 in the room. But I just wanted to thank Cindy and Prentice again for last night's party which I thought was absolutely amazing. And I also, I don't know how many people stayed for the band, but I think it was a competition between Boston and New Orleans for the best dancers. But I think Brian and Ramona were sort of one for one. So we've spent most of the, we've spent this morning and the past couple of days in many ways talking about the practice and talking about what we've actually been doing and what we can learn from one another. And we wanted to take this closing session to sort of take things up a level and to begin thinking a little systemically. So if you'll indulge me for three minutes or so, I want to talk a little bit about sort of art place and our strategy as a context for a conversation that we're all going to have together. So as I think everyone has heard me say repeatedly, art place is chartered as a 10 year fund, right? So we go out of business in 2020 and people often ask why that is. And there are fundamentally three reasons for that, all of which are true. And the first is it's just a very honest conversation about philanthropy and that you can hold the attention span of a foundation for about a decade. But after 10 years, strategies change, staff changes, leadership changes, right? So it's very honest about the reality of our funding. Number two, we were given a job to do, right? We're working to reposition arts and culture as a core sector of community planning and development. And the thing that is sort of true about human nature is if you give someone a job to do and you tell them they have forever to get it done, they usually take that long, right? So we were given 10 years, we're given a deadline. And third, which is the answer that in some way interests me most, is an equity play, right? We're tying up a significant amount of national resources. We're tying up something like $150 million over 10 years to try and do something. And at the end of that decade, the best use of the next $150 million in the next 10 years had better not be the same thing or what the hell have we been doing, right? So this is really a chance to sort of say, take the marbles, play a game, do the best you can, and then at the end of it, let someone else step in. So today, as we stand here, we're almost exactly halfway through that 10-year life. We're five years down, we have five years left to go. So what have we been doing, right? So a quick reminder of the history because all of us have sort of joined this conversation at different points. Jason Schubach talked about this a little bit on Monday, that this really, as the conversation we're having, began at the NEA when Jason and the U.S. Conference of Mayors commissioned the white paper, the creative place making white paper, I'm sure everyone has seen, that was written by Ann Marcuson and Ann Gadouan Nicodemus. And that's kind of what started this whole thing. And art plays, as Jason talked about, really grew out of that. And as someone who has worked both in government and in the real world, one of the things that I love most about art plays is I think we're one of the rare examples of an innovation that started in government, an innovation that started in the public sector and was adopted by the private sector. And what we really were started to do was to accelerate and to be a catalyst for the work that the NEA had started and to really be a partner. So when Carol Cleta was our founding executive director, she and the team she put together, their job was really to make creative place making a thing. It existed sort of in this white paper, but it wasn't a thing in the world. And when it existed in the world, if it existed at all, it was in air quotes. And I think there are many extraordinary things that Carol did while she was at art plays. The single most impressive thing to me is she got rid of the air quotes, right? So creative place making went from creative place making to creative place making. And our job when the current team got together was to build on that work and how we can use that work to get to that job of repositioning art and culture as a core sector of community planning and development. And so we actually began to work towards that goal through three ways. The first is the national creative place making fund that Javier and Lila oversee. And that was really what art plays had been primarily known for. And as I think you guys all know, we're still investing about $10.5 million a year in communities of every size across this country for anyone that is doing art with the explicit intention of creating some sort of place based change. And the mandate to Javier and Lila, what they're really trying to do with this highly competitive process, we got something like 1400 applications this year, 1400, and we're going to make 40 grants, right? I mean, that's ridiculous. And what their job, one of the ways that they're sifting through it is, yes, we need to fund extraordinary projects, but we also want to fund projects that together create a microcosm of this country. We want to fund projects that have communities, that have people, that have challenges, that have community development outcomes, that everyone in this country can see themselves in that portfolio in some way and to be inspired. So whether you're in a new big village in Kivalina, Alaska, working on climate change and environmental issues, or if you're diverse urban community in Miami, Florida, trying to reconnect neighborhoods that have been separated by transportation infrastructure, we want people to be able to look at our community of grantees and see someone like them. So all of that funding is project-based and it's meant to be a sort of one-time infusion of funds to get something done. But as we all know, the real work extends well past any one project. So Liz Crane took her leadership and her skills and she put together a second grant program for us at Art Place, the community development investments. And representatives from those six projects are with us today, you remember they stood up on day one. And I hope you've had a chance to meet them. And with those six organizations, we were looking to invest in folks that were deeply embedded in their communities, that had a really strong track record of delivering for those communities, and that folks that had never systemically or strategically worked with arts and culture before. And so we picked a tribal housing authority in Anchorage, Alaska. We picked a comprehensive CDC in little Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles. We picked a youth enrichment project on the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, a housing preservation organization working in rural Southwest, Minnesota, a public health organization in Jackson, Mississippi, and a parks conservancy in Philadelphia. And just like we do with the National Creative Placemaking Fund, we again wanted every kind of place-based organization in this country to be able to see themselves in that group. So whether you're working on housing issues, whether you're working on public health issues, whether you're working on youth issues, we want you to be able to look at these 18 million dollars that we're investing and see some way that can inspire you to partner with arts and culture to achieve your mission. So we're actually partnering, there are a number of colleagues here from PolicyLink, which is the organization we're partnering with to capture that knowledge and to share it around the country in a way that will be used, in a way that someone will look at the knowledge that we're capturing from that. They'll wake up and they'll do something