So the first thing I want to say is welcome to LA Who are the Angelenos in the room? Let's give a shout out for ourselves Angelenos we are present The people who raised their hands you are the first delegates here because you are the creative place makers in Los Angeles That will sort of help get everybody acclimated here It's a great town. You're at a great time obviously who came from the east coast and We're just having a wonderful warm time here in our hearts To be able to embrace and outside as well, but but to be able to host You guys here. I'm with the Irvine Foundation by the way. Oh, my name is Josephine Ramirez forgot about that part and We're we're just pleased to be the site for this second summit and honored and Really really excited about this incredible energy in the room and the potential for some real change starting to happen Los Angeles is a site and as a concept has always been about this sort of transmutation and change and And I think it's fitting for this conversation that we're gonna have so I won't Talk too much more. I just wanted to say welcome and give you a warm embrace from your angeline Angelenos brethren and introduce our fabulous mayor of Los Angeles who has Made a little video for us to say hello, and I think we're gonna Start with that mayor Eric Garcetti I'm sorry. I can't join you, but I want to welcome you to Los Angeles and acknowledge the incredible work done by Art Place National Art Place grantees and especially our Art Place grantees here in Los Angeles Art Place is uniquely positioned to advance creative place making and support projects that transform neighborhoods and communities using art to create social change And we're thrilled that they recognize the work. We've done right here in Los Angeles We're known as the entertainment capital of the world, but I'd also like Los Angeles to be recognized as an arts and culture capital We're a multicultural city unlike anything else home to the most diverse vibrant and creative people on the face of the planet And I believe we have the ability to look at arts and cultural place making in the 21st century way One example of this is our Great Streets initiative It's a neighborhood-scaled approach to one of our largest assets our city streets and Multidisciplinary teams are working to leverage our existing resources and create community gathering places by bringing together public art landscaping small business support and human-scaled street design I believe in the power of partnership and the power of civic engagement So I look to you as collaborators and educators to help me shape the Los Angeles of the future Together we can transform our communities and build a more vibrant prosperous and livable city. Thank you and have a wonderful Good afternoon everyone, I'm Don Lou deputy mayor for the city of Los Angeles. Hi Mitch I'm pleased to bring greetings from Marigar said he who's very sorry he can't be here He's actually on his very first Foreign trade mission and in Mexico City today But he wanted to take the opportunity to welcome you to Los Angeles by that video Los Angeles has so many assets at our disposal our weather our natural beauty our infrastructure our neighborhoods and our people Our city has communities such as Limerick Park Korea town Thai town little Armenia and Boyle Heights that are cultural destinations and part of what makes our City so rich and unique We are making investments in these communities Around transportation infrastructure, which will allow these communities to be more connected and allow those who visit Los Angeles Better access to these incredible neighborhoods One thing the mayor admires about art place is its ability to recognize and support projects that your Transform neighborhoods and communities through art and social change The work that you've done in the field of creative place making is phenomenal in a model We hope to replicate as part of our Great Streets initiative, which the mayor mentioned in the video Streets make up approximately 13% of the land in the city of Los Angeles. That's over 60 square miles Which is roughly the size of both Pittsburgh or St. Louis This Rick this presents an incredible opportunity to take an asset that we already Control and use it as a tool to improve our communities And we hope to accomplish that through this Great Streets initiative This initiative hopes to improve each of LA's diverse neighborhoods Maybe a hundred of them throughout the city of LA by creating a main street with a small street feel a true sense of Community with restaurants bars cafes shops and galleries places is accessible by car foot and traffic I Forgot bike and I also forgot to mention yoga the mayor is always mentioning yoga he believes that a city that begins with neighborhoods and I he believes that a city begins with neighborhoods and neighborhoods begin with streets streets based on walkability transit and yoga and that serve as community hubs and Our mayor has has emphasized over and over again. He we do call him a very Artistic mirror the arts and culture mirror because he is an accomplished jazz pianist and and a pretty good photographer too If you want to follow on Instagram at Eric Garcetti, he's taking pictures in Mexico City He believes that design matters He believes that our great streets should be a reflection of this of public art Beautiful benches distinctive lighting the way a neighborhood looks and feels has a lot to do with its livability and vibrancy The results of all this focused creative police making busy storefronts offering offering Amenities and jobs closer communities with increased convenience and bonds between neighbors and Healthier neighborhoods for all of us So congratulations to the grantees. Thank you to the grand tours and welcome to Los Angeles. Have a great conference Thanks Thank You don't It's my pleasure to introduce the next speaker We're really proud to have here a leader in the philanthropic field in the whole United States of America Someone who I hear from staff is a pretty amazing visual thinker. I don't know if he'll be drawing with his hands up here much but Rip Rapson is also the chair of the president's council for art place this group of leaders of foundations all over the country really have put their their hearts and their heads together to Propel this initiative and with the leadership of mr. Rapson. I think maybe we'll all Grow a little brighter along with them rip Thank You just fine and good afternoon everyone. I don't know about you Many many years ago was the deputy mayor in Minneapolis and to have a mayor with that kind of energy and enthusiasm and vision for acts of creative activity is just is just mind-boggling I Just dread to think what my mayor would have done if you put him in front of a piano or in front of a Camera But it was it was just great to hear all of the ways in which Los Angeles is is using the creative arts to Redefine and reimagine its future. It's it's it's quite spectacular. I also want to thank The Kresge staff for showing up Jamie was a little afraid that we'd have a small crowd So we invited the Kresge staff to come and looks like we're at least half of you. So this is great We've got Alice Carl who runs our arts program Helen Johnson in the back Michelle Johnson is somewhere Maria Rosario Jackson is always is an LA ish. Oh No, hello Michelle. Oh, oh way back. Oh way back. I thought Michelle was looking for more attention Which is tends to be her wand And Regina Smith who is Regina here also I hope Regina's way in the back. So Anything that comes in the next number of minutes that I say that is difficult or offensive. Please talk to them You know, it's really just such a pleasure to be with all of you who have given Definition to creative placemaking over the course of these next couple of days will help all have the opportunity to understand the various ways in which This multi-dimensional vibrant and powerful movement is shaping communities throughout America You've all been doing the work that we call creative placemaking for a very long time But it did receive an Indispensable lift almost five years ago when Rocco Landisman took the reins at the national endowment for the arts And I wanted to start with just a little bit of that creation story Everybody knows Rocco, but if not, he's the guy in the cowboy boots in the front row here I had the pleasure of getting to know Rocco when I was running the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis And he was running the Jujamsen theater group with the patriarch of the McKnight family Jim binger a Couple of things were really clear when Rocco's appointment was announced first He would make sure that the White House dress code included cowboy boots Second he'd bring the same combination of intellectual brilliance and political savvy to Washington that he had displayed in New York and Third he would not rest until he had re-infused the endowment with a kind of Urgent energy and compromising vision that the arts and the cultural community so richly deserved So when he asked me to come and visit his new offices right after he arrived in DC I pretty much knew he was cooking up something When I saw Joan Chikakawa sitting on the sofa in his office. It sealed the deal These were serious people with serious ideas Rocco explained that he wanted to commit the NEA to the proposition that arts and culture could help restore and animate American communities Just as his experiences with historic theaters had suggested but certainly far more He asked if I would join with Louisa Binias and Darren Walker at Ford to help birth that effort That was a tough choice Rocco the most dynamic guy in Washington and two of the most brilliant people in philanthropy But I thought I better agree. I suggested that we we get started by Corelling and Marcus and you remember Rocco that conversation At the University of Minnesota sort of helped us frame the argument Just did she had done for McKnight incidentally a number of years ago And so he and Joan agreed to get that going and the Marcus and paper confirmed what Rocco already knew Creative place-making was thriving across the national landscape Engaging artists in the reimagination and renewal of their communities Elevating community identity and voice in the process of community development Rocco's next move was to ask Louis and Darren to host a meeting at Ford among a dozen Foundations who support the arts to see what role philanthropy and the NEA might play together when we