The Minneapolis city government is participating in a program called Creative CityMaking—which places 9 local artists within 5 city departments to work on city planning. The program's goal is "to create strategies for tackling community challenges — things like reaching out to the city's youth and trying to get a higher rate of response from people of color for surveys and city meetings.” Creative CityMaking is the first program of its kind in Minneapolis and is successfully connecting the city to its residents. It's funded through a combination of federal, private and city investments that total more than $1 million.

In its pilot program, artist team E.G. Bailey and Sha Cage surveyed more than 1,900 residents in the Cedar-Riverside area to identify the community's assets and transformed a conventional survey into a hand-drawn magazine that included an interactive map of the world.