differently. They'll work with new partners, they'll work in a new way. And those two grant programs, as you all know, are complimented by the research strategies that Jamie Handover sees. And she's looking deeply at the 10 sectors of community development that we track. And she's trying to find the opportunities to highlight the language, to highlight the shared goals that artists and arts organizations can share with each of these. And I think we all remember the extraordinary plenary yesterday with the three artists that were working in these areas. And I think Deputy Fajeda, in particular, is exactly the embodiment of what we're talking about. Someone who is fully realized as an artist, someone who is fully realized as a law enforcement official, and bringing both of those ways of working, both of those ways of knowing together. And so, sticking with that example, Jamie Hand is working to sort of create the bridges that allow artists and public safety officials to share common goals around community reentry, around violence reduction, around social cohesion, in ways that allow them to partner with each other. And we want to embed that work, yes, in the art sector, and also in the non-art sector. And that's one of the reasons that we're so excited that the Urban Institute has already cross-posted the white paper on arts, culture, and public safety. So that folks that are going to the Urban Institute website because they care about urban issues, because they care about public safety issues, are going to find this and find this way of working. So our goal for all of that, our goal for the national grant program, our goal for the community development investments, and our goal for the research strategies, is really to help build a field of people who share a perspective, who share a common point of view that artists and arts organizations have a vital role to play alongside all of their other neighbors at the community planning and development table. So if creative place making only happens when there are special earmark funds available, we will have failed, right? Our job is not to create a special kind of community development. Our job is to add a standard tool to the toolkit of all comprehensive community planning and development. So as we look ahead over the next five years, we expect that all three of those lines of work will continue. And as they continue, we want to keep ourselves focused on the world as it will be in 2020. And at that point, that means that all of you, everyone in this room, and all of our like-minded colleagues from around the country, will be the ones who collectively ensure that the work continues. And it means that we at Art Place need to redouble our efforts and redouble our focus on your needs and also on the resources that each of you brings to the work. And I think this morning's crowdsourced panels are a perfect example of that. Eight extraordinary topics were surfaced, eight extraordinary conversations were had, and all of them sort of drew on the knowledge that we have collectively. So what we want to do today is we want to end our time together by asking all of you as a community to join us in two activities. The first is going to be revisiting the team boards that you began working on on day one. And the second is a design thinking exercise that Prasad Bordkar, who leads the innovation space and the biomimicry lab at ASU, will take us through. So the first is the team board. So can we get the lights up in the house because we're going to start working together? So you remembered that there were five questions that are there in front of you, right? One, how do we recognize creative place making when it's operating and it's best? Two, what are the major barriers to us working at our best? Three, how do you learn? Who do you turn to? What are the resources you need? Four, who are the key players in the worlds in which you're working? And five, how do you know when you're achieving the best possible outcomes for your work? So we want to take the next 15-20 minutes for you guys to work again at your tables and we want you to revisit those five questions with two things in mind. The first, run through the questions and just quickly see how much your thinking has changed over the past two and a half days, right? What have you learned? What conversations have you had that changes the answers you gave on day one? And the answer might be that they're all different, the answer might be that they're all the same, likely it'll be somewhere in between, and make a note of that. Use your post-its, give your sort of day three answers. And then after you've done that, spend a little more time thinking through the next steps. Think through something on each of those dimensions that would help you push a little bit further in the work. So if you were to have said that equitable development is part of creative place making at its best, you might say that what you really need is a framework for understanding if development is happening equitably. So that might be a sort of next step need, a tool that you need in order to move forward. If you were to say that lack of community organizing capacity is a barrier in the community, you might think about the fact that we need a shared community space in which all the members of a community feel equal ownership and so on and so on and run through those. So we'd love to take, as I said, about 15, 20 minutes for you guys to do that. Run through the questions, revisit your answers, and then think through one or two or three things on each of them that would help you push that work forward. And then I'll be back in about 15 minutes and we'll have report outs, and we can't get to everyone in the room, but we'll have sort of quick report outs to get some things out in the room to see what folks are talking about. And then after we finish with the boards, we'll have Frasad up here and he'll lead us through a second exercise. So does that make sense? Any questions, any clarifications? General nodding? Can you get some general head nods that that makes sense? Okay. All right. Excellent. So get at it. Work at your tables and I'll be back in about 15 minutes. So just a heads up, you've got about three minutes left. I'll be back in three minutes for us to start reporting out. All right. All right. Let's come back together. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Hi. All right. So if we can take the lights back up now that we have everyone's attention, and we have, I think, we have Prentiss and Stephanie who are in the audience with microphones. And I'd love to sort of take the questions one at a time and just run through sort of what people's thoughts were and what a sort of next step was for each. And we'll just sort of ping-pong back and forth between the sides of the room. So Prentiss, can you find someone who wants to share on the first question around, sorry, I didn't get myself organized, around what are the elements of creative place making at its best and what some of it would sort of help us further that? Oops. Hold on for one sec. Sorry. And when you grab the mic, just say a word about who you are. So we sort of know. Hi. My name is Sophie Constantino and I'm a filmmaker and I have enjoyed this very much. My creative place making has been energized. And I have to say that our table went through the questions and we answered them all in a mush. So thank you for calling on me to do the one thing that we didn't do. I think Prentiss is probably to blame. But I think we came to this, the sets of questions outside of the granular of what we did and into the what's the next step. So really thinking how do we be more strategic? How do we keep building