gathered at the Ford Foundation and this was the presidents of Mellon and Knight and McKnight Bloomberg Sirdna Rockefeller Irvine Cargill William Penn Rasmussen and and and others together with Deutsche Bank I'd be half of a number of lenders and the NEA staff The decision to do something mutually supportive probably took all of 17 minutes And then Darren in his inimitable get to the point style suggested that we formalized the relationship Each of our institutions agreed in principle to contribute to an entity that would invest in creative place-making Projects and forge new working relationships with the NEA and its federal partners That institution formation phase was put into hyperdrive and we had our organization art place Within a matter of months, of course that was far too slow for Rocco But for the rest of us it seemed like something out of Star Trek a Number of things were remarkable about all of this Getting risk averse institutions to move so quickly to create a new entity to be sure But also drawing philanthropy and financial institutions into an unprecedented and complex Relationship with the agencies of the federal government Rocco was clear that his motivation was as much elevating arts and culture on the agenda of every department of the Obama Administration as it was directing philanthropic dollars into projects on the ground and that's exactly what happened during his tenure federal departments began integrating arts and culture into their programming and talking to one another about how to do it better Rocco arranged for example just this memorable meeting at the White House for a number of the art place presidents and Essentially the the president's entire cabinet It was just striking how each of the secretaries and presidential advisers have thought about the role of arts in their work How it could integrate more fully across one another's Domains and how over time they could make it stick what Rocco began and the Obama Administration has continued is absolutely revolutionary, but it's also also ultimately sensible and compelling Art place staked out the ground that when you're dealing with a host of seemingly intractable wickedly difficult problems of our time Arts and cultures simply has to be at the center of that conversation It proposed that you can't smash those problems without the kind of creativity the kind of energy the kind of Identity perspective that the arts provide When you do infuse the arts conversations are richer. They're more balanced They have much more to do with the creative potential of inviting people to examine not only their potential for human development But also the potential that arts and culture have to drive economic development to drive sensitive place making and attachment to community And to drive the kind of long-term visioning that a community needs in order to remain vital and healthy The evidence of that sits in this room in just a little under three years Art place has made over 42 million dollars in grants contributed to a network of more than a hundred creative place making projects across the country and Thanks to your creativity passion and tenacity has brought a national spotlight to the idea of creative place making So what defines this work exactly? What is it that tethers all of us here together? Let me suggest us very briefly three characteristics that help explain our work First and at the risk of stating the completely obvious creative place making is grounded in the particulars of place In the community development field the idea of place making has been around for a long time It pivots on the idea that places are important places to find us We attach to a place with an emotional energy and a sense of long-term commitment that is often Definitional to how a community works to how individual identity is formed and to how and to how group identity is formed The particulars of place can be reflected in the rich architectural or historic structures in a community as we'll see tonight on our walking tour But a sense of place can also trace to less tangible qualities deeply rooted cultural traditions significant historical legacies or shared lineages of dance music language and other forms of expression Now Rocco is fond of likening art to the French concept of to our which holds that the best wine reflects the unique Geography geology and microclimate of the area in which the grapes are grown in the same way The best art reflects its unique local influences Creative place making accordingly has the potential to do more than embellish a location. It holds the promise of creating an essence identifying Elevating or assembling a collection of visual cultural social and environmental qualities that imbue a location with meaning and significance When we're able to connect to a city or a neighborhood through an individual or shared cultural experience, there's a magnetic pull You want to stay connected you want to invest you want to build a future and these are the conditions for civic transformation The second quality of creative place making is authentic and ongoing community engagement Creative place making to be truly successful is created with and by a community not to or in spite of it Community engagement is important not only because it ensures a voice for residents and shaping the future of their community But also because it generates social capital those informal networks of support that bond people one to another and that bridge across difference The centrality of arts and culture to social cohesion is one of the arts and culture communities secret sauces Underappreciated and insufficiently understood this phenomenon has been meticulously documented by the 20 years social impact of the arts research project at the University of Pennsylvania the Principal investigator there Mark Stern writes it turned out that the arts were associated with preserving ethnic and racial diversity in urban neighborhoods lower rates of social distress and Reduced rates of ethnic and racial harassment Perhaps most surprisingly we found that the presence of cultural assets in urban neighborhoods was associated with economic improvements Including declines in poverty We documented that it was the social and civic engagement associated with the arts that seemed to drive these economic benefits and revitalization It's not simply then that the arts promote social well-being They are indispensable elements of social well-being Just as you can't strip out health or housing or transportation from social well-being neither can you remove the arts and The third quality of creative place-making is the willingness and the capacity of the arts and cultural sector to assume an outward orientation You know for all sorts of understandable and justifiable reasons the arts and culture community can often be inwardly focused Part of that's absolutely necessary There's no substitute for continual cultivation of artistic mission and efficient Systems of finance administration and artistic mission, but increasingly that's only part of the puzzle The fate of cultural institutions and the sector is inextricably intertwined with the face fate of their host communities Arts and culture even if rooted in place and tied to community engagement will contribute to community revitalization Only to the extent that they engage private public and non-profit policies Practices and investments the arts have to take into account other disciplines such as the health the environment housing Transportation education and human services. They have to interact with the financial governmental and non-profit sectors That will require that the arts and culture sector Occasionally leave the safe and secure moorings that our organizations and institutions have come to know Sometimes we'll pivot just a bit and get it right at other times However, we'll have to expand our range of motion to embrace a level of risk and uncertainty Commensurate with the magnitude of the challenges we face But ultimately a sector that has long stood outside the fence line of major public discussion and decision making looking in We'll have to get inside and mix it up Indeed, I would suggest that creative place making is a clarion call for a different form of creative engagement Elevating the particulars of place drawing on community wisdom and energy Embracing the challenges of reconnecting and reinvesting in America's poorest communities looking beyond one's own institutional walls Cultural creativity may well be the driving force of community revitalization in the 21st century It promises more adaptive ways of seeing understanding Experiencing and transforming where we live how we work and what we dream You walk Kupai an important part of that creative geography I know you're committed to making it matter and keep in mind Martha Graham's admonition No artist is ahead of her time. She is her time. It's just that the others are behind the time So let me then turn turn to the next phase of our place Many of you had the distinct pleasure of working with Carol Coletta Carol is a force of nature and got us off the ground Crafting a program and creating national buzz at the ground level Joe Cartwright is here who worked closely with Carol They did just spectacular work and and we're really indebted to you. I also want to thank Jeremy Noak many of you have met Jeremy There is really no one quite like Jeremy He took art place through its transition phase and he just is one of those rare sort of superb analytical thinkers who can both be creative and Methodical at the same time and he really helped us bridge to where we now are and Finally, I want to thank each art place grantee for your incredibly important work and your contribution to advancing this this movement but our work is not done and the very good news is that if you had to look across the American landscape and Identify one person who was uniquely qualified to take us into the future, which is exactly what we did You'd land on Jamie Bennett Jamie probably needs no introduction to this room, but let me torture him just a little bit and And introduce him nevertheless Jamie as you probably know was the director of public affairs at the NEA starting in 2009 and he was promoted as well to serve as the chief of staff in June 2011 Prior to the NEA. He was the chief of staff at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Serving as a senior member of the commissioners leadership team and he was the chief of staff in the office of the