Understanding Artists’ Relationships to Urban Creative Placemaking Through Documentary Storytelling

This essay utilizes the extensive research developed for the documentary film, A Day in the Sun, and offers a focused case study of the relationship between arts-driven development practice (creative placemaking) and individual artists in the dense, micro-urban space of York, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. In doing so, it explores the relevance of narrative encounter and creation in understanding the motivations and actions of artists and those of practitioners or administrators in the arts development environment. Utilizing an interdisciplinary composition of research in economics, urban planning, organizational theory and arts development, as well as hours of the documentary’s raw and unedited audiovisual material, this essay explores storytelling as a viable means of understanding the relationship between artists and their creative urban spaces.