those partnerships? How do we go back to the people who we first met and start to reform the relationship so that people still aren't missing from the table without the table getting too big? I think that that sort of continuing to be dynamically strategic about what we're doing, not just in the making but in the visioning and seeing it moving forward so that this doesn't end but is an ongoing process. And is there something that you identified that could help you with how do we get everyone at the table and not let the table get too big? I think... Right, I mean because that's attention we all have, right? Every one of us has attended a meeting where someone says let's begin by talking about who's not at the table. Yeah, I'm going to extrapolate because I think Bob brought this up and I think it's important it sort of to slow down. Right. That we are all a little bit A type and we want to get all the people at the table and let's go. Maybe it's less people at the table every time, more tables, more often, slower. Time and tables. And I think as we said honoring the existing work but I think maybe it just stops with honoring the process and I think that sort of the slow food movement, the slow process and realizing we're not on a rapidly moving train but we need to be in the moment. Got it. More time and more tables. Stephanie, who do you have wants to weigh in on elements of a great creative place-making project, creative place making it its best? Hello, I'm Ty Asia O'Brien from Brooklyn, New York. Definitely enjoy the entire conference. For the, this is for the most significant creative place making challenges. So we changed in learning that I'm working with what is already there in terms of barriers and understanding our assets. Understanding or the assumptions that everyone feels empowered to participate so making sure that everyone who's involved in a project is may not be as interested in participating as you initially thought and working with the community through that. Defining what your community is accurately and understanding their needs and making sure whatever their needs are are prioritized and those are somehow matched with what you're doing with your creative making project. It's great. And anything that you guys identified that could help you push us that further with any of that? Not, yeah, we didn't necessarily address that. I think it was just the change in understanding from what we learned over the past couple of days. Perfect, excellent. Thank you so much apprentice. Hello, I'm Jenny Moore. I'm from the Bala Simpson Whirly Kick Park in Wilson, North Carolina and this has been wonderful. I have met so many great people and learned a lot. Okay, our table came up with several things, the importance of cross sector partnerships. That was something that we all noticed and took note of. Oh, a tune, being attuned to local needs, looking at your community and then bringing artists to the table from the beginning to help with problem solving. Fantastic, thank you so much, Stephanie. Or Gail, hi Gail. Hi, good morning. We talked about Gail Issa from Philadelphia. Yes, characteristics of great creative place making projects, including meaningful arts integration and ensuring that the arts are not only a tool for sort of getting a project going or something that's sort of a layer of sort of colorful dressing in the process, as well as hoping that the projects will have, even if the projects end, that the that the impact will be ongoing in the communities that where they're taking place. And then I think for us some of the most important characteristics are just acknowledging the amount of time and flexibility that it takes to have a successful project and the need for there to be built in opportunities for projects to quote unquote fail for us to be able to take risks and to try different approaches and to be able to learn and then to follow up with with next steps. And we would like it if Art Place could help us in advocating to the broader sector and especially to the sort of the worlds of philanthropy and resources to kind of be able to build that into the model of how this work is supported. And other than philanthropy are there any other specific resources toward which sort of help advocating is especially useful? Did that come up? There may not have been time. We did this super quick. Yeah, we were mostly focused in terms of the grant world. Yeah, that makes total sense. Well, I mean we did also talk a little bit about some of our own sort of community dynamics. And I don't know a specific role that Art Place could play in helping us to negotiate those but maybe creating space for us to share strategies with each other. Fabulous. Prentice. Hi, my name is Emily Vanust. I'm from Indianapolis and I'm also really excited to be here. One of the things that we kept coming back to again and again is the idea of displacement and trying to put strategies in place to prevent displacement from the beginning and lots of ideas about that. But also looking for ways to hear and honor the voices of the most vulnerable in our communities because they are often missed. They don't come to the table. They don't see themselves with the place at the table and it takes so much time and effort and concerted energy to hear those voices and to honor those voices and then to avoid their displacement at later stages. And just because this comes up so much, is anyone here working in a community where displacement is not an issue? Are one of you willing to just share something about your community context where it's not an issue? Right behind you Prentice or down here? I'm not going to try and help, sorry. Hi, I'm Donna from Wormfram Institute in rural Wisconsin and we live in a rural community but we are within 200 miles of three major urban centers and we are part of a region that is an urban rural continuum. So we see the assets that grow, literally grow in our region going back and forth to cities but the people are living in the cities but we play a very pivotal role in what happens to those cities. So physical displacement in our town is not an issue but the traveling of the resources between is. One other where displacement is not an issue? Yeah, we're in Ajo, Arizona where the poverty level is 38 percent where because we used to be a mining town in the mine left we have lots of vacant houses and opportunities for rehabilitation. We need some gentrification, we need people and I think this is true, you know, I mean rural America is a very different place to place but it's true in a lot of small rural towns. And was that Leslie's hand way in the back? Could one of the two of you run to her? Or both of you. Stephanie Winn. So the project that I'm working on is with Indigenous healers and multicultural artists up in the rural communities of Alaska that are dealing with suicide rates that are seven to nine times the national average and going in consciously to knit the communities back to themselves, their traditions and each other so that they because they are isolated little pockets of two to six hundred maybe nine hundred people, 80 miles from the closest other village so and they're dying so ways that arts and culture can go in and work with the native ways of knowing to keep the people alive in their place doing what they have done for generations and generations. Got it so we've got about five minutes before we pivot and for those five minutes I'd love if folks have thoughts specifically about sort of who are the key players in your world and how are you learning? Who do you learn from? How do you learn any of that? So are there folks who have thoughts on those two things? Key players and sort of how you learn who