president of Columbia University There is a whole string of other things that I'm not gonna walk you through But let me just say that when we were interviewing I had never met Jamie I had heard about Jamie Rocco had told me all sorts of stories about this this phenomenon And it was very interesting because a guy had sort of appeared In our interview list out of my background who was just spectacular And I couldn't imagine anyone even holding a candle to this to this other Canada and then Jamie walked in the room And I don't think I have ever seen anyone as deeply passionate about thoughtful about and able to express and these sort of wondrous sort of irreverent and yet elegant Phrases the importance of arts and culture to our our daily life I think we are just Unbelievably blessed to have Jamie at the helm of our place I know that in many ways so much of our success just depends on on the work you do But you've got to have someone sort of at the center Trying to make sense out of it trying to create some platforms trying to create some of the connective tissue that I think will make This movement stronger and so it's been my pleasure to work with Jamie all of what two months And in those two months. He's already In my mind justified our decision many times over so I'm delighted to introduce to you the the head of art place Jamie Bennett Thank you so much rip. I think it really means a lot to me to have you read that introduction that my mother wrote so Thank you very much but in all seriousness as I was sort of considering this opportunity the chance to work with rip and with all of his colleagues at Kresge as He pointed out many of whom are here was really one of the big driving points for that In the two months that we've gotten to work together in this way I've already learned so much about what it really means to care about a place to care about it deeply To care about it in locally nuanced ways and and to care about the people who make it up So I'm already deeply indebted to the Kresge foundation And in addition to getting to have rip as our chair of the president's council I also have his colleague Alice Carl who Co-chairs the operations committee along with Judy Lee read who I think did make it in from New York. Yes. Yes. Hi, Judy Lee welcome Made it out of the storms from the east from the certain a foundation and in addition to the Kresge team and Judy Lee we have people here from ten of the foundations that are partners in art place So I hope over the next three days You'll all take some time and get to know our colleagues from the bar of foundation Which is the most recent partner to join the art place family, which we're thrilled about Bloomberg Philanthropies Ford Irvine. Thank you again, Josephine for everything you and your colleagues have done In making the next three days possible the night foundation rip analysis colleagues at Kresge McKnight we have a colleague from Mellon who is on her way I think she's in Charlotte at the moment trying to get here To la brass muson and I think Julie has at least one other colleague here from Sirdna as well So please really do take the opportunity over the next days to get to know them I also want to point out another partner Who will be largely invisible to a lot of you guys, but will play a really important role to us Which are we have colleagues from Rockefeller Philanthropy advisors with us who are going to be new partners to art place in terms of managing Our operations and I'm really excited to be working with them as well as our colleagues at from the US Department of Agriculture I saw Chris Beck Registering earlier he Chris as well as a number of colleagues here from the National Endowment for the art and I have the distinct I don't know that I would call it in honor. I have the distinct situation of having Two of my former NEA bosses in the house So we have both Rocco Landis men who along with his wife Debbie have been tremendous friends and colleagues as well as John Chigokawa who's currently heading up the agency and doing just a fantastic job Along the way with that So I just want to add my thanks as we're doing sort of the formal bit of this To Mayor Garcetti in the city of Los Angeles for their help and partnership the deputy mayor for joining us today Abigail Marquez who will the associate director of education workforce will join us tomorrow and most importantly our colleagues from Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs who've really been extraordinary partners in putting this together So rip talked a little bit about the founding of art place and he mentioned the two people that I would like to sort of publicly go on record with my thanks and Acknowledged the deep debt that I owe to Carol Coletta our founding director and Jeremy Novak Who served as the interim director during our strategic planning process? It was a strategic planning process that brings us to where we are today To this gathering and to these opening remarks So all of us gathered in person together here in Los Angeles Represent everything that we have collectively accomplished over art places first three years You are the grantees that have been doing the hard work the foundation partners that have provided the capital We were able to invest in this work our government colleagues from whom we learned so much and the readers and panelists who helped us review and adjudicate the thousands thousands of LOIs and applications that we've received and We also have a number of people who are watching this webcast via howl-round TV and Participate participating in the online discussion on Twitter using the hashtag art place and in many ways Those people are virtual colleagues represent the future of art place because they're the individuals the projects and the Organizations that we've not yet had a chance to work with directly So I just want to add a special. Thank you to everyone and welcome to everyone who's watching us online So last week as hopefully all of you saw on the eve of this summit We announced the 97 projects that will be considered as finalists for our place investment in 2014 It's a wonderful list that represents the creative place making work across the country We have projects in every region of the country in almost every artistic discipline in every size of community And it's a list that makes me incredibly proud But I do want to talk for a minute about the other LOIs we've received They're nearly 1200 projects that art place will not get to know more closely through this year's application process and the reason I bring this up is because those are the projects that in some ways so deeply Informed the strategic planning process that the foundations undertook as rip said over the past three years We've invested over 42 million dollars in a hundred and thirty four projects taking place in 80 communities around this country But it's clear from those 1200 LOIs that were not invited to submit full proposals that 42 million dollars in investment represents an investment in just the very tip of creative place making that's happening in this country and our foundation partners realize that we were interested both in the projects in which we were able to invest and also in the ones that we've not yet reached and What they realized ultimately is that they were not interested in art place as an organization per se But what they really were interested in was the field of creative place making Our partners confirmed that rather than being interested in building a permanent institution They wanted the creative place. They wanted to make creative place making a standard operating procedure throughout the country as Rip said the work itself is not at all new the arts have been actively shaping place throughout recorded history I did a recent blog post and I pointed to the theaters in ancient Greece as an early example of a situation where you had a theater as the literal spiritual and civic center of a community and In response someone emailed me and suggested I go back even further and consider the caves of Lascaux as perhaps the earliest example Of art inscribing place in a meaningful way So I think it's safe to say that even though the work is ancient as rip said the word itself is new And if something is yet to be named it is also yet to become a field of practice When Carol Cleta arrived at art place three years ago Creative place making as a phrase existed at best inside air quotes. It was always creative place making and Among Carol's extraordinary Accomplishments the one I find most breathtaking is how quickly she got rid of the air quotes and turned creative place making into a thing One of the ways she did this was by being absolutely laser-like in her focus She defined creative place making theory of change as Partnerships between the arts and their communities that were aimed at driving vibrancy as defined by changes in people activity and value vibrancy in turn would increase the quality of place Quality of place would help with talent attraction and retention and that talent those people would lead to place-based economic development and community prosperity Often in philanthropic initiatives people will work hard at creating a theory of change that clear and robust But then when it comes time to actually making the investments to making the grants Too often only a narrow sliver of that theory ever gets illuminated Stunningly Carol succeeded at just the opposite Looking around this room looking at the projects that you all represent. I see things that are collectively Even more interesting than our original theory of change Many of you are driving vibrancy Some of you are even doing that as your primary objective But others of you are doing other things valuable things things that we need to also explicitly recognize in art places work Because of Carol's success in getting creative place making into the national lexicon We're actually now able to evolve into the next phase of art places mission When I had those conversations with the art place search committee They told me that they were interested in catalyzing strengthening and supporting a national movement around creative place making they wanted to make it standard operating procedure that every mayor Every county executive every tribal leader in this country would see the arts as a core sector of their community At the table right alongside housing transportation public safety and education as a sector that is crucial to the future of a community It which it