Creatours is an initiative of the Legacy Center at the Blue Grass Community Foundation. The purpose of Creatours is to expose existing and emerging community leaders to innovative ideas from communities and people around the country. Ideas to be discovered range from downtown development to greenway trails, to inner city revitalization, to social entrepreneurship and activism among many others.

Destinations and activities to be studied will be selected based in part on suggestions from the community.

Participants are selected by an application process. Participants will be required to study before their trip, to take notes, photos, and videos in order to prepare a blog that will be posted on this site as well as to stay in touch with their fellow Creatourists in order to keep innovative ideas alive.

Participation is open to any resident of the Bluegrass, 21 years or older regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

Creatours participants may be eligible for full or partial scholarships funded by the Legacy Center at Blue Grass Community Foundation. Scholarships include transportation, lodging, meals, and any applicable fees.

2009 Creatours are being planned now. Each trip will generally range from one to two full work-week days, although longer, more extensive conferences are also possible.

If you are interested in joining us on a Creatour, please email the following (as plain text, Word, or PDF) to saustin@bgcf.org:
• Full name of applicant
• Address of applicant
• Phone number of applicant
• E-mail address of applicant
• Web-site and/or blog URL of applicant (if applicable)
• Occupation and employer of applicant
• Brief biographical information (under 150 words)
• List of conferences, trainings, or other continuing education opportunities attended over past three years (please include name, location and month/year of each event)
• Describe how your employer supports your professional development (in terms of time-off, etc.)
• Describe what you hope to get out of attending a Creatour (300 words or less)
• Describe how you think Lexington would benefit from your participation in the course (300 words or less)

We will select participants based on their ability to experience personal growth as well as their ability to expand the consciousness of our Community.

We will notify you as Creatours are planned to gauge your interest in joining us.

Donations to the Creatours Fund are welcome and can be made at the Blue Grass Community Foundation Home Page:
http://www.bgcf.org

or email me: saustin@bgcf.org

For more information on the Legacy Projects, please stay tuned to the Legacy Center site: http://www.legacycenter.ning.com

yeah, it was a little wet, and a little cold - but making our city a better place requires a certain hardiness, like the pioneers had....

On November 12, 2008, twenty energetic and diverse Lexingtonians toured the Indianapolis trail system in order to better understand how to create great trails here. Our fabulous tour guide was Joann Green of CBA in Indy, the landscape architect who is helping to design the legacy trail here. In her words: “I’ve never seen a community so excited about trails as Lexington.”

This is due in large part to the efforts of early trail advocates here including Vanmeter Petit and Zina Merkin and other supporters of the town branch trail, Cindy Dietz, Kenzie Gleason, Keith Lovan, Jay McChord, Marnie Holoubek and so many others.

Our group endured seven hours of bus travel over crumbling interstates, spent hours touring in a cold rain, and in all gave twenty-seven intense hours of their lives to this trip. We also had a great warm supper amid wonderful conversations about trails and city building and the pros and cons of living in the Lex.

Check out the spectrum of people on the trip: young professionals, police officers, Downtown and East End residents, suburbanites, government officials, city staff from the parks department, planning commission, and the bike and pedestrian coordinator for the city. We had trail experts, community volunteers, downtown leaders, engineers, landscape architects, a safety expert, and a representative from the arts community.

All were brought together by a shared vision of trails for Lexington – the power of an idea to make a better place to live. In the words of Keith Lovan at supper, "its amazing to see so many people here (in indy) because of a trail!"

We learned about a concerted community effort to remake a Indianapolis based on the premise that trails are vital to quality of life and that quality of life is good for business. We saw a community that uses public art not only to beautify, but to stand as a visible symbol that the place is open to new and different ideas. We felt a sense of positive energy that seems to permeate across the city.

Watch the video below - stay with it, its very interesting - and check out the pictures. For more detailed thoughts, click on the Indy Blog. And let us know what you think – how can we all make a better trail system as well as a better Lexington.
Our team consisted of:

Saraya Brewer - writer Business Lexington/Smiley Pete
Sarah Brown - 1st District Council aide
Brent Claiborne - Theraputic Recreation Director for Parks and Rec
Jim Clark - CEO/LexArts
Cindy Dietz - Greenspace Planner
Bob Drakeford - General Services
Brad Flowers - Chairman, Bike Task Force
Kenzie Gleason - Pedestrian and Bicycle Corridinator
Marnie Holoubek - Community Volunteer
Renee Jackson - CEO/Downtown Lexington Corporation
Keith Lovan - City Engineer
Jay McChord - City Councilman
Zina Merkin - Community Volunteer
DR. Derek Paulsen - EKU Professor/Safety Expert
Officer Brian Penix - Police Department
Sgt. Chris Schnelle - Police Department
Thomas Tolliver - Community Volunteer
Mike Woolum - Strand Engineers/Lead Trail Consultant
Beth Willmott - Legacy Center
Steve Austin - Legacy Center

For more information on the Cultural Trail watch these videos and visit the cultural trail website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7VGP7Xcss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZy8PQ0C9c
http://www.indyculturaltrail.org/

This link has all the cool conference stuff, agendas, etc...
http://creativecitiessummit.com/
Special thanks to Laura Williams and the Knight Foundation for helping to make this trip possible!

