Creative Placemaking Convocation

A Program for You

Brought to you by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) and ArtPlace America, this Virtual Convocation offered a chance for state arts agency community development coordinators to connect with each other and explore challenges and promising practices in community arts development and creative placemaking.

About the Convocation

This program tackled placemaking in a shifting landscape. The advent of COVID-19, economic upheaval, the murder of George Floyd and longstanding inequities are driving tectonic shifts in community life and arts participation. What do these shifts mean for placemaking? How can state arts agencies best serve communities in this context? The Virtual Convocation helped state arts agencies navigate this terrain.

A strong equity lens infused and informed the entire program. The first week of the Virtual Convocation focused on cross-sector collaboration and mapping/mobilizing creative assets. The second week our practice deepened around measuring equity, empowering communities and addressing unintended consequences.

The Virtual Convocation responded to the needs of agency community development coordinators. Stories and speakers from the state arts agency network were interwoven throughout.

Plenaries

Resetting the Stage: Healing Communities in Post-2020 Realities

This opening plenary brings us to Minneapolis where the murder of George Floyd, in the midst of a global pandemic, set off unprecedented national and international protests calling for racial justice. Many parts of the Twin Cities were devastated.

Speakers

Shá Cage

Shá Cage

Playwright, Director, Actor

McKnight Foundation

Shá Cage is a curator and cultural consultant. She is also a writer, activist, theater/film maker, performer and director who has been called a Change-maker, one of the leading artists of her generation, and a mover and maker. Her work has taken her to Japan, South Africa, Germany, England, West Africa, Canada, The Netherlands, Bosnia and Croatia, Sweden, and across the U.S. She holds both Emmy and Ivey awards, a TCG Career fellowship, a McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship, artists of the year recognitions, and international awards. She is the co-founder of several organizations and initiatives including The Million Artist Movement, The MN Artist Coalition, Tru Ruts, MN Spoken Word Association, Mama Mosaic, Black Film MN, Catalyst Arts, The Black Arts Healing Retreat, and the Black Arts Alliance. She was seen last as Lady Capulet on stage at the Guthrie Theater and has held lead roles at the Jungle, Penumbra, Frank Theater and Mixed Blood. She is the editor and curator of the Moment of Silence forthcoming anthology www.blackmnvoices.com and has 3 plays and 6 films to her credit. She has been using art to elevate Black and Brown narratives through Tru Ruts for over 20 years.

DeAnna Cummings

DeAnna Cummings

Program Director

McKnight Foundation

DeAnna Cummings joined McKnight in June 2020 as Arts program director. Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, McKnight invests in the arts and other sectors to support the state’s working artists and advocate for the value of their work. Cummings is a cofounder, board member, and the former CEO of Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA), a social enterprise business in north Minneapolis that trains and employs historically underestimated youth as a springboard to higher education and careers in art and design. Established in 1995 as an after-school program in the North Side’s Sumner-Glenwood neighborhood, JXTA has become one of the most important cultural institutions in the Twin Cities. Prior to cofounding JXTA, Cummings served as a program officer for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and as a senior administrator for the Council on Black Minnesotans, since renamed the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage. Cummings has served on the Bush Foundation’s board of trustees since 2013. She is a 2016 Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Women in Business awardee and a Minnesota Public Radio 2013 Arts Hero. From 2016 to 2018, she was a DeVos Institute Fellow in the selective international fellowship program in arts management at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a master’s in public administration from Harvard University and studied sociology and psychology at the University of Minnesota. Photo Credit: Ryan Stopera

Robert Lilligren

Robert Lilligren

President

Native America Community Development Institute

Robert Lilligren is President and CEO of the Native America Community Development Institute (NACDI). He is enrolled in the White Earth Ojibwe Nation. Robert served for 12 years as the Vice President of the Minneapolis City Council. In his professional, political and activist work, Robert emphasizes empowering historically disenfranchised people. Robert lives the asset-based community development vision of NACDI. He was appointed to the Metropolitan Council in March of 2019 and is Chair of Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors (MUID), a regional leadership forum comprised of the executives of some three dozen Native organizations. Robert is a housing developer, transportation policy wonk, and year ‘round bike commuter. Robert’s work includes developing a strong Native cultural identity to a part of the city, policy work related to development on a neighborhood, city, and regional level and operating a cultural space

Eric Takeshita

Eric Takeshita

Senior Fellow

ArtPlace America

Erik Takeshita is passionate about advancing the role of art and culture in building stronger communities. Erik is currently a Senior Fellow at ArtPlace America. He previously served as Portfolio Director for Community Creativity at the Bush Foundation and Director of Creative Placemaking at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). Erik also ran an arts center in Honolulu, HI and served a Senior Policy Aide to the Mayor of the City Minneapolis. Erik was trained as a potter, holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two daughters.

