ABOUT US

DEBORAH PATTERSON
Creative Placemaking Consultant

For more than fifteen years, Deborah Patterson has expertly guided diverse communities through the creative placemaking process, crafting spaces that embody their distinctive vision, innovative ideas, values, character, history, and culture. Her journey into this process was as organic as the transformative work she champions.

A practicing artist for over thirty-five years, Deborah lived in Italy for many years–while also teaching art in Greece–and returned to the U.S to complete her masters degree in Religion and the Arts at Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music and the Arts. She then returned to her place of origin, Baltimore, Maryland, in order to complete a painting and music collaboration (the first of two) with composer and then-director of the Peabody Institute, Robert Sirota.

In addition to painting (and teaching Italian), she became a teaching artist in several underserved Baltimore City communities. Over the years, she discovered that people of all ages in the community deeply yearned to create but had few opportunities. Seeking to engage them in a holistic and grassroots way, she stumbled upon the remarkable work that New York City’s Project for Public Spaces was accomplishing with communities, both small and large, worldwide through their placemaking process. After completing two training sessions with them in New York: “How to Turn a Place Around” (2008) and “Streets as Places” (2009), she founded the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, ARTblocks, whose express purpose is to bring art out of the classroom and into the neighborhood for all to participate.

Numerous transformative community projects have resulted that include five life-size elephant sculptures to traffic calm a formerly dangerous road in a neighborhood adjoining Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park; a living chair at Rawlings Conservatory in collaboration with a Mexican living wall artist; an enormous bus stop in Highlandtown created in collaboration with a Spanish arts collective; and others.

In addition to facilitating the process with communities, Deborah is frequently asked to speak about creative placemaking. In 2020, she was a presenter at an international conference on arts integration and climate action, which led to her advising teachers in a town in northern Italy and a nonprofit in Uganda. In 2022, she was the keynote speaker for Maryland’s Citizens for the Arts’ annual ArtsLAB, which resulted in a collaboration with Charles County, Maryland to create a “center”–through creative placemaking and public art–in rural Waldorf. In 2023, as a Mangroves Fellow–an international think tank for scholars of varying disciplines–she shared the process with the Fellows, many of whom have since used it directly or indirectly in their work. On October 18, 2025, she will lead residents and stakeholders of Easton, Maryland through the process to create a public art vision plan for the principal road and gateway into town.

To discuss using the creative placemaking process with your community, contact Deborah directly deborah@creativeplacemaking.com