Community activists and developers are integrating the arts and culture into building vibrant communities. Increasingly, groups and organizations are leveraging the arts and imagination to engage citizens in community development. In doing so, they create places and organizations that support economic diversity and strengthen the aesthetics of communities. There is a growing awareness that the arts can serve as a vehicle to bring people together. There is interest in making places more intentionally open for diverse economic opportunities and fostering connections across cultures which makes communities more vibrant and welcoming.

Culture is also gaining more attention in community development as society becomes more diverse through demographic shifts including greater concentrations of the elderly, immigrants, ethnic diversity, and counter-culture movements. As a result, it could be argued that there isn't a single public but multiple publics. Community developers are challenged to be culturally aware and sensitive as they weave these multiple publics together into a community of shared vision, interests and investment.

The 2015 Community Development Society conference offers a platform for dialogue about community development with an emphasis on the roles of creativity and culture in framing community issues and responses. We invite you to join us July 19-22, 2015 in Lexington, Kentucky in the heart of the world's most avid horse culture, to share your research and learning about how the arts and creative expression are strengthening the bonds of communities around the world.

The learning tracks will provide opportunities to explore community development approaches in depth from an urban, metropolitan and rural perspective. The program agenda includes many issues and areas of community development practice such as:

• Strengthening Health
• Strengthening the Environment
• Strengthening Economic Vibrancy
• Strengthening Social Justice
• Strengthening Democracy

Conference Theme: Creativity and Culture: Community Development Approaches for Strengthening Health, Environment, Economic Vibrancy, Social Justice and Democracy

Call for Abstracts – Deadline Extended
Deadline for submissions:  February 15, 2015
To submit go to this link: http://comm-dev.org/about-us/2015-conference/call-for-abstracts

Please see the detailed Call for Abstracts that includes a detailed description of conference themes featured and attached below.

This venue provides opportunities for spirited and lively exchanges about community development practice, learning, and scholarship. We invite your presentations, workshops and discussions of successful and innovative approaches to solving development issues in communities, large and small, in the US or internationally to share with your colleagues, new and emerging scholars, students and others in Lexington. Won't you join us?

Thank you,

CDS