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Divergent Thinking: Making New Connections

In this plenary, participants learn about, observe, and discuss ways of working and partnering for effective creative placemaking in diverse, challenging, and ever-changing circumstances. We hear about examples of effective, unconventional partnerships and ways to help form and support responsive and flexible collaborations.

Speakers

Barbara Schaffer Bacon

Barbara Schaffer Bacon

Co-director, Animating Democracy

Americans for the Arts

Barbara Schaffer Bacon co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that inspires, informs, promotes, and connects arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Additionally, she contributes to Local Arts Advancement work at Americans for the Arts. Barbara has contributed to many publications including: Civic Dialogue, Arts & Culture: Findings from Animating Democracy, Municipal – Artist Partnerships, and The Aesthetics Perspectives Framework. She has served as a program design and evaluation adviser for state and national arts agencies and private foundations. Barbara previously served as executive director of the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts. She is president of the Arts Extension Institute, Inc. and a board member for WomenArts. Barbara served for 14 years on the Belchertown, MA School Committee. In 2018, Barbara received the Robert E. Gard Foundation Leadership Award. She currently serves as a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Marty Pottenger

Marty Pottenger

Founding Director

ART AT WORK

Marty Pottenger is a theater artist, playwright, activist, and pioneer of creative placemaking. She is the founder of Art At Work, a national initiative putting creativity to work strengthening communities and local governments’ ability to meet challenges of health, inequity, partisanship, and climate emergency. a A 2013 MacDowell Fellow, Marty received an OBIE award for a performance and five-year community art project called City Water Tunnel #3. She is currently creating MAINEUSA – a musical theater performance and community arts project about the history of Maine from the Ice Age till now. Nine narrators, seventy-five singers, musicians, dancers, and a life-size Right Whale puppet will offer a shared narrative to audience members who see little commonality with each other in these times. inspire Mainers to come together with a fierce determination to combat climate destruction. www.artatwork.us

Maria Sykes

Maria Sykes

Director

Epicenter

After graduating from Auburn University’s School of Architecture in 2008, a program known for a focus on community-engaged rural work, Maria Sykes sought after a community where her skills and passions could be utilized for good. Following a summer visit to the town of Green River (pop. 952) in beautiful southeastern Utah, she moved there to co-found Epicenter with colleagues from Auburn. Epicenter is a non-profit organization and Local Arts Agency focused on community and economic development through arts and design. Sykes has been working in rural community development for less than a decade, but the work has been honored many times including by Utah Governor Gary Herbert. Sykes is the Executive Director of Epicenter and has a contagious passion for working in rural places as close as nearby Moab, Utah, and as far away as Neskaupstaður, Iceland.

Daniel Ross

Daniel Ross

CEO

DAISA Enterprises, LLC

Daniel is CEO and Principal of DAISA Enterprises LLC (), which works at the intersection of food, health, economic and community development, building cutting-edge initiatives and enterprises. As an innovator for healthy and equitable community food systems, he has been recognized with fellowships from Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Good, MIT Legatum Institute for Development and Entrepreneurship, Do Something, and others. Since full launch in 2015, DAISA has developed a powerful portfolio of projects, working with national foundation clients VC-funded social enterprises, and leading community-based organizations. DAISA is the National Program Office of the Kresge Foundation’s Fresh, Local, Equitable funding program, and is honored to facilitate the national Equitable Food-Oriented Development Collaborative (), a practitioner-led movement for systems change in finance and community development.

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The Color of Equity: Do We Know It When We See It?

Racism and inequity are deeply – and sometimes not so deeply – embedded in cultural, social and economic institutions and systems. When we peel away layers, what do we see and still not see? This session explores equity and persistent questions surrounding inequities that typically arise in placemaking and other cultural work.

Speakers

Kiley Arroyo

Kiley Arroyo

Founding Director

Cultural Strategies Council

Kiley Arroyo is a respected cultural policy, collaborative learning, and justice-centered systems change expert based in the Bay Area. Over the past twenty years, she has led a diverse portfolio of initiatives in partnership with entities from the arts and culture, government, civil society, and academic sectors. This work has taken place in a combination of urban, rural, and indigenous contexts in the United States and internationally. This work is increasingly focused on amplifying non-western, and indigenous approaches to whole systems care as a means to expand the library of cultural knowledge that informs just transitional efforts. Ms. Arroyo’s career began as a teaching artist in public schools. Learning through intercultural exchange and creative processes remains central to her work with foundations, government, and cultural development actors. She has lectured at universities in the United States and abroad and published widely on the role of culture in contemporary policy issues, global migration and displacement, participatory democracy, equitable development, community wealth building, and racial justice.