you turn to. Hi I'm Sarah from Minnesota. This link is really loud. I wanted to talk a little bit to that because we went into an interesting direction talking about who gets paid and who doesn't get paid and the value of community organizers and one thing that's of interest to me being from the architecture field is when this idea of a designer became professionalized and so there are some architects out there who are more sculptural I would say than service providers and it's interesting to see that play out in the architecture field and see when we talk about community organizers being trusted individuals or people that listen people of their neighborhood these are aspects of them as a human and they may or may not relate to how they get their income and when we talk about who's being funded and who's at the table and it's a professional planner or it's an organization or administrator they've had a different professional track in life so can we create some system of sharing and some system of bringing together these trusted individuals who have been community resources for a long time and would that be a way to start to professionalize something that's a value to communities that hasn't been acknowledged before. And may I just ask a quick follow-up when you're talking about professionalization of the non-professionals is that about paying and value or is it also about a different kind of professionalization? Great question I'm not sure that we talked about that as a table yet my personal point on that would be to have a level of sharing and documentation about what all of those people have in common so for me I mentioned the book The Craftsman by Richard Sennett where he talks about the difference between an artistic practice which is your individual values and a shared craft where you communicate with people that are doing similar things and form the shape of that and the identity and the values of that as a professional community. So that's kind of the corollary I think about is that you can have an individual practice but when you start working as a collective there's space created where you can share those ideas and opportunities and form them through conversation with other people doing similar things. And if folks don't know Richard Sennett that craftsman work is I think really key and really important so if some smart person is on Twitter and wants to tweet out a citation it's really totally worth a read. I lost Prentice over here. Something about learning key players. Oh great hi. Hi I just want to follow up on the community organizing piece because I think it's really. Lynn McCormick from LISC. Lynn McCormick from National LISC. The community organizing piece we talk often about paying artists and valuing paying artists and we know that conversation has been going on for a long time and in this work but when we're looking at reaching deeply into community and accessing voices that aren't at the table and bringing those voices into the conversation and calling upon those voices as experts the community organizing field is where we can reach the the folks that aren't necessarily coming to the meetings or feel comfortable coming or and they have access to those those networks and so they are professionals at getting that information and they should be paid for that work and there's some projects going on through our Kresge funded work particularly in Providence where we're they're working directly with the community organizing organization that is being paid for the work that they're doing and it's it's it's risky to do that. All right great let's get one last thought here and then we'll pivot. I just wanted to bring it back to important actors critics and advocates so my name is Michaela Shirley coming from Albuquerque, New Mexico. We talked about city elected officials and staff as being really important to our work but I also wanted to mention universities and colleges that are also part of the fabrics of the community and just being able to you know leverage them as resources particularly if they're a public institution thank you. Thank you so all right so I think we've heard a lot of common themes and I didn't sense there was a lot of disagreement right we all need more time we need more tables we need to deal with issues of empowerment and self-determination we need to deal with partnerships we need flexibility we need comfort with failing we need to value contributions in an equitable way we need to deal with issues of payment I mean I see a lot of head nodding I mean I think a lot of these things are familiar so we're going to be collecting these boards and sort of putting together the answers putting together the thoughts and and using this to really get a sort of sense of the of the room and what we want to do now is to pivot slightly and focus really on that fact that there is this sort of 2020 end insight at least for art place and there are a huge number of organizations that I've gotten to know over the last couple of years who really understand the way that arts and culture can help drive community planning and development whether they use the creative placemaking frame or not and some of them are here in the room springboard for the arts is done at the Center for Performance and Civic Practice has done it, LISC has done it, there are folks that are not in the room but sort of around the country I think a lot of us know Leo Vasquez and the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking, Barnaby Evans and Providence Rhode Island what he's doing with Water Fire and the creative placemaking or placemaking.us the Bowles Center in Madison Wisconsin and what's exciting to me and one of the reasons that we're here in Phoenix is that Steven Tepper and Jonathan Cappell the two deans we heard from on Monday are really interested in joining that community and what's exciting to me is that they're looking explicitly to do it in ways that are both additive and supportive and they want to understand the work that's already taking place and the gaps that really need to be filled what are the things that are not yet getting getting addressed and so ASU is entering this conversation is interested in exploring this at a moment when I think we as a community are beginning to be able to deepen our conversations I think we all have a kind of shared understanding of what we're talking about right we're talking about doing art with the explicit intention of driving a place-based change some sort of community outcome by finding a way for artists to join their other neighbors in strengthening and building and making better our communities and so I think we've got a pretty good sense of the litmus test right is this project creative placemaking yes or no are folks doing art and are they measuring the success of the project in terms of how it is impacting the lives of people who live in a place and partially because we're here and talking with our ASU folks we're thinking about that sort of I think Liz used the analogy on Monday of sort of the general survey course the sort of 101 this is sort of a sampling of creative placemaking around the country into sort of a 201 into something more like a graduate seminar that begins picking up the sort of the themes the the questions the really difficult things that we're wrestling with those things that we sort of kick down the road and say we'll get to later so I'm really excited as I've been talking with Steven and talking with his colleague Prasad to sort of hear how they're thinking about this how they want to approach this work and so they've put together a design exercise and if you sort of lift up your boards underneath it is a sheet of paper with some