should be a sector that both needs planning and investment to succeed and also one that contributes Mightily to its community's future. Oh And the foundations were also gracious in telling me I had seven years to get that done So our foundation partners changed the unit of analysis for art places success from the portfolio of projects in which we are investing To the field of creative place making in this country This pivot from being a collection of projects to being one Organization in a field of endeavor is a theme that we've woven into our time together over the coming days Following this session our colleagues from arts Emerson and howl around in Boston, Massachusetts We'll share with us the commons framework that they used to describe their work as part of the American theater broadly writ tomorrow Interim president and CEO of the Irvine Foundation Don Howard will lead us through the strong field Framework that he developed and that Irvine has adopted in some of its work in poverty eradication public education and other areas And then we'll end our time together collectively those of us in this room in the same town hall format that Carol used To conclude last year's session in Miami where we will collectively chart out the work of the work that is ahead of us all In order for any of those frameworks to fit It's important that we have clarity in the definition of ourselves as a field So I have proposed that we expand the definition of creative place making to encompass all of the work in which the arts play an explicit and Central role in strategies that are shaping the social physical and economic future of their communities I've spent much of my time over the past two months trying out this definition on various colleagues And we recently had a meeting with some of our colleagues from national art strategies And their CEO a wonderful woman named Russell Willis Taylor who I know some of you know Sort of stopped me halfway through the spiel and said oh, I get it creatives an adverb not an adjective It's the making that is creative And I think that's exactly right and it also allowed me to offer what is perhaps an even more elegant definition for creative place Making in creative place making we're doing art to change place Art places deputy director Liz Crane Will lead a session tomorrow that talks about intentions and outcomes and seeks to demystify the whole evaluation Conversation by breaking it down into three questions What are you going to do? What are you trying to change and how are you going to know if you did it? I want to pause here and make explicit what I hope has been implicit in art place from the beginning Not all art should be dedicated to creative place making There are plenty of artists and artworks that are not interested in changing place Some care about individual transformation others serve as an idiosyncratic expression of a thought or image that has never before existed But because of art places success success in igniting the creative place making movement in this country I have heard grumpiness from some arts colleagues who are not interested in this work as their primary mission And they're feeling pressure to get into it Well, I believe that every community needs to incorporate the arts and creative place making into community planning and development Just as every community works with housing and transportation I do not believe that every artist and work of art needs to be dedicated to this work but any artist arts project or arts organization that is Explicitly interested in playing a role in shaping its community's future Art place stands ready to accept and welcome as colleagues in our collective field of creative place making So what exactly is art place going to be doing between now and the sunset date that I've been given of 2020? Our goal is to deeply embed creative place making throughout the community development and planning field To make sure that arts organizations feel both welcome at and a responsibility to All conversations about their community's futures and Then to make what my friends Pat Patrick and Maggie Affectionately referred to as an Irish goodbye our goal will be to slip away quietly while the party is in full swing with no one even noticing So how do we hope to do that? There are four broad areas of work I see before us the first will be art places signature program the national grant making Art place will continue to make grants across the country through an open call for proposals to support creative place making projects And we will continue to make those investments guided by peer readers and panelists from both the arts world and the place world We want to invest in bold and exciting projects ones that are likely to be deeply transformative and some that have the potential to fail spectacularly Some should come from usual suspects others should come from organizations that have never before received philanthropic support But and this is an important change. We're going to ask something new of our grantees going forward We're going to ask them to yes be responsible for their projects Yes, they will still have responsibility for the organizations. They represent But we're also going to ask them to join us in shouldering some of the responsibility for the broad field of creative place making In some in philanthropy some grantees are thought of as winners. There's rhetoric around competitions and being awarded a grant Other grantees are thought of almost as contractors a funder identifies an area of work in which it wants to make a vision and Essentially outsources that vision hiring a nonprofit to end hunger or strengthen public education Still other grantees are thought of as partners a Coequal who joins a funder around a shared interest and who brings different resources to bear on the challenge at Artplace we're hoping to sketch out a fourth way forward grantees we're going to think of as delegates from the field of creative place making Delegates who represent different geographies different size of communities artistic disciplines types of communities types of partnerships and so on and These delegates we're going to ask to be responsible for representing their sector within the national conversation and Also for carrying back information and resources from the national conversation to their sector This can be a scary ask Carrying out a project takes a lot of commitment Being the caretaker of an organization has a lot of demands that come with it There are going to be some organizations who may not feel up to also taking on some responsibility for the field as a whole However, for those who are interested in willing I believe that we will discover that once we expand our field of vision To the field as a whole new opportunities and resources will be open to us Our colleagues from Howell round who are going to lead the next session often use the frame of needing to move from scarcity to abundance Rather than leading with what we lack we want to do something, but we don't have the money to do it We need to lead with what we bring to the table. We need to strike a stance. That's more. Let me show you what I can do for you In an email I had with Rocco over the weekend He sort of summed it all up by saying yep, we need to see artists as givers not takers and I think that's exactly right David and Polly from Howell round will lead us through an exercise that will help us Collectively to identify What resources we have as a field and what are the resources we've not yet identified on? Tuesday morning Don Howard from Irvine will lead us through an exercise to look at where we are specifically Around the issue of leadership and pipeline So who are the leaders in creative place making and who are the next generation of leaders and also where we are with developing and sharing standards of practice Please keep this notion of grantee delegate in mind as we go through both of those sessions as well as through everything We do together because this is a topic that I'm very eager to have your feedback about as it will inform our guidelines and our review process for 2015 and beyond so We're going to continue with our national grant making with this added goal of seeding a Congress of delegates from the creative place making field with a special emphasis on the sectors of the field that are currently under represented but number two We're going to add a new stream of investment We will be looking to identify five communities across the country in which we will make a deep and sustained commitment The five communities will be in different regions of the country They'll cover all size of community with something like to being urban to being rural the fifth being an isolated metropolitan area or suburban area We'll be looking for communities where there is lots of potential to see creative place making in action And we will use those communities as showcases and laboratories from which other communities around the country can learn We will use those communities as the sites to activate our work with art places financial Partners and see how other kinds of capital debt lines of credit Etc can help further creative place making We'll also use these communities to see the different ways that it is possible to leverage the policies and resources of the federal government Tomorrow we'll see presentations from the Promise Zone work here in Los Angeles as well as some of the work that the USDA is Supporting through the International Sonoran Desert Alliance in Ajo, Arizona Both of these are federal programs that are locally deployed and I think once we have these five local laboratories It will provide a really important experience and learning opportunity for us in terms of how to engage most effectively with those federal programs We've not yet decided how those communities will be chosen and we're currently in conversations about the different ways We might do that some of the funds that we've previously used for national grant making will be focused on these communities so we'll be seeing both of these buckets of grant making as art places direct investments in creative place making projects that transform community So the third area of work will be around our research strategy and Joe Corite was introduced before from impressive Consulting and as rip said Joe's been an invaluable research partner for our place over the past three years And Joe will very much continue to work closely with us But we also need many more Joe's we