Theresa Hwang

Theresa Hwang

Director

Department of Places

Theresa Hyuna Hwang is a community-engaged architect, educator, and facilitator. She is the founder of Department of Places, a participatory design and community engagement practice based in Los Angeles, CA. She has spent over 15 years focused on equitable cultural and community development with multiple groups and campaigns. Additionally, she is the current Program Director of Design Futures Student Leadership Forum, a national anti-racist design education. She was the former Director of Community Design and Planning at the Skid Row Housing Trust, a non-profit permanent supportive housing organization where she was the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow from 2009-2012. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, the New York Times, Atlantic Cities, Al-Jazeera America and other media outlets. She is on the Board of Directors for Venice Community Housing and formerly on Board of the Association for Community Design. She was recognized as one of Next City’s Urban Vanguards in 2015. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design (2007) and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Art History from the Johns Hopkins University (2001). She is a licensed architect in California and is a LEED accredited professional.

Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes

Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes

Chief Executive Officer

Efforts of Grace

Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes is a mother, daughter, educator, organizer, author, event producer, performance artist, and community servant. Most know her by her many pursuits, but the way this writer knows herself and the world around her, is through her exploration of the word. Embedded in the cultural soil of New Orleans and watered by the writings of her literary idols, Kalamu ya Salaam, Sonia Sanchez, and Toni Morrison, Asali has grown to bask in the sun of her literary heritage—from the sages who transformed pharaoh to God in Ancient Khemet to the Spy Boys who chant the way clear for Big Chiefs on Carnival Day. Ms. Ecclesiastes excitedly brings her deep roots in New Orleans’ indigenous culture to her work as the new Executive Director of Efforts of Grace and Ashé Cultural Arts Center.

Dee Davis

Dee Davis

President

Rural Strategies

Dee Davis is the founder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies. Dee has helped design and lead national public information campaigns on topics as diverse as commercial television programming and federal banking policy. Dee began his media career in 1973 as a trainee at Appalshop, an arts and cultural center devoted to exploring Appalachian life and social issues in Whitesburg, Kentucky. As Appalshop's executive producer, the organization created more than 50 public TV documentaries, established a media training program for Appalachian youth, and launched initiatives that use media as a strategic tool in organization and development.

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Looking to the Future

“How can we become agents of justice not administrators of the status quo?” This was asked during a July 2020 discussion among city planners of color by Pedro Soto, planning director for the City of Lawrence, MA.

Speakers

Leila Tamari

Leila Tamari

Senior Program Officer

ArtPlace America

For six years, Leila led ArtPlace America's National Creative Placemaking Fund -- a $86M national grantmaking initiative -- among key partnerships to advance equity in arts-based community development. In her role as a grantmaker, she consistently puts relationships first. She believes cultural self determination, neighborhood love, and transformative justice are key ingredients for collective liberation.

Carlton Tuner

Carlton Tuner

Co-founder

SIPP Culture

Carlton Turner works across the country as a performing artist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant, and facilitator. Carlton is the founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where he lives with his wife Brandi and three children.

Tamara Mozahuani Alvarado

Tamara Mozahuani Alvarado

Executive Director

Shortino Foundation

Before becoming the Executive Director of the Shortino Foundation, Tamara served as Executive Director for the School of Arts and Culture at MHP in East San José since it was started in 2011. During Alvarado’s leadership at the School of Arts and Culture, the School and the Mexican Heritage Plaza earned a positive reputation for their commitment to their East San José communities and the excellence of their programs. The School has developed a strong financial position and enjoys the committed support of many multi-year funders. It recently completed a long-term strategic plan to carry out its vision for enriching the arts and culture of the people of San José. Prior to her service at the School, Alvarado was director of the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute at 1stAct Silicon Valley before it became a program at the School of Arts and Culture, and was Executive Director of MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) in San José. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish Literature from Stanford University.

