Creative Placemaking Convocation

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.

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.

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 (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.

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.

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 (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.

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 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.