 We've done a new set up of chairs this morning that Liz and I are affectionately referring to as the rainbow. So anyone who's in the back, please feel free to come forward and join us in the rainbow. And by anyone, I mean the table of New Yorkers who refuses to mix with anyone right over there. So this is a little bit of a sort of open session. Maria, let me actually start by doing that. Standing next to me is Maria Rosario Jackson, who I think a lot of you guys know both from her work at the Urban Institute as well as her work now with the Kresge Foundation as well as serving as a member of the National Council on the Arts, which is how we've gotten to know each other better than we had known each other before. That's right. From when I was at the NEA. And so I asked Maria to sort of tag team this with me and what we're hoping to do with this morning session is sort of as a group think through sort of what we've heard over the past two days. What are the themes we've picked up on? And then perhaps the most important thing is what are the things that we collectively think we can get done and should get done in the next little bit. So a quick note on social media. Everyone who's been tweeting, please keep tweeting with hashtag art place. This morning we're also going to incorporate Facebook because we should have more social media in everything. And we're gonna capture some of the ideas that we're discussing and actually gonna post them on Art Places Facebook page and ask people in the room to feel free to comment. People who are watching at home to feel free to comment and people who wanna sort of come back and do it later. So I'm going to in a moment ask Maria to sort of kick us off by asking her about a couple of the themes and things she's heard and picked up over the past couple of days. But I wanted to sort of share two stories to help get us collectively in the same mind space going into the session. And so the first is Donna here. There's Donna from Worm Farm. If you haven't met Donna Newworth from Worm Farm Institute is here. And I was in a session with her yesterday and one of the projects that Worm Farm does is called fermentation fest. And what Donna talked about yesterday was sort of fermentation as a celebration of abundance. So whether you're turning grain into beer, whether you're turning milk into cheese or whether you're turning cabbage into kimchi, it's much better to sort of transform and make use of something. And this was the sort of money quote, then let your abundance rot in the field. So our goal for this morning is