need a Congress of researchers Who will ask all of the questions that need to be asked of artistic interventions and community outcomes? We need economists. We need community planners. We need anthropologists. We need geographers We need big data people and we need the anecdotal Our place will not directly get into the business of publishing research ourselves Instead we will commission research and support research that will live elsewhere This is both because we need the research to live in institutions that will last well beyond 2020 and Also because we want to support all lines of inquiry into this work Around research, we'll have essentially three different areas of endeavor Our place will work as something of a librarian Getting literate in all the relevant areas of knowledge and having enough fluency to connect people with the existing work That can help illuminate and further their own projects Our place will also serve as a venture capitalist for research investing in new avenues of inquiry encouraging and supporting research projects that are almost at a tipping point and Importantly funding bridging work that will help connect extant areas of knowledge that do not currently speak to one another as Just one example I am making a public vow that I will never again sit through a meeting where the Quantitative people and the qualitative people explain how the other is wrong We need both if you if you actually succeed in getting qualitative work that illuminates quantitative data You can actually begin to see the big picture So bringing kinds of knowledge together is an area that we want to invest a lot of time and intention and as part of that We'll also be working as a convener. We'll be bringing together researchers to talk about creative place making We will help researchers attend conferences that are outside their usual sphere We will bring together researchers with practitioners and policymakers I have no interest in investing in research that's going to sit on a shelf in the academy I'm interested in research that will help shape work in real time Work that will help us understand where we're succeeding and work that will allow us to ask what we should be doing differently So in addition to our national grant making our place-based community investments and our research strategy Our place will also be looking to undertake a bucket of work around field building We will look to make investments in the infrastructure that we need to operate as a field Let me use as an example a field infrastructure howl-round TV Through which people around the country are able to watch our summit for a relatively modest investment I think howl-round has a contract of something like five thousand dollars a year and For a portion of one of their staff members time. Thank you Vijay very much for the work you're doing Howl-round is able to offer a high quality ad-free platform to the entire theater community to be able to broadcast performances discussions conferences and panels Because we in creative place-making are also a national field I think something like this would be an invaluable resource for us While virtual is by no means an exact substitute for in-person Given the time and resource commitments that travel entails having this as an option Especially for the colleagues who do not live and work near a major airport hub is a really important option that I think we should offer the field Our blog at artplaceamerica.org has been an extraordinary resource for broadcasting information About each of the projects that you all are doing and I would like to build on that wealth of information And turn our blog into an online platform where discussions about and among the whole field of creative Placemaking in this country can take place We want to help allow our grantee delegates to attend conferences help them make national presentations We want to allow you all to be resources to your peers around this country The field building work will be in some ways most important to our goal of sunsetting in 2020 as This will be what allows us to help connect the field in ways that will outlive us as an organization So how are we going to get this done as some of you know despite the smoke and mirrors at the moment Artplace is just two of us myself and our absolutely extraordinary deputy director Liz Crane who I think is perched in the back So I think as is clear from that spontaneous reaction Liz is perhaps the one person in this room that we all have in common So in preparing for the summit in managing your grants I think Liz has talked with an emailed each of you on Decidedly more than one occasion So each of us individually only knows a tiny sliver of all that Liz has done for art place And I think if we were ever to piece it together We would truly be undone by all that she's accomplished in the past year and a half But the good news for Liz is that when we've returned to New York after this conference We will at long last have all of the pieces in place that will allow us to hire some new colleagues at art place So we'll shortly be posting for position descriptions Someone to run our national grant-making program, which I think quite possibly could be the best job in this country Someone to be our director of research strategies Which I think easily could be the most interesting job in this country and a director of communications Who'll be charged with leading our field building work, and I'll be honest here I think that clearly is the worst job in this country Because I care a great deal about that work and unfortunately. I think I know something about it So there's not enough money in the world to get me to be my own director of communications So good luck to whoever responds to that In addition to that we'll also be hiring an operations manager who'll interface with our colleagues at Rockefeller Philanthropy advisors And that will actually be a fascinating opportunity for someone to have a look into the way that a really first-rate organization is run RPA as well as see the nuances and Individual natures of the 14 foundations that we have as our partner So I actually think that's a really interesting one as well And I hope that you all will be on the lookout for those postings and help us distribute them widely So here's where I come to a to an end of my prepared comments And I want to end this with a thank you as rip did to everyone in the room One of the sort of most humbling things about this job is looking around this room and being reminded So concretely of the fact that I'm not the one who's doing any of the hard work That hard work is being done by all of you and that it's really the people in this room that I'm looking at Who built this field of creative place making to what it is today? So I'm eager and excited to offer whatever assistance I can to moving your work forward. So I want to end my my Comments here. I've sketched out a little bit about what our trajectory is going to be for the next seven years And in the balance of the time that we have left I'd really love to open this up to conversation to questions to discussions And really just sort of take the next 20 or 30 minutes to get to know each other a little bit better and You know tease apart any place where there's any confusion We've got a couple mics that are running around Liz and we've got another one here in the center And on the side and I just ask that you do please ask your question into a mic for the folks who are watching us online Otherwise, they can't hear it. So let me end what I have there and be quiet for a moment and hear from someone who's out there stunned silence Thank you Julia Taylor from Milwaukee And I love the idea about creating a school of thought around creative place making because I think it is Something different in everyone's mind, which isn't a bad thing But it would be good if we could start to explain better I think to the public sector as well as the private sector about the impact this could have to us in terms of how Our communities are going to look years from now. So thank you for taking it that direction. That's great. Thank you so much Chris Beck with US Department of Agriculture Jamie and I were on a phone call last week preparing for our session on Monday So we may get into this tomorrow, but I said something on the phone call that struck me in my head and thought about before But I thought I'd just share it and I Started thinking about The I've been involved with a little bit with the the stem to steam Conversation do you all know what I'm talking about science technology engineering and math and the arts people want to add art I think that's great. We should be trying to integrate arts into education and I started thinking about what we're trying to do here is integrate arts into the land use and transportation Community development Intersection and I think that this movement this field of practice is is is similar to the stem to steam I don't know what the acronym would be in community development But that's how I've been thinking about that and that's resonating in my head that that is in part What we're trying to do you alluded to it in your own words, but I think that's something we can be that's a seed I plant with all of you as well. I love that and just for those of you who haven't yet met Chris He and his colleagues at USDA have been some of our closest colleagues Both at at art place in terms of the creative place making work But also at the National Endowment for the arts and it's one of the things that I just think is wonderful Because it would be very easy for the USDA to sort of define their mission in a way that had nothing to do with the arts and sort of say We don't need to enter into those conversations But instead at least over the past six years of this administration They've really been some of the most embracing and I know a number of folks in this room have gotten to work with Chris and his colleagues I love that so I think do we have someone down front? Yeah. Hi Okay, great. I'm Megan Tracy and I'm with Arts at the Feeding Grain in Loveland, Colorado and I'm so excited. I'm very pleased to be in this room with all of you But I think one of the things that art place really did for us and all of us sitting in this first row here We're the first Colorado recipients of this grant and We all have collectively now The thought of ways of that we can collaborate in our state which is really exciting and I can see that happening on a National level just by