questions on it and there are two blank pieces of paper so you can sort of do that shuffling as Steven and Prasad come up here and they will sort of walk you through what you want to do with that and once you've sort of done that shuffling join me in welcoming back to the podium Steven Tepper. Good hot day to everybody I think we're going to get to 98 degrees here in Phoenix. It's been an incredible few days and I've enjoyed all the sessions that I've been able to attend such an amazing amount of energy and passion as a sociologist this really feels like a field that is sort of what we would call pre-paragdigmatic or pre-institutionalized it's it's right now driven by this bundles of energy and imagination and talent and it's happening in all kinds of organic and incredible ways but I'm interested in the idea of institutionalizing a field now I know when you hear the word institutionalization you're thinking we don't want that that's a that's hospitalization that's the iron cage of bureaucracy that will kill every good idea but I want you to think a little bit differently about what it means for a field to become institutionalized in sociology we think about fields that are institutionalized as having systems of validation something that Maria Rosario Jackson talks and writes a lot about what are the ways in which the work gets validated fields that are institutionalized have central puzzles that people kind of agree are there are the dominant questions we're asking together and some agreed upon methods by which we are exploring those puzzles and those questions when things are institutionalized they have durable networks with easily identified nodes of action not temporary not sporadic but durable institutionalization means we have some sense of measuring our performance and a progressive sense of improving over time we have patterns of interaction that get repeated that's what an institution is not bricks and mortar it's patterns of trusted interaction that happen over and over again and when things are institutionalized you're kind of moving from work being driven by charismatic entrepreneurs to work that's increasingly driven by professional experts and there are a lot of there are there are things that you want to avoid as you're institutionalizing things institutionalization can also mean power grabs certain groups get to grab power based on their self interest and so it's important to think about what's happening to this field right now and be intentional about the shape we want it to take and you can think about jazz as an example of a field that at one point was not institutionalized at all right jazz happened in people's basements on front porches in seedy bars in in speakeasies and it was a whole amalgam of different kinds of influences from from swing to blues to to african drums to gypsy music to religious spirituals and and then suddenly over time not suddenly over time that's a that doesn't make any sense i'm good at self reflection it's something that we learn to do in art schools jazz began to have more form to it clearer boundaries and definitions about what this genre was uh and agree some agreed upon canons and classics dedicated venues for performing jazz dedicated formats on on radio labels that started investing in this format the nea that started uh funding uh jazz projects so you had funding streams you had a validation system the grammy started giving out a grammy awards in in jazz you had a a field of critics that were that emerged to judge and to uh and to to comment on on jazz you had journals and you had academic programs where people could now go and study jazz they could become jazz experts jazz performers departments of jazz so what does that look like for creative placemaking moving forward and and what can the role of of universities be they they have played a major role in the evolution of the jazz field um what does that look like for creative placemaking and when you think about um universities they are collections of assets and what we want you to do in the next um half hour or so under the leadership of uh prasad who i'll introduce in just a second is to really think about what this bundle of assets looks like and how it can be supportive of the work that you want to see done over the next decade or longer so universities are collections of students and staff and faculty that's an enormous amount of human resource right just think of the uh herber institute design in the arts we have 4700 arts and design students so we're going to want you to think about what if you could mobilize those students to support the work how would you do it universities are places for convening we gather people together we uh identify important topics that need cross fertilization that need insight from expertise what kinds of convenings can we organize what are existing convenings that can be informed by creative placemaking universities are places to advance ideas right if nothing else we are knowledge enterprises that are committed to advancing ideas creative placemaking is a bundle of ideas how do we help advance those we are a collection of resources oriented towards research what kind of research needs to be done can be done should be done to support the work we have um pr offices communications offices advancement teams development teams these are all resources that could be accessible to you and your work we are places to what extent can the lessons of creative placemaking be applied to the many spaces and places that universities occupy both in the community and on their own campuses how can our spaces be optimized and used by the by all of you in this room and by others trying to do this work we are a collection of tools we have makers spaces in engineering in design in art we have studios we have technology systems that can be deployed to support the work we have alumni millions and millions and millions of alumni which of these alumni need to know about this work and how can we engage them and universities are economic drivers we spend billions and billions of dollars we are often the single greatest employers of cities and regions how can the university's economic driver complement the work that's happening in this room and across the country so to help lead us through this next discussion i want to introduce prasad baradkar who is an industrial design professor at asu he runs something called innovation space and a new center for biomimicry he has authored many books he's really an expert on in the meaning of objects the meaning of design the culture of design and and he has facilitated many many meetings and we're very very lucky to have him with us today to help us think through creative placemaking 201 prasad thank you steven well good afternoon everyone uh so i am i realize the last man standing last our last day of the conference between so between me and your lunch and a margarita in the afternoon 98 degree weather outside time by the pool or running for the airport so bear with me as we go through this one hour i have a quick presentation on design thinking so if you could queue up that presentation please so as dean tepper mentioned i am a professor in industrial design at asu in the design school and i'll be talking about design thinking briefly and then we'll run you through a present a an activity on brainstorming so if we could have that presentation on design thinking up on the slides that'd be great just a quick quick question in my discipline this is this term is talked about quite a bit how many of you have come across the term design thinking i hope i can see you all okay good so there's a good number of people who heard the term design thinking and i i just want