Art Begets Community Pride Begets Economic Growth

December 5, 2025 by btadmin Posted in Grants, Rural Placemaking

Project 412’s art installations and placemaking work are reinvigorating the Detroit Lakes area

The original plan included murals and smaller art pieces throughout the town of Detroit Lakes, located in Becker County in west central Minnesota. Once Amy Stoller Stearns and her team got to ideating, however, they found it hard to stop.

“The Blandin grant got things going, shall we say?” Stoller Stearns, executive director of Project 412, shared with Blandin Foundation. “The funding was like a flywheel: It got rolling, and people saw what’s possible.”

Project 412 is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making Detroit Lakes — commonly referred to as simply “DL” — a more vibrant and colorful place to live and visit. The organization got its name from the 412 lakes surrounding the town of approximately 9,000 residents. And the organization would look very different without the initial help from Blandin’s Rural Leadership Boost Grant program.

Detroit Lakes was looking for exactly that during the fall of 2022: a boost. The COVID-19 pandemic had greatly impacted the community, and Stoller Stearns knew from professional experience that improving the town’s aesthetics and visuals could help get people excited about their town again. She’d been working at the nearby Historic Holmes Theatre for 20 years and came up with a plan to raise awareness of and support local artists through a series of placemaking projects, which at the time she dubbed “Create DL.”

“We had so many questions: ‘How can we do this? How can we find the funding to do this? How do we encourage the community that there’s value in public art?’” she shared. “Those were the things swirling in our heads.”

They were all fair questions to ask. Stoller Stearns was looking for help creating art and experiences that plenty of people might consider superfluous. Non-essential. Nice to have, but not a requirement.

However, placemaking projects, though they may seem like “just art” to some, have been shown to be anything but. Studies demonstrate that placemaking activities like public arts and events, revitalization, and community development help build resident connection and civic pride. They give people a greater voice in decision-making and a sense of community self-determination. They foster respect for diversity, cooperation and community attachment. Even better, rural placemaking is significantly correlated with a town’s economic growth.

“There’s so much need out there right now for food banks and housing and all of those things that really pull at your heartstrings and are very important, and I also think art is needed, too,” Stoller Stearns shared. “You want to live somewhere that looks good. You want to be proud of your community. We’re also a mid-sized community. We’re not a tiny town, but we’re very, very rural, and so sometimes it’s hard to find funding in that realm.”

At the time Stoller Stearns got the word she’d received $90,000 in funding to bring Create DL to life, she and a small group were starting to form the placemaking nonprofit Project 412, which gave her the flexibility and opportunity to raise additional funds to help support the work and keep that figurative flywheel rolling into the future. She and her team came up with a list of projects, including the aforementioned murals and smaller art pieces, as well as a community-wide art event, a new website to introduce Project 412 to the public, and more.

The team experienced some pivots along the way — a natural consequence of any placemaking project — but as of November 2025 they’ve made incredible progress on their initial goals, resulting in:

• 8 new murals, some as large as more than 2,000 square feet, with 2 more in the works
• 20 “art surprises” — smaller pieces of artwork placed on walls, sidewalks, and planters throughout town
• 12 utility box wraps installed on power stations throughout the community
• 12 “art on a stick” pieces with 24 pieces of art planted in four DL city parks, to be updated with new designs annually
• 12 weekly summer art events in lieu of just one large community event
• A new website that showcases all of the artists’ work and details upcoming projects
• The development of a “Wave Makers” donation program to help fund future ventures

When he founded Blandin Foundation back in 1941, Charles Blandin emphasized flexibility to ensure the organization could adapt to changing times. This flexibility extends to our grantmaking process, and it’s something Stoller Stearns acknowledged throughout the execution of Project 412’s plans.

“Blandin is very generous in their reality of implementing funding, because not all funders realize that sometimes things change, sometimes things get delayed,” Stoller Stearns shared. “For example, with our utility box wraps, there was a lot in terms of working with the Public Utilities Commission, who were great, and with the Department of Transportation, which is a little more challenging. Sometimes those things take longer. Sometimes with the murals, we found that what we thought was a perfect wall was not such a perfect wall because it had foundational issues. The best part, though, is that what we first dreamed and envisioned has now become an ongoing investment in and focus on adding more public art to Detroit Lakes over the next decade.”

Unsurprisingly, public response to Project 412 has been overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps more importantly, it has done exactly what placemaking projects are designed to do: spur vitality and economic growth within a community.

“That’s been a really happy offshoot of this funding and this project: the civic pride we see in people. I drive by any one of these murals, and somebody will be pointing at it or talking about it. It makes people feel good,” Stoller Stearns explained. “The VFW in particular is so enamored with their big VFW mural; they’ve updated the inside of their building and are doing so many more public activities. I feel like the mural helped give them a little more pride in their building.”

She continued: “When this grant was awarded, the Historic Holmes Theatre was about it in town in terms of any kind of visual arts classes. It’s been three years, and it just seems that there are so many more opportunities now in town for art. There’s a new art materials and framing store. Another business started that offers a whole roster of classes for youth and adults. The Holmes is doing even more with visual arts; they have a full-time Visual Arts Director. The museum has some gallery space. The bookstore in town is showcasing artists. There’s another business that opened up that’s an event center and also offers art classes. There’s another gal who freelances and teaches art classes in the basement of a building downtown. None of that existed three years ago. We also fundraised separately to bring in Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo, who built giant trolls throughout DL,” Stoller Stearns added. The ‘Alexa’s Elixir’ exhibit and Detroit Lakes were named by TIME as one of the World’s Greatest Places in 2025! So this boost grant was truly a boost for us.”

Blandin Foundation is passionate about maintaining and improving the quality of rural places to help people feel connected, invested, and proud of where they live. It’s a passion that Stoller Stearns shares and continues to bring to her role at Project 412.

“Investing in placemaking is one of the best things a community can do for economic development,” she said. “It really helps people want to stay in that community, maybe start a business, raise their family, retire there, visit, all of that. It’d be great if more towns would embrace it, and if more funders would fund it, because some of the activities and projects in the placemaking world cost a lot of money and time to do. It’s sometimes hard to find the money locally. It’s great when a foundation such as Blandin recognizes how important it is.”