Creative facilitation for civic dialogue and community action around Creative Placemaking
Client: New Hampshire Creative Communities Network (NHCCN)
Format: Three-session virtual series
Role: Creative facilitation, process design, and creative synthesis
Lead Artist & Facilitator: Catherine Stewart / Make Create More
Why This Project
Communities are often asked to navigate complex cultural, social, and economic questions using meeting formats that prioritize information-sharing over connection, reflection, or imagination. In the context of creative placemaking and community development, this can limit how people engage with uncertainty, difference, and possibility.
Round[the]Table responded to this challenge by creating a space where creativity was not an add-on, but the method — supporting participants in exploring complexity, building shared language, and envisioning how conversation might lead to action.
Project Overview
Round[the]Table was a three-part virtual conversation series designed and facilitated by Make Create More for the New Hampshire Creative Communities Network. The project brought artists, cultural workers, community leaders, and partners together to explore questions of creative placemaking, community leadership, and cultural change through dialogue grounded in imagination, metaphor, and shared inquiry.
Rather than functioning as a traditional panel or webinar, Round[the]Table was designed as a participatory, creative conversation — a space where people could think together, listen deeply, and make meaning collectively.
Our Approach
Creative Facilitation & Playful Metaphor
Make Create More designed each session using tools drawn from theatre, facilitation, and participatory art-making. Playful metaphor and imaginative prompts helped participants move beyond abstract language and into more embodied, relational ways of thinking.
This approach lowered barriers to participation, invited curiosity, and supported conversations that were both rigorous and accessible.
Thoughtful Virtual Design
The series was intentionally designed for a virtual environment, with careful attention to pacing, accessibility, and multiple modes of participation. Each session balanced listening, reflection, small-group exchange, and collective dialogue — allowing participants to engage in ways that felt meaningful and humane.
From Conversation to Creative Output
A defining feature of Round[the]Table was its commitment to creative synthesis. Rather than allowing insights to dissipate once sessions concluded, the conversations were translated into a creative companion that captured how ideas evolved over time.
This artistic output served as both documentation and invitation — preserving complexity, surfacing shared questions, and offering a tangible resource that could continue to inform learning and action beyond the live sessions.
The project resulted in a visual and narrative companion created by illustrator Marek Bennett that reflected the questions, tensions, and insights generated across the three sessions. Instead of summarizing conclusions, the companion held space for nuance — mapping relationships, ideas, and moments of resonance that emerged through dialogue.
This creative artifact functions as:
-
a shared reference point for participants
-
a learning resource for the wider field
-
a bridge between conversation and future action
Interested in a Project Like This?
If you’re holding questions that would benefit from imaginative facilitation, creative synthesis, and community-centered dialogue, we’d love to explore what a project like this could look like in your context.
Start a conversation →
Interested in seeing the facilitation in action?
View the full discussions and activities in the videos below, and if you have feedback on the experience we'd love to hear it.