to assure you that it's design thinking is more than just a obsession with post-it notes i think there are certain methodologies practices behaviors activities that we can get involved with within design thinking so what we'll do in this session is i'll walk you through just a few examples of design thinking a few ways of thinking about design that could inspire ideas and then we have a set of questions so there's i think there are 45 tables here and more than 250 people so we've written up these questions we've divvied them up across these tables what we'd like you to do in the last save half an hour 45 minutes of this last hour of the conference is to think in your in your tables of these questions and the idea is to generate as many wild ideas as possible so i'll run you through this quick presentation on design thinking and then we'll get into the into the exercise so this is one of these tons of definitions of design thinking i have many of my own as well but this is jean litka who teaches at a dart month and yes someone needs to do the work of filling up all those post-it notes behind her but she refers to this as what is scientific thinking there's design thinking i think what we need to do is bring those two together it's design thinking is both right it's integrative in a sense it's it's left and right brain we need to think of both of those ways of thinking the logical but also the random the verbal but also the imaginative the linear creative so how do we bring these two parts of our brain together in i think what daniel pink refers to as whole brain thinking design thinking is also optimistic right i had a friend of mine a sociologist who said once to to me that you designers are awful at research and i was extremely offended of course the reason he said that you are too optimistic you look at a problem and you don't think of well let me get to the bottom of this let me break this out into components you want to quickly solve it and come up with answers and you need to be optimistic so i think design thinking and brainstorming you have to sort of take this this approach that yes i can solve the problem no matter how hairy how large how intractable the the problem is so thinking positively through these questions is another important thing that we'd like you to encourage to do but i also think we need to be skeptical we need to question everything question the status quo and i think artists and designers are fantastic at doing that right we don't take things for granted we take things we look at them we uh we come up with new ideas because we question what we see in front of us this is one thing that's talked about quite a bit with folks like ideo and the the d school at stanford et cetera this notion of prototyping so as you look at these questions in front of you what would a prototype of an institution look like what would prototype for a new program look like how can we engage students and faculty and other folks in the community through these questions this is a really lovely quote from edison so what does failure really mean it doesn't mean that i was unable to do something but i found ways by which i can move forward like there are some things that clearly do not work design thinking also is collaborative and in this case of course we have so many people here we have people working in teams but in addition it's also inspired by diversity and i know here at at art place we you know we have been getting together for several years there's enormous diversity in in in gender in race in disciplines and artistic practice in location so i think we can really bring a lot to the table as we work through these through these questions design thinking is also about connecting the dots so and again artists and designers i think are really good at this stuff they can see things that apparently make no sense at all it's a sort of hallmark of creative thinking and connect those dots to to make sense and generate new ideas i think that's a part of what we do we also want to look at what we've done in the past learn from the giants who preceded us but also look ahead so how do we learn from tradition but also look at the future bring these two together to come up with with new ideas we don't want to measure too early right we want to break standards we can start by coming up with crazy ideas because measuring too quickly too early too rapidly can really stifle innovation again another fantastic quote not everything that can be counted is worth counting right it's really it's really good way to think about how qualitative information qualitative data qualitative research is also really important in addition to the numbers so this is just my way of defining what what design thinking is it's integrative like we bring several minds together several ideas together we work in teams we think left and right brain and the idea is to improve life on the planet improve life for improve everyday everyday life for people help communities bring groups of people together solve problems etc so that's that's the that's the task for the the rest of the conference as we wind it down and so we've come up with a set of questions there are five questions and you'll find one of those questions on on your on your tables so this is one of the questions what if we had gobs and gobs of money if that was a case and you had 10 years what kinds of challenges and problems would you take on and maybe what we can do is look ahead not look at what we've already done but new things that we haven't taken on so far new problems that we haven't addressed so far Steven mentioned the resources at a university what can a large public university do how can we leverage the resources that are there and come up with new ideas to move it forward do you want to add anything to the Steven so that's that's question two and at some tables have question two the third question is yes in addition to all of this what if we have tons of students ASU has upwards of 80,000 students I suspect with the largest university in the US right now I'm not entirely sure but with that large of a number of students how can we mobilize them how can we use their brains their energy their enthusiasm to move some of these projects forward so can you come up with the creative ideas for that question four this is slightly longer but this looks at who would you invite to work with you I think there was some one of the questions that Jamie asked as well who are the people you work with who would you like to invite to participate with you on on these projects and what would they say what would you ask them right if you could have anybody in the world dead or alive what would that be and the last question is if you could have one single meeting right and that one meeting will lead to the maximum impact how would you plan that and who would you bring together so these are the five questions that we came up with based upon what's happened here for the past few days I would like you to think about these questions we'll get back together at about 1245 and we'll do something similar to what Jamie did earlier we don't have time to listen to all the ideas that will be generated at in this room but we could sort of hand pick a few people we could have volunteers to speak about the ideas that they came up with so please use the large sheets of paper on your table the markers sketch draw write doodle and we'll get back together in a few minutes hello again it's just past 12 30 I hate to be the guy who kills good conversation but what we thought we would do is maybe wrap it up a little bit early give you some more time outdoors so if we could take a few minutes and maybe I could ask for some