being here. So thank you And I'm especially thrilled that the front row is here since I was snowed out of my trip to Denver For the smart growth conference. So I owe you all one. So I will be seeing you in Colorado soon. So they have it on camera Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Halpern Ibrahim from Our beloved place of South Los Angeles We will have the honor of hosting you tomorrow night at tomorrow night's mixer at the Mercado La Paloma and one of the things that Moved me very much in your remarks Esperanza is a 25 year old organization that has had a mission of human rights Exercise through five main domain. So housing affordable housing health economic development education and arts and culture and while we have always gotten tremendous kudos for keeping the arts as fundamental to our mission and to Exactly in a session an essential element in cultivating healthy communities from the grassroots up We had not until the art place funding ever been Funded for that kind of work and so I want to stand in appreciation of having been so designated before I'm looking forward to having discussions with all of you tomorrow in our beloved place at the Mercado La Paloma Which in fact had been until the 13 years ago and we started to develop the site a Garment sweatshop like so many other spaces in that immediate environment. So I want to really appreciate Hearing from this podium and among these colleagues How essential in all of the work we do whether it's an economic development whether it's in health promotion and Building community health leaders or quality affordable housing at every level of affordability for families in this nation that the arts are just an essential an essential component of that and the support that this That art place has given to neighborhoods like ours is really profound as we look forward to showing you tomorrow night Tomorrow it's gonna be fabulous. So I know that there's always creep in terms of you know When it's a conference goes on don't miss tomorrow night's party really Jamie is this on can you hear me? First of all, I just want to start with a thank you. I am first of all Congratulations. We're so happy that you're at the helm. You're gonna do a great job and I want to thank all of the art place Funders everybody that's made this investment. It has really done extraordinary things for our communities So thank you so much and also you have really catalyzed a movement within this nation And then also it's had this incredible reverberating effect about two weeks ago I have the honor of testifying at the California Joint Committee on the arts And I talked about the role of creative placemaking and economic development And I highlighted two of our art place funded projects and as a result of that Testimony about hearing there was new legislation that was introduced to restore funding to the California Arts Council So that's just part of the story that you've done that you've created here with our place So thank you so much I really want to just say that from the bottom of my heart as a professional as Also is somebody that's you know in the trenches and San Jose and Then of course, I'm gonna go ahead and be bold and I'm gonna ask the 90 million dollar question How do you become one of those five communities? Yeah, so this is no, no, I I Love any question at this point. This is this is both convenient, but it also happens to be true We honestly don't know yet There are a bunch of different ways that we might think about approaching this I'm really committed to there being five different regions of the country represented I don't want them all five clustered in the west or all five clustered in the southeast or something like that I really am committed to there being five different sizes of communities So that we're looking at both creative place making in the rural setting as well as in the urban setting I think there's some interesting things going on with suburban communities that we saw through the most recent thing So on one hand, I would sort of love to do an open national competition But on the other hand, it's a little difficult to balance that Along with sort of the requirements for balancing the portfolio So the good news is we honestly don't know so you guys probably have a good Six weeks to begin lobbying us for how we should go about selecting those communities So there is not yet a secret plan and if it makes you feel any better I was meeting with one of our fabulous foundation partners In Philadelphia a couple weeks ago who asked the very same question and so I gave them the very same answer So that really is the truth at the moment. So yes, and I actually that just reminds me I don't know if I mentioned Olive Moser from William Penn who's here But William Penn if I didn't give you a shout out before William Penn is here as well, Sarah Yeah, hello, I'm Kimberly van Dyke from Wilson, North Carolina with the Wallace Simpson Whirligig Park project and I liked what you said about embedding Creative place-making in planning transportation and community development But I think it's really critical that we also add economic development to that list I can tell you that with our project over the last year what we have seen is Significant economic reinvestment in the geographic area surrounding our project To the tune of twenty million dollars now that may not seem like a lot depending on where you're from But if you're from a small rural formerly tobacco-dependent town in North Carolina with a very depressed downtown That is phenomenal going from almost zero to twenty million dollars in one year of Property redevelopment business creation and job creation. So I think that we should add economic development to the list I think that's great And just before you sit down will you just say a couple words about what the project is for the folks in the room who may Not know it just because I think this is such a neat and Unexpected example of the fact that this project would lead to struck such a strong economic development case Sure, so the project is in the middle of a of a downtown. That's very economically depressed in a small town like I mentioned in North Carolina the population's 50,000 and There was an artist. He actually just passed away in May. He was 94 and he created giant Kinetic wind-powered sculptures and they were in a field sort of outside of town long story short about three years ago the community galvanized around acquiring those pieces of art that were in severe disrepair and And repairing and conserving all of them. There are 31 of them. They're they're massive and gigantic like 50 feet tall and and You know three tons and they're building a world-class sculpture park in downtown Wilson So I hope you can all come see it We're we're about three quarters of the way through with the project and and what we have to do now is just It's just constructed. So we're almost done But it has I mean it has not only transformed sort of really the whole community perception of itself But also has really driven investment in the downtown. Of course, we have a long way to go But it's a it's a phenomenal start and the works of art themselves are just so whimsical and so magical And so anyway, it's just I sort of love the look of it. Let me come here and then I know we've got in the middle Eric Avner from the Hale Foundation Cincinnati I just it's kind of fun to be here both as sort of a grantee because we work with the cosine project in Cincinnati But actually we're a regional funder Who just focuses in one region and it may be something to consider in this field of work and especially even these these Communities of sustained focus is how to leverage a local or a regional funder in that so that instead of having five Maybe there's a way to sort of Bring regional funders who are always going to be in that place Not just for five years or for seven years But is there a way to leverage our presence in those communities too? So then maybe you have 30 of those communities of focus or let's maybe start with 10 But you but I think there is there's a willingness from the regional funder community I think specifically the private funders who would be saying we would love to be an art place funder But we kind of already are in our own community So I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how do you leverage that to achieve that this really great Direction I think a hundred percent and one of the things that I'll sort of say explicitly to sort of foundation and funder colleagues There's nothing in my job that asks me to increase the number of funders who have money throwing flowing through art place That's not how my success is going to be measured So if I can work with regional foundations we've had an interesting conversation with some leaders in community foundations around the country and Share our way of working if we did end up running a national or regional Competition to get cities to compete and we could share those applications with regional funders who might want to invest in other projects I love that so I don't need just to be absolutely clear I don't need anyone to sort of come on and formally join the art place party I'm happy to sort of bring the party to you know party in a box Set it up and go nuts so I love that idea and I've already tapped you to do one thing over the next couple of days and I think I'm going to be emailing you to set up a phone call to keep doing it so and the cosine project is I mean I'm going to say this about every project the cosine projects another great sort of whimsical fun project So I know we have someone here. Hi Or there's a mic. Oh, sorry behind you then we have John. Hi I'm Nancy Barton from the Prattville art project and I just want to thank you guys like everybody else because I Never would have gotten so involved with my community if it hadn't been for art place when we you know sent in that grant And we heard that Liz was coming for a site visit. The whole town was like you're kidding I'm in a town of 700 people that was destroyed by Hurricane Irene and virtually, you know The entire town is like, you know wiped off the face of the map And I just wanted to say how much it means to have art tied into things like disaster recovery That's another whole infrastructure that I think is really worth considering since we have all this climate problem and Also, I wanted to say that it is really Special to work among people who do not believe that art has anything for them You know