Divergent Thinking: Making New Connections

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 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

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 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.