Evan Weissman

Evan Weissman

Executive Director

Warm Cookies of the Revolution

Evan is the founding executive director of Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a Civic Health Club that blends innovative arts and culture with crucial civic issues. Prior to founding Warm Cookies of the Revolution, he spent 12 years as a company member of the collaborative Buntport Theater Company, who the Denver Post called “Monty Python’s anarchist grandchildren”, winning over 100 awards as playwright, director, designer, and actor. Warm Cookies of the Revolution have created over 200 unique arts-based civic programs, including the nationally recognized multi-year Participatory Budgeting project called “THIS MACHINE HAS A SOUL”. Evan was recently selected as a 2019 Roddenberry Fellow for innovative activism as well as a 2019 Livingston Fellow from Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. He was awarded the 2019 Colorado Governor’s Award for Creative Leadership and the 2018 Parr Widener Civic Leadership Award from the Denver Foundation. Evan was also named one of “15 Disrupters Changing Denver” by 5280 magazine. Evan was Denver Commissioner for Cultural Affairs in 2017 and Creative in Residence at the Denver Art Museum in 2015

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Workshops

Defining & Devising: Metrics That Fit Communities

Susannah Larammee Kidd

Susannah Larammee Kidd

Affiliate

Metris Arts

Susannah Laramee Kidd, PhD is an ethnographer turned evaluator and arts and culture policy researcher based in Philadelphia. As an independent consultant, she works with artists, arts and community development organizations, and community members to create frameworks that generate learning for action from the ground up. With Metris Arts Consulting, she leads research and evaluation, theory of change, evaluation capacity building, and cultural asset mapping projects to support the field broadly. Previously, Laramee Kidd was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at the LA County Department of Arts and Culture, where she evaluated public art and engagement projects at parks and libraries.

How do we know our grantees and communities have achieved real, positive progress in this complicated, long-term work that’s different in each place? Can one size fit all in assessing community change?

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Embodying Equity: Culturally Competent Arts Agencies

Randy Engstrom

Randy Engstrom

Director

Seattle Office of Arts and Culture

Randy Engstrom has been a passionate advocate and organizer of cultural and community development for over 15 years. He is currently the Director of the Office of Arts and Culture for the City of Seattle. As Director of the Office, he has expanded their investments in granting programs and Public Art, while establishing new programs and policies in arts education, cultural space affordability, and racial equity. Most recently he owned and operated Reflex Strategies, a cultural and community based consulting business that worked with foundations, non-profits, and local government. He served as Chair of the Seattle Arts Commission in 2011 after serving 2 years as Vice-Chair, and was Chair of the Facilities and Economic Development Committee from 2006 to 2010. Previously he served as the Founding Director of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, a multimedia/multidisciplinary community space that offers youth and community member’s access to arts, technology, and cultural resources (). Prior to Youngstown, Randy spent 3 years as the Founding CEO of Static Factory Media, an artist development organization that owned and operated a record label, bar/performance venue, graphic design house, recording studio, and web development business. In 2009 Randy received the Emerging Leader Award from Americans for the Arts and was one of Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. He is a graduate of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, and he received his Executive Masters in Public Administration at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs.

How deeply do we understand equity in the ways we do our work and how our organizations are structured? How are our institutional assumptions biased? Addressing equity is more than a change in the colors of faces.

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Feeling & Healing: Trauma-Informed Grantmaking

Samantha Matlin

Samantha Matlin

VP of Learning and Community Impact

Scattergood Foundation

Dr. Samantha Matlin, a clinical/community psychologist, is the VP of Learning and Community Impact at the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation. In her role, she provides training and consultation to build evaluation capacity in community-based organizations and city and state agencies. She leads the RISE Partnership, an initiative that supports nonprofit organizations in Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. The Partnership provides nonprofits with resources and training to strengthen organizational effectiveness and ensure a greater impact on social, economic, health, and educational conditions in communities, including the effects of racism, intergenerational poverty and trauma. She is the former Special Advisor to the Commissioner at the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services where she contributed to the formulation of high priority programmatic initiatives and policy across the behavioral health system. She also teaches several courses at the University of Pennsylvania public health master’s program and is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is committed to improving the health status of communities by improving the effectiveness of health and social service systems, with a focus on how neighborhood factors contribute to health.

Maria Cherry Rangel

Maria Cherry Rangel

Director of Strategic Initiatives

Foundation for Louisiana

Maria Cherry Rangel (LA), Director of Strategic Initiatives, Foundation for Louisiana Maria works towards resourcing and shaping FLL's future, and utilizes her expertise in arts and culture, racial justice, and LGBTQ organizing to inform FFL's programs. Maria Cherry Rangel is a New Orleans based cultural organizer, philanthropy strategist, equity coach, and organizational capacity building specialist. Her work focuses on interrupting systemic bias in philanthropy and support for grassroots arts ecologies, communities of color, LGBTQ communities, and artists who have faced significant disinvestment by the arts funding infrastructure.