the people in rural America who have like pickup trucks and guns Those are the people I talked to every day and that like the bikers are afraid to come into the art center So my you know like sunset opportunity is get the bikers in the door And I think that's a conversation. That's really important for America politically, you know The kind of split between liberals and conservatives is really a split about fear It's really about people who don't know something and because they've never seen it And so putting art in these places that have never had it before and it's just been extraordinary I think that's great, and I want to make sure if you don't know will our Milwaukee friends raise their hands I just want to make sure that you connect with these guys because Milwaukee Their creative community fascinates me because Harley Davidson is every bit as much a part of it as the museum is And so I just think if that's something you're looking to do here are two people who might have some some knowledge to share In a really interesting way Great, and then I'll come over here next Yeah, hi everyone, my name is Rod France I'm with create here now from the state of Connecticut and I'm just buzzing from being in this group today the energy level at least in my antennas just off the charts and I want to congratulate you Jamie I heard your remarks and rips remarks before that and they were really stunning and I applaud the direction You're taking the organization and I have the good fortune to be here with my partner Margaret Bodell today And we both work for a very visionary civil servant named Kip Bergstrom in the state of Connecticut Kip is the deputy director of economic development and under his umbrella is the office of the arts the office of innovation historic preservation and Tourism and so what Kip is done very very gradually because it's sort of like turning a Ocean liner is bring all of these departments into alignment with creative placemaking for the the purpose of economic development and he has started the historic preservation office has Started a grant called historic preservation arts catalyzed placemaking and Margaret and I worked on the first iteration of that grant so what we're doing now is Leveraging historic preservation monies to repurpose historic buildings as Creative placemaking centers and we're doing this all around the state, so I Invite you to You know meet with Kip or talk with Kip sometime. I'd be happy to make that Introduction and I got to know him a little bit when I was at the NEA and he and Rocco got to know each other That's right. I haven't reconnected with him in this hat It's so great to be here today. Thanks everyone. Thank you think over house right Hi, yeah, my name is native Thompson with creative time. It's really great to be here. I'm really excited I think it's about time that we had a moment where culture and the production of the city is taken as a given because I think Actually that knowledge has been going on but it's like everyone's getting their head around it It's exciting because it's the facts in some ways too It feels like the art since the culture wars have been trying to get their legs underneath them as a way to defend themselves to America And in the CIA they have a term called blowback Where you become victim to the kind of boosterism that you perpetuate and I think in the arts We got to be careful that we don't hitch our ride to revitalization Without parsing out the social justice issues within that and I think like it there's a race class dimension in this that is Really delicate and and really important because I think to maintain our base and actually keep it real We can't just always be so raw raw Because the arts actually are being used by all kinds of forces good bad Whatever to change cities for various reasons for various forms of power So I think for us it's a it's a call because the artists I think at the end of the day want to keep it real and keep social justice on the table And so I think we got to owe it to each other to be really careful And I'm looking forward to the kind of research you're talking about and how we can split these questions up about place making So we can make sure that when we do it we really help cities for the people that need it most No, I think that's very I just I think that's hugely important and tomorrow afternoon we'll hear from two colleagues Manuel pastore and Tom main and both of them sort of approach places as collections of people and I think one of the things that's in Interesting thing to me about this about sort of coming into the creative place making space is that there's something in the language We use around place making that talks about place almost as if it's empty of people and For place making in terms of how I talk about it, and I think how all you live and experience and work in it Places are the collections of people who are in them, right? I mean place is people in a lot of ways for the work we're doing so I just I think this is a really important Conversation it's one that I hope tomorrow afternoon will spark some Conversation about but I hope we'll sort of have it as a thread through everything. So thank you, nata Sarah. Yes Hi, I'm Ann Marie Erickson and very happily here from Detroit and the Detroit Institute of Arts and Possibly because of the situation my institution finds itself and I spend a lot of time with government officials lately and we always start talking to them and touring them in the Cultural living room which was funded by art place and we talk about creative place making to them and They don't really get it So I too am very pleased to see that you're talking about research and talking about really embedding creative place making Because we need to help government officials along that curve along that trajectory Because in the end they could be incredibly helpful both in moving projects forward in and helping us fund it And if there is a way we can start a dialogue so that we can help you help us explain to them What is going on? I think that would be a terrific Step because not everyone is as visionary as Kipp is and I think he was in Miami last year Yeah, and I heard him speak then I would say he's the exception to the rule in Terms of most government officials on the state and local levels So if we can be advocates for creative place making using your power your research And your help I think that would be terrific. I think that's hugely important work And just so you know there are two communities that I've been talking with one that's going through a very significant mayoral Transformation and one that's not that have actually asked me to come in and speak with their civic leadership Because there is this I was just talking about this. I think with Garrett when we were talking before There's this bizarre thing that if you hear something from a stranger you believe it So if there's a way that I can be the stranger in your community who comes in and validates what you already know to be true You know, I'm happy to play that role and I think it's something that's really important for us to do So if there are things like that, it's a hundred percent the kind of thing that I think we need to be doing so let me go Hi My name is Cynthia Chavez Lamar and I'm with the school for advanced research in Santa Fe, New Mexico I just wanted to thank you for You for acknowledging the existence of American Indian tribes in the United States by referencing tribal leaders in your remarks As a person who is of Native American heritage. I'm from San Felipe Pueblo in New Mexico It's vitally important for us to be part of this initiative I think because our communities are very rich in arts and cultures and I think that a lot of times our tribal leaders fail to see that The arts can be more than just a tourist attraction in our communities. So thank you No, I think that's hugely important I was lucky enough to have been asked to spend a week in Alaska with a couple of people that are sitting behind you And was able to spend some time getting to know a couple projects that are going on including the one that Rico is involved with the Walter Sobo off-center in Juneau, which I think is a really interesting way that that the native arts aren't just being used for Tourism or for decoration, but are I think really in a fundamental way Changing the inscription of the downtown and changing sort of the ownership of that communal space So I think it's a really interesting area and when I was there I was there actually with one of Chris Beck's colleagues Patrice Kinesh Who is deputy undersecretary think of USDA and her background is Lakota and so she and I were speaking a little bit about the Project at the Red Cloud Indian School So I just I think there are a lot of folks who are interested in this So I'm eager to have us to be a partner in any of those conversations. So thank you for introducing yourself and saying that Hi, I'm Gilgoun came from the city of Minneapolis And I just wanted to echo a little bit what NATO was saying over there around the importance of Race and culture in this conversation in our communities, especially low-income communities as a stakeholder I consider myself. I'm the director of arts culture creative economy in the city and I consider myself a Stakeholder in many of the projects happening it within the city and a partner to many of the projects and There are there are two specific issues I want I'm really interested in digging down into in this conversation And that is what do we mean when we say economic development and for whom and also The issue of research especially because yes, it you I have met set through many of the debates around qualitative and quantitative Assessment, but that those debates are extraordinarily damaging to people like me because I need that research to work And I need to deliver it to elected officials in a way that can help them make the best possible Decisions for the community. So it's very hard for me to do that when I have so much Opposition and I'm I'd be very curious to hear from my colleagues in other cities how they have managed that and then what they're doing In terms of making that that research field responsive to our needs. That's great I know tomorrow at our lunch hour We're going to sort of have a sort of do-it-yourself affinity group session And I so I know Gogan's interested in meeting with other folks who are sort of working in and with municipal government and having that Conversation so