MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - During the Township Board meeting on September 20th, Peter Menser, Senior Planner for Meridian Township gave the Our Town Grant presentation.

Since August 2016, Meridian Township has been negotiating and collaborating with Michigan State University (MSU) on a grant opportunity; the grant opportunity is through the National Endowment for Arts which exhibits a mindset about community development with a specific focus on arts.

During Menser's presentation, he gave a detailed description of what the Our Town Grant is and what it hopes to achieve: The Our Town Grant looks to fund projects that build knowledge about creative place-making. Creative place-making is where partners from public, private, nonprofit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood or could be a city, could be a region, but it's shaped around arts and cultural activities.

Menser said, "Meridian Township doesn't really focus much on bringing arts into the community planning process so this grant specifically is an effort to address that gap."

While MSU will provide the financial match, Meridian Township offers its "sweat activity" as Menser calls it, where staff will host meetings, attend meetings, contact corridor stakeholders, make connections, distribute surveys, review documents, and other logistical work.