What a GREAT conference! One of the best conferences any of us has ever attended. Creativity - how to develop it in every single person and how to engage it for the betterment of the community - that's what this is all about.

Think about these questions:
Do we have enough creativity in Lexington?
Is our economy on the right track?
Does Lexington appreciate creativity?
Who are our creative Champions?
Does our community say “yes” enough?
What is your role as a creative catalyst?

WHERE WE GO NEXT:

The Creative Cities Summit is over, but our work is just beginning. It was a fantastic conference, one that has inspired us to reach out into the community to make sure that we can share the benefits as widely as possible.

We are going to be doing the following things:

1. Spread the message in a grass-roots, social networking fashion about the importance of creativity to every issue that faces our city. We want to re-frame the discussion – the challenges we face include food, energy, environment, broad economic opportunity, local commerce, mobility, and increasing beauty in our city, among many others.

We want to tap into, enhance, support, and even help energize the people and groups who are already addressing these challenges in creative ways.

2. Each member of our traveling group will prepare a list of actions that they can take immediately to make our city a better place – these will be posted here asap.

3. Begin a media strategy immediately to get the word out that we – the creative class – are already here in Lexington and that we are going to reshape the city over the coming generation. To quote JFK, “the torch has been passed to a new generation…”

4. Our website, as well as various other social networking sites, including Facebook will be employed to build connections and awareness.

5. We will begin planning for a “Creative City Lexington Forum” or some such title, to be held in mid-late winter 2009. This will be modeled after the Detroit conference but will be focused on Lexington. Great speakers, cutting edge concepts, and a broad partnership of local groups and organizations to sponsor and support this Forum will be the hallmarks. This could mark a significant turning point in Lexington’s history. Longer term, we will entice an international creative cities conference here a la Creative Cities Summit 2.0 in Detroit.

This is not another study, plan, or report. This is not “someone’s” group. This is not a club or clique. This is simply us trying to reach, support, and motivate the creative soul of Lexington. Who can say where it will lead. That’s the fun part.

If you care about these questions read the blogs, check out the videos and pictures and come back often!

"Be the best, not in, but for, the world"

thanks

Participants:
Beth Willmott – Legacy Center
Laura Williams – Knight Foundation
Phil Holoubek – Knight CAC and downtown developer
Anthony Wright – LFUCG director of economic development
Nathan Cryder – Global Gain
Hap Houlihan – Morris Book Shop
Griffin Van Meter – Entrepreneur/Activist
Brad Flowers – Chairman Mayor's Bike Task Force
VanMeter Petit - Architect
Steve Austin – Legacy Center

Here's a short clip with some creative cities ideas
For more information, please stay tuned to our home site: http://www.legacycenter.ning.com or email me: saustin@bgcf.org

The first creatour....

Columbus Visit, Monday, October 6
Creatour Attendees
• Renee Jackson – President of Downtown Lexington Corporation
• Phil Holoubek – Downtown developer and President of Lexington’s Real Estate Company
* Josh Marrillia - Design and construction
• Anthony Wright – Mayor’s Office for Economic Development
• Jay McChord – Urban County Council Member
• Barry McNees – Downtown developer and main force behind our new Distillery District, a 25+ acre development in downtown
• Vitale Buford – DLC board member and community activist
• Steve Austin – Director of the Legacy Center
* Erik Carlson - Business Lexington

What a great trip! Travelling by city bus, we visited with several key leaders in the Columbus area; learning about the innovative ways that they are addressing their challenges. From utilizing every revenue source possible to improve their city to utilizing a 150 year-old public market to enhance quality of life, to building over 86 miles of greenways, Columbus has much to teach us.

Perhaps most innovative is Columbus’ approach to downtown development. By doing away with a 50 year old, suburban zoning code, the city has been able to leverage over $2 billion in downtown investment over the last seven years. The zoning code was replaced with a flexible system that utilizes collaboration and market forces to get a desired cityscape rather than regulations and confrontation. The results are spectacular: over 4,000 housing units have been developed in downtown, hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and office development have been added, historic buildings have been protected while new buildings are architecturally daring.

This is a valuable lesson for Lexington and one that we will ensure gets more discussion here.

The video below presents some of the great things learned by trip participants. Take a look and leave us a comment.