volunteers to discuss some of the answers to questions that you've come up with anyone willing to speak about what did you do at your table in terms of discussion around question one please oh it doesn't matter either question if you want to do them in order we have oh doesn't matter go ahead we've been looking at question number four and question number three my name is Nancy abraham from south central los angeles and one of the things that we talked about in a lively conversation is recognizing all the incredible resources that can be available through a university and the departmental connections one of the issues of concern is that universities also tend to be the largest nonprofit in the area not necessarily contributing to the tax base they tend to dominate the environment in terms of the local real estate and yes are also the largest employers in the area i think that what if this is an earnest question i would like to suggest that any university thinking of engaging in community really has to take an honest assessment of the impacts that universities make on the local economy on mom and pop businesses and the culture that is inherent in that and on the local housing market and i think that because you have schools of planning and and and perhaps you take on issues of zoning there are opportunities to consider putting the research around urban in in in my case and my concern is around urban development some thought as to the development of overlay zones of protection for the communities that surround i also wanted to recommend just from our own experience the and and an experience that has precedent in other university environments is developing an earnest community scholars program where students are partnered with community experts with equality nobody's expertise is more important than the other and partnering in ways that actually gets students engaged on the ground in local community nonprofits and also brings students i mean creates a permeability of the walls of academe so that community members are also invited into partner with the scholars on research projects that inform the direction of community place basing place making i think that one of the other things that we came up with was that you know universities can certainly facilitate a huge amount of research and help to guide perhaps or inform the direction that a project should take but that kind of scholarship should be on tap and not on top so it should on tap but not on top and the way to do that is to create a really meaningful exchange between the community that is going to be most impacted by the deeper deeper entrenchment of the largest nonprofit in the area and the facts on the ground for folks thanks thank you i saw some other hands up this table do you want to tackle question one or okay so we have a lot of ideas so let me just try to distill this so if you could just quickly mention the question that'll be great for the it's question number one if we had the ten million dollars a year for ten years okay so we think there should be a coherent strong federal vision for how the arts impact larger issues and it should manifest itself in a wpa where artists are at the table dealing with infrastructure issues across this country because that's an area that's been neglected and artists are our great thinkers so that's one okay two arts and culture divisions offices in cities across the country let them be relevant not ribbon-cutters not just for elite organizations we think that they should have um be responsive to community organizations that that we should um you have to help me out here you had a good you have to okay am i doing okay that they should be they should have artists at the table and they should somehow be inspired to rethink their practice so that cities are looking at creative place making community development community reinvestment issues around equity and justice we just shift the paradigm okay so that's two um three um we think that there should be like okay so um let me see what is the other one um okay we think that housing authorities across the country should have artists at the table so that um like when i was in ireland many years ago artists were at the table so that when communities were being thought about rebuilt reconfigured that um they were done in the most humane manner possible because artists were there thinking about creativity and more importantly thinking about what what do we want this community to look like what does impact look like and i think artists can deliver that and have i left anything out oh yeah the curriculum piece all universities all planners at universities should have creative place making be part of their practice this is serious and if we're really going to sort of um really inspire people to be change agents and think about the practice in a way that that is responsive to communities then we really have to think rethink the curriculum that planners are being exposed to not dramatically but we it has to be change and creative place making and the art should not be over there and planners over here and in order to have an integrated approach let it start in universities okay i think that's it i love your energy anyone who tackled question two red four or somebody else yeah so question two about um if creative place making 201 included a partnership between a large public university and the community how would we deploy the assets of the university to support this work one of the things that we spent time talking about is the importance of inviting current practitioners to be the students or perhaps fellows in residence for the program rather than always working with folks who are sort of just beginning to understand and kind of wearying the communities in which they might be placed for the learning process we also felt that this model should be a low residency model so that practitioners can continue to practice in the communities where they are already located maybe convening one or two times per year or possibly more often online and especially we know that asu has a strong online learning community we also wanted to make sure that there would be self nominations so or potentially different sort of tiers that folks could kind of self identify with so that it's not exclusive to just the existing sort of superstars in the field but also to folks who might be more emerging or mid-career in their practice we also talked about related but potentially separate having the university consider creating a community liaison position or department that would work with each department of the university to help link the university and resources from the university to local communities and grassroots organizations one of the examples that came up was a community-based learning center that's being developed now at Occidental College and then another I mean there's a few more ideas but one more that I really wanted to highlight is I think the importance of also not in in 201 but actually in 101 building in a social analysis or anti-institutional racism training for anyone who like already practicing or beginning their practice in doing this work great thank you third seven please read your question if you don't mind first I included a partnership between a large university in the community how might you deploy the assets of the university to support the work one of the things that could be done is that the university could partner with a national main street program which has a number I mean a large number of communities across the nation who are poised and ready to begin creative placemaking work and they could do this maybe via Skype and through computers and that kind of thing but once the