it might be interesting for a DIA to join and and for some other folks to do that So I'm just watching timeless. We have time for we have what ten minutes excellent So we have ten minutes worth of questions. Let me go to the woman standing here Good afternoon, my name is Kimberly driggins, and I'm with the Washington DC office of planning and it's been a really great Opening session, and I'm really excited to be here I was at the first conference in Miami last year and really hearing some of the Conversation some of it's the same and I think that some of the four areas that you're choosing the focus in I think all of them are right on point the one that I really want to talk about right now is Broadening the field and sort of the field work that that last bullet Which is really about building the field and as someone who's really rooted in place I've been in community and economic development for the last 18 to 20 years And so as a grantee, you know our office really used art play strategically to kind of move the ball with Arts and culture as driving neighborhood development So in terms of being the the conversation needs to be And it is growing sort of outside of the field of who's in here and really sort of reaching other other Other arenas and so with Liz this year We're going to the American Planning Association National conference and you know really I go to a lot of these Conferences and it's sometimes tangentially talked about but really what art place is really the intersection of the two fields and where you really see that overlap really pushing the conversation in The community development and placemaking field. I think it's critical to really Moving the national conversation of creative placemaking. So, you know, we're happy that we're going to be at APA this year and the panel that we're going to be moderating Liz is actually moderating a panel with Kit Bergstrom with Michael Forsythe with in Detroit and myself So that's one panel and I also think Liz is doing one on rule development So we are sort of trying to push the conversation outward and there's some other Initiatives that we have in the works as well and as someone who's based in Washington I get a lot of calls from around the country about some of the work that we're doing in DC And I think that that's good. So I encourage the grantees Especially those who are not in the arts and culture field to really sort of have that dialogue And we work closely with our arts and culture community with our arts and humanities commission as well as some of the arts organizations, but we come at it from a very specific Points of view and and I'm unapologetic for that but really understand the need For for arts and culture and moving that the conversation in communities around neighborhood revitalization I think that's exactly right and I'll I was I've been a Washingtonian for the past four years and just the one thing I'll sort of say as a private citizen is very few people Use words like visionary and innovative when it comes to DC government But but in all seriousness the DC office of planning has done some extraordinary things and just I was sort of Bold over just as a citizen as a resident of DC So thrilled to sort of have you as a partner The other thing I'll say is someone asked me a couple weeks ago What I thought the most difficult part of this job was going to be and what I said was The people that I really need to speak with are the people who have no interest in speaking to me Right if I say would you like to speak about the arts and community development? If you raise your hand, we don't need to have the conversation because I've already made the sale Right, it's the people who keep their hands down that I'm interested in speaking with so that sort of notion of Where do we go where the people aren't embracing it so warmly is so important. So just thank you very much for that Yeah, hi Michael Sairath. I'm from Seattle and with Capitol Hill housing We did the 12th Avenue Arts building and a new art place Funder two things we do affordable housing community development work and bringing affordable art space So the comments from the gentleman a creative time about social equity We're in a very rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and have a long out of strong market trouble there Very great comments and those are excellent. I was excited to hear you talk more about delegates moving forward We're hungry for the conversations. You're having or are wanting to help push it forward So if there's something we can do as current funders To be those delegates we happen to have a very supportive government in our city Who wants more of this they're hungry for it So the more we can bring best practices ideas and you feed them to them Well, we'll be working to create a stronger network Locally so I encourage you to think about us as your delegates starting now I totally love that and and just I mean that so perfectly sets up the session that we're about to go into Because in addition to sort of us thinking about you I want to ask all of you to think about us and so the invitation is a two-way one Also come to me and say it would be really great if we could have a representative of a national foundation at this meeting That we're having because we you know, this is a pivotal watershed moment or stuff like that So please this is an honest invitation sort of make it a two-way street and let us equally think about each other and what we can do Because we're all in this together and we're all sort of in the field All right, excellent. So I'm going to do Jason and Leslie. Perfect. We'll end with friends. Hi Jason she walked from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hi everybody. I run the our town program So this is just a little bit of a statement not really necessary We are just thrilled about the new direction of art play not new direction continuing direction of our place Especially around the field building conversation and having worked with Jamie from us for years now I have to say this is one smart dude and we are in incredibly good hands here and it is going to just be He's gonna rock it out.  So can we just end there? I'm Leslie Cotton. I've known you for five chapters. I think that's true, but I will not tell stories Music and I run Governor's Island, which is a small island in New York, Harvard And I'm gonna say one thing that's sort of obvious based on what I do and one that's less one is sort of the role of public spaces and parks and we're completely heterodoxical and that we absolutely embrace all kinds of programming and We like to provoke our colleagues in parks to say like we're really happy this grass is trashed because it's the setting for All kinds of activities and when you think about sort of shared spaces You know even in the mayor's remarks streets are shared spaces public spaces But sort of changing attitudes about those being stages for all kinds of culture I think are important because they're free and they're there already and the other word that I haven't heard at all is commerce And commerce is a wonderful thing creating. We have an Etsy house on Governor's Island Those artisans sell things that fine with me I don't you know audit them But I think as you look as people walk through downtown LA and you'll see creative industry signs office space. You'll see Locally owned retail. You'll see free space given to art galleries. All those are part of the ferment But thinking about how where that synergy is and that commerce is not necessarily a dirty word because particularly for people under 35 Creative industries. There are no there are no boundaries anymore between what I used to call, you know Commercial versus not profit versus restaurant versus museum and how we all embrace that I think becomes really important particularly Yes, no, I think that's I think that's exactly right and is Beth Nordland here. Did she make it in Beth? Excellent, so I just want to make sure you and Leslie connect at some point because I sense kindred spirits So I think you guys will have a lot to talk about so all right This is you know just the beginning of conversation So I don't feel too bad about drawing to a close now And I'm going to turn things over to Liz who's going to do a couple of housekeeping notes And then we all get to stretch our legs and do that sort of stuff. So Liz Crane Hello, I'm Liz Crane deputy director of Art Place America I wanted to welcome all of you and welcome all of you who are watching via our live stream as a reminder for everybody in This room. We are having conversations online in addition to in person So keep an eye on the hashtag art place throughout the day And if you're at home watching or if you're with a group watching, please interact with us On our Twitter feed at Art Place America or hashtag art place These are going to be short housekeeping comments I'm going to add some more comments about what we're going to do tonight and tomorrow a little bit later today But just to get the very basics because this is a conference. The bathrooms are to the right If you're watching from home, I can't point to where they are, but I'm sure they're nearby Hopefully you've all checked in and gotten your program and leafed through it to see everything that we've got coming in The next couple days If there's any issues with the hotel, please let me know. I know I've been talking to many of you about that If you're watching from home with big weather and terrible things We hope your internet stays going throughout this entire thing and that it stops snowing soon And we'll try not to talk about the sunshine that's coming in Los Angeles So that's pretty much it for this first session again. I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about the tour tonight It's gonna be really exciting don't plan to go anywhere else. We're gonna have a great reception later And otherwise if you have anything else that you need come find me come to the registration table and we'll take care of you So thanks so much. We're gonna have a really quick break. So this is a 15 minute break This is not a 30 minute break. This is a go stretch your legs and then come back in break And we'll have longer breaks later in the session. So come back in and be ready to move around There's some exciting stuff happening. So we're gonna come back by 6 45 to get started. I'm sorry 3 45 I am in eastern time still. I'm still working that out. So 3 45. We'll see you all back in here. Thanks so much