Communities, like individuals, experience social, environmental, historic and other traumas that impact their needs and ability to function. How do funders recognize when community partners are seeing or not seeing trauma?

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Finding Common Ground: Aligning Community Goals

Sally Dix

Sally Dix

Executive Director

BRAVO Greater Des Moines

Sally Dix is the Executive Director for Bravo Greater Des Moines, a nonprofit organization that leverages community resources to maximize the impact of arts, culture and heritage to advance regional priorities. A primary function of Bravo is to strategically invest in regional cultural organizations to elevate and enrich a vibrant Greater Des Moines. In addition, Bravo leads community efforts to ensure that arts and culture are integral to advancing regional priorities. Dix has an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins, both in Environmental Science and Policy. She also earned her MBA from the University of Iowa.

Goals and agendas of different community actors often seem disconnected or in competition for resources, validity, and attention. Effective placemaking requires alignment among key community partners.

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Recognizing & Reconciling: Gentrification and Other Unintended Consequences

Lyne McCormack

Lyne McCormack

Executive Director

LISC

Lynne McCormack joined LISC as national program director of creative placemaking in 2015. Since that time she has led the integration of arts and culture into community development by creating programs, developing learning networks, providing technical assistance, and leveraging financial resources, including over 24 million dollars in loan funds. All these activities have increased the capacity of LISC’s local offices to strengthen inclusive arts, culture and creative placemaking activity in neighborhoods across the United States. Through a cooperative agreement with LISC and the National Endowment for the Arts, Lynne led the first pilot program for technical assistance for Our Town grantees. This work has served to identify gaps and opportunities in the deployment of creative placemaking resources nationally, and includes the development of the NEA’s Local Leadership Institute on Creative Placemaking. Prior to joining LISC she was director of art, culture + tourism in the city of Providence. Serving five mayors, she completed a comprehensive cultural plan in 2009, and forged partnerships that resulted in, a summer youth workforce development program, zoning changes, numerous creative placemaking grants, destination arts & music festivals and increased funding for artists, designers and organizations through CDBG, HUD, transit and economic development funds. She worked closely with Americans for the Arts and The U.S. Conference of Mayor’s on arts advocacy. Her work has been recognized by arts, tourism and social justice organizations. A trained video artist, Ms. McCormack earned her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and continues to employ creative practice and design-based thinking in her work for national LISC.

Lauren Hood

Lauren Hood

AfroUrbanist

Detroit, MI

Lauren Hood (MI) is a native Detroiter and AfroUrbanist working at the intersection of Black aspiration and city change. Applying a reparations lens to the work, Lauren employs the strategies of storytelling, visioning and relationship building to addressing a community’s past harms, present needs and future hopes & dreams. Credentialed and experienced as both a community developer and equity facilitator, she holds space for otherwise difficult conversations that allow practitioners and citizen stakeholders to understand and value each other’s contributions while working toward transformational outcomes. Lauren brings first-hand experience in gentrified communities with a sharp analysis of how both cultural and the built environments can be a force pushing out poor and longstanding communities from their homes.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, is there a map to get us out of there? Achieving equity through placekeeping comes with ample detours and fragmented maps. If we’re lucky we can find a good compass.

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Recognizing Engagement: Doing the HOMEwork

Dave Lowenstein

Dave Lowenstein

Artist

Lawrence, KS

Dave Loewenstein is a muralist, printmaker and community organizer based in Lawrence, Kansas. His murals can be found across the United States, Northern Ireland, South Korea and Brazil. Loewenstein’s prints, which focus on social justice issues, are exhibited internationally and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Yale University, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. He is the co-author of Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide; and is the subject of “Called to Walls,” a feature length documentary that premiered in 2016. In 2014, he was named one of the founding Cultural Agents for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.

Jen Hughes

Jen Hughes

Director of Design & Creative Placemaking

National Endowment for the Arts

Jen Hughes was appointed director of Design and Creative Placemaking for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in April 2018, having served as acting director since June 2017. In this position, she oversees grant portfolios that support the design and creative placemaking fields, as well as leadership initiatives that include the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design.

Strong community engagement is integral to good placemaking. What happens when a community was not involved or organizational partners were not the right fit with each other or for community-based work?

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Speakers

Artists

Thank You