art, culture & equitable development

All CITE scenarios are multi-dimensional, revealing not only the dynamics of particular diversity issues, but also the dynamics of humaninteraction around the issues.

Foreclosed was a collaboration between Temple Hoyne Buell Center, the School of Architecture at Columbia University, and NY’s Museum of Modern Art that created new tools around reimagining public housing, particularly in the economic and housing crises. The workshop and community engagement activities produced a pamphlet, screen play, website with comments from the workshop, and field guide to lead future conversations and engagements. Projects like this series open up a space for community, artists, and administrators to engage in dialogue that can further examine the issues around housing while also taking an active stance and creating content to be distributed.

Penn Avenue Creative offers emerging creative leaders network development, mentorship, sessions with field experts, and a project development stipend. How do you build better communities for all? You do it by supporting the people who work, dream and live in ways that answer that question, everyday. Penn Avenue Creative is a demonstration of Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s continued commitment to being, growing and developing that support in the East End.

His current research is focused on developing community based and culturally relevant programs that question power structures of race, economy, and cultural access.

Through the activation of public spaces around the world, artist Candy Chang creates work that examines the dynamics between society and the psyche, the threshold between isolation and community, and the role of the commons in contemporary wellbeing. She is interested in the relationship between public space and mental health, the tension between individual liberty and social cohesion, and a city that exposes and fosters the complexity of the individual and collective psyche.

Evan Bissell facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. Projects take varied forms: an interactive online history of freedom and confinement in the United States told through 50 miniature paintings (knottedline.com), poster installations and community surveys about broken windows policing in the Bronx, and collaborative, life-size portrait paintings created with incarcerated fathers and children of incarcerated parents. Evan has exhibited at CUNY Graduate Center, on Alcatraz Island, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, and SOMArts, and facilitated projects in schools (K-12) and community settings throughout the country. He has taught in public school grades 6-12 and courses on art and social change at UC Berkeley.  Evan was an activist-in-residence at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College (2015), the first artist-in-residence at the American Cultures Engaged Scholar Program at UC Berkeley (2013), and was awarded a Headlands artist-in-residence (2013) and the Roselyn Lindheim fellowship (2015). He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. He compiled the first Health in All Policies report for the City of Richmond (2015) and worked as an artist/researcher with the Public Science Project at CUNY Graduate Center (2014-15). He received a master’s in Public Health and City Planning from UC Berkeley in May 2016 and is a firm believer in reading groups.

TAP (The Alley Project) is an initiative of Young Nation. The gallery includes a garage that contains a studio and gallery space for youth and the community, two lots that provide a common art space for neighbors and artists, bike racks for youth traveling on two wheels, and a walking gallery along an alley that spans one city block with high-quality, multi-color murals with signage to honor and explain the history of the pieces and the alley on garages and other surfaces. In these spaces youth and community members can create, show, and/or see street art in a way that is legal, safe, and supports learning and relationships!!

Located in the heart of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, we serve as an open community center with studio spaces, computer lab, radio production studio, a large art library, and a creative, supportive staff who are always around to help, encourage, and inspire. We aim to strengthen the students’ creative and cultural capital by engaging them with their own cultural discourses through art making.

The truth is that those of us who enjoy watching football on Sundays, and those of us who like to knit, or bake, or tell stupid jokes, or wish we could walk down the fashion runways of Paris, or like to build robots….we all have the capacity to understand and take part in the decisions that affect our lives. We know that the Revolution won’t be televised and that we have to take part, but the Revolution also shouldn’t be boring and we should be able to dismantle the aspects of our community that aren’t working while creating beautiful and vibrant and fun, new systems.

The program also includes a interactive map that shares the stories of those who have lost their lives and is a place where they can be memorialized. There is also a Creative Catalyst Artist in Residence program that uploads observations about the City, transportation and the pedestrian experience including a podcast series. 

o   In a larger sense, the creation of the 303 is a chance to show the region and the nation how improved walking and biking connectivity, along with local art and heritage, can strengthen the bonds of community, contribute to neighborhood “placemaking,” and make for a fun and healthy viable alternative to people using their cars to get around their own neighborhoods.

Annie Koh is a writer for Progressive City and her own blog City Publics. Recently she was a part of the Decolonizing Cities Symposium at the University of Hawai’i. The symposium focused on “...possibilities for indigenous urbanism and decolonizing urban planning by creating a space to talk about something we are not sure how to define or do but that we know is essential for justice and our collective futures. What does aloha ‘aina look like in Honolulu? How does native knowledge provide solutions to perennial urban dilemmas? What are the key touchstones in the effort to decolonize cities and how can we decolonize urban development and municipal change?”

Sweet Water Foundation utilizes a blend of urban agriculture, art and education to transform vacant spaces and abandoned buildings into economically and ecologically productive and sustainable community assets that produce engaged youth, skilled workers, art, locally-grown food, and affordable housing.

Springboard for the Arts believes artists and communities thrive when they work together. There goal is always to create projects that are adaptable to the the needs of individual communities; and to catalyze relationships and mechanisms that bring artists and communities together, and have lasting impact. In the Irrigate Project, Springboard for the Arts partnered with the City of St. Paul to contract with artists to activate spaces while development of a rail was being built throughout the community. Artists engaged community members and local businesses to stabilize communities through this time of change. Performers came to businesses that were in construction zones to promote activity, vacant lots were turned into pop-up art shows, and residents explored their neighborhoods in new ways.

Mallory Nezam entrepreneurial social practice civic artist, cultural producer, writer, communications strategist and urban strategist passionate about engagement that dissolves barriers. Her work reimagines ways in which we utilize urban spaces and disrupts the psychogeography of segregation and silence. Her practice integrates intervention, performance, play, movement, and mindfulness to activate the public spaces and people of cities. She believes that collectively performing creative expressions in public builds a bond between citizens and an ownership of place. Mallory serves as the Founding Director of STL Improv Anywhere, a guerrilla performance collective disrupting public spaces with joy and mischief. She is also the Co-Creator of Building as Body, The Poetree Project, and #ChalkedUnarmed. My work has been supported by the Regional Arts Commission, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, Marfa Dialogues, the City of St. Louis, and more. She is also a writer, and has been published in Hyperallergic, Temporary Art Review, Public Art Review, Art Animal Magazine, Riverfront Times, The Mantle, FEAST Magazine, Alive Magazine and more. She also serves as a member of the national Placemaking Leadership Council for Projects for Public Spaces, and formerly served on the Next City Advisory Committee. Mallory currently works with Transportation for America as well. 

Nina Simon has been described as a “museum visionary” by Smithsonian Magazine for her audience-centered approach to design. She is the Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, and has consulted with hundreds of international museums, libraries, parks, historic sites, art and cultural centers on issues of relevance, community engagement, and participatory design. Nina is the author of the best-selling book The Participatory Museum and the popular Museum 2.0 blog. Her work has been shared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, and TEDx.  

Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) and Public Matters in South L.A. have been working with high school students and local convenience stores in a program called Market Makeovers to document the need, stimulate the demand, and provide healthy food options like fresh produce in the ‘food deserts’ of L.A. Local students create awareness around food issues by producing videos and revamp corner stores then promote healthy foods and get fresh foods stocked. The organizations also help provide cooking classes and healthy recipes for community members. The project has made-over five markets to date.