRA’s Active Place Competition, Best Paper Award in ARCC/EAAE’s conference in Dublin, NCSU Alumni Fellowship, Turkish Department of Family and Social Policies Accessibility Quality Award, and Accessible IT Platform of Turkey Accessible Education Award. Her research focuses on neighborhood design, walkable communities, accessibility, inclusive design, campus design, children’s environments, active living by design, health and design, community participation, and more recently on creative industries and community art centers. She has received research grants from national and international organizations including the European Union and TUBITAK.