“We unleash the creativity of artists to create welcoming, human-centered places.”
Art Builds Community is a women-led, public art planning, consulting, policy, curation, placemaking, and community engagement firm that brings critical thinking and artists’ perspectives to the creative design of cities, buildings, and infrastructure.
Our StorY
Art Builds Community (ABC) is a nationally operating, women-led firm based in San José, California, specializing in public art planning, policy development, curation, placemaking, and community engagement. Established in 2020 by Barbara Goldstein, Amanda Rawson, and Quỳnh-Mai Nguyễn, ABC brings a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach to shaping culturally resonant public spaces across the United States.
The firm’s work integrates critical thinking and artists’ perspectives into the design of cities, buildings, and infrastructure. With a mission rooted in equity, storytelling, and access, ABC collaborates with public agencies, municipalities, and private developers to develop frameworks that place artists at the center of civic transformation.
ABC’s national portfolio includes public art master planning and strategic consultation for clients such as the City of Las Vegas, NV; the City of Lake Oswego, OR; and the Town of Catonsville, MD. Their impact within curation and placemaking can be seen through projects such as Growing AgriCultural Roots at Veggielution Community Farm, the rooftop public installation at the Vietnamese American Service Center, and Womanhood, a public recognition project that recognizes women’s historical contributions to Santa Clara County. These projects reflect ABC’s capacity to tailor artist-led, community-informed approaches to diverse urban and regional contexts.
The founding team reflects a powerful combination of expertise:
Barbara Goldstein, a veteran public art planner and former architecture critic, brings policy insight and strategic vision to the intersection of culture, infrastructure, and urban development.
Amanda Rawson, a committed arts advocate with a background in art history, has played a pivotal role on arts organization boards and has championed cultural ecosystems through facilitation and advocacy.
Quỳnh-Mai Nguyễn, a social practice artist and designer, contributes deep experience in community organizing, engagement, and creative production, centering marginalized voices through art and storytelling.
At its core, ABC values the ability of people to shape their environments through creative expression. The firm’s work champions the balance between new development and existing cultural assets—ensuring that communities not only retain their identity but thrive in evolving landscapes. Through artist collaboration and public engagement, ABC creates more dynamic, inclusive, and culturally responsive places within their work.
our mission
As cities and towns develop, it is critical to facilitate a balance between new development and existing cultural assets. Working with public agencies, community groups, and private developers, we devise frameworks that empower artists to participate in shaping changing environments. When artists participate in design, places become more dynamic, engaging, and culturally responsive. Our work builds upon existing cultural assets, valuing the past while welcoming the future.
our Values
Equity and Access: We prioritize inclusive practices that elevate historically underserved communities and recognize the importance of access to the lived experience across all limitations experienced by a person or group.
Artist Empowerment: We believe artists are essential to shaping vibrant, resilient, and meaningful public spaces.
Community Voice: We engage people in co-creating the environments they live in and value.
Cultural Sustainability: We honor existing cultural assets while planning for a dynamic and connected future.
Our Services
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From project management to public art master plans, our planning process involves working closely with clients and community stakeholders to develop a series of recommendations that reflect both national best practices and local circumstances and concerns. We help create frameworks that emphasize on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion so that our clients can be successful in leading their public art programs and projects with confidence.
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Our team is multidisciplinary and diverse in our experiences, backgrounds, cultures, and generation. We are not just public art consultants. We are arts advocates, art historians, policy makers, community organizers, respected leaders, creative producers, and working artists. Our work and investments in the cultural arts span nationally and internationally. We can help consult on your public art projects and programs, artist management, community outreach, operations, policy, events, galleries, and more.
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Public art has the ability to honor the past, inspire the future, catalyze discourse, and transform and anchor a place with art and storytelling for/by/about the communities who call it home.
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Our methodology combines traditional forms of outreach from surveys, focus groups, and community meetings with a multidisciplinary arts-based engagement within a social practice lens. We empower artists to be community connectors while also engaging communities through art making. It is important to meet people especially those who are hard-to-reach where they gather, knowing that there are many barriers such as language, access, and transportation that may limit their participation in the planning process.
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We have extensive experience in placemaking as well as placekeeping, a term that many people are not familiar with but often advocate for when it comes to preserving their communities and culture in the face of development. When we work with community organizations, community members, and artists, we are able to reimagine overlooked spaces to become places that honor the past, welcome the future, center around healing, inspire creation, while also being a catalyst for discourse.
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Let us help you curate engaging and educational experiences around public art and planning. We have experience in facilitating panel discussions and board retreats, interviewing and hosting artist talks, presenting hands-on placemaking workshops and community engagement activities, mentoring emerging artists and student artists, delivering presentations for businesses or conferences, and more!
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