students already knew about creative placemaking they could they could begin to actually have a community with which to work some of the other things would be have fourth-year students do their senior project as a community placemaking project the city of Little Rock has partnered with the university of Arkansas and we have actually utilized the both the professors as well as students assistance in grant writing why because they knew the design lingo and they were able to help us when I was very first beginning to learn about creative placemaking for them it was already trippingly off the tongue and so they would put words into my mouth or into my computer and then into the the grant projects incredibly helpful there let's see we've got some more in here that were really good we had us this city of Little Rocks revamping its main street the students fourth-year projects at the University of Arkansas was to come in and design some buildings this was the architectural students that were going to go right into main street and exemplify the principles that they had learned as well as their creative placemaking I'm going to pass this to the other team and let them know if they're shaking their head so we just opened an office in the state table number two our office is called combined because our question was what if we could plan a single meeting this is what we were having to have maximum impact on the field what type of meeting would you plan and who would you bring together so we were questioning what kind of impact does the field need and discussing around the word that I can't say in English institutionalize of our dean temper we thought what about to institutionalize the search of the unknown and I want to pass the description of the project to my colleague which I just met Kate and Jamie will end the session so our idea of a meeting was uh sorry our idea of a meeting was to create a jam session and we were talking about last night's concert and how there is a moment where the people in the audience and the people on the stage began to encounter one another and eventually we were all in the stage dancing and we thought that's that's what the meeting needs to have a jam session and a place for everyone to to to relate with one another through jamming through using various ways of communicating that are not perhaps only spoken English and I guess we created a flyer and come jam come mix combine and we really wanted to get a chance for all players in the creative place making field an opportunity to come and bring their authentic selves and skills and knowledge and share whatever that is and mix and combine that and just jam out and create the unknown through that process thank you I think we have time for one more and I think maybe question four I'm not sure if anyone got to question four yeah this table over here table eight um our group calls itself the res dogs so uh question four is basically what if you could invite anyone in the role you wanted to join the university in leading managing running and promoting creative place making 201 so I just want to hone in on one because we have a whole list but one in particular that I think resonated with all of us and that is third grade teachers and the reason being that in terms of our sense of development and growth that not only do they foster an environment where they're bringing in all sorts of different kinds of elements besides the three R's including dance and music and uh fun activities and play time and all of these other kinds of things but I think in terms of our own sense of development certainly amongst us that was a time when we sort of were motivated it gave us our sense of purpose in a way and I think that these individuals in that context are so important in terms of why it is that we turn out the way that we do because we get a chance to sample all sorts of things and then we learn to like some things and we dislike some sort of things and that's one of the people that I think needs to be in the room in this conversation and just as a last thing we also think Barack Obama because he's going to need a job pretty soon and he can leverage lots and lots of resources for us so thank you well I I hope I hope you've all jotted down these ideas I'm sorry we couldn't get to the rest of the tables but thank you for participating I'm going to invite Jamie Bennett to come back and wrap the session up thank you all right cool that's it so thank you guys so much leave the papers leave your boards on the tables we'll collect them after all the people have left the room get the information together this is hugely helpful to our thinking at our place as we think through sort of the needs and resources and partnerships that we need to be working on it is separately hugely useful to ASU as they think through whether and how to join this conversation begin working with all of you guys so really the stuff that's left are just the thank yous so a huge thank you to all of our ASU colleagues who helped participate and host sessions yesterday a huge thank you to Greg and Nicole and all of the Roosevelt row people for the awesome stuff yesterday are you guys in the room thank you i'm wearing my t-shirt huge thank you to Cindy and all of her colleagues for the Mesa Performing Art Center from last night to all of the yogis to the runners to the walkers to the artists who performed last night to the artists who painted the map to the artist who's making the paint by numbers for all of us totally extraordinary we've got a lot of our foundation and government partners in the room which is why we can all be together so huge thanks to all of our foundation and government partners a huge thank you to everyone who spoke to everyone who shared to everyone who asked a question and to everyone who attended i mean you guys it is coming together as a community that is so awesome so thank all of you guys who are here in this room together and then just to end with the sort of really extraordinary people that i get to work with i think folks know Javier and Lila from the the National Creative Placemaking Fund work Liz Crane who's leading our community development investments who was back here somewhere Jamie Hand who's leading our research work Sarah Calderon who is our new managing director and did the awesome artist plenary yesterday is Justin still floating around taking photographs Justin who's been the fabulous photographer that you've seen you guys finally got to see the face of our social media Mari who's in the back so thank you Mari for all of that and then the only way to end the session is by bringing up the person who's really responsible for everything that we've been through the past couple of days so please to close the session join me in welcoming thanking and bringing up Prentice Soneyemi thanks you guys and there is no way that this would be possible without our planning team Stephanie Laura Allison Carmella you guys were the backbone of this event thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you housekeeping there was one person who followed those prompts that were on the inside of the printed program that was Nia she just stepped out but these three lovely items from the artists who were doing the demonstrations last night at Mesa Art Center will all be headed to Jackson Mississippi you all as consolation prizes each get a Sharpie congrats and there are those pillow cases with carmels on your table so make sure you grab that too a little something from Serenity Suites a local shop in Scottsdale for anyone who is heading to Ajo the bus will be down on the first street side to the same area where the buses went to Mesa at 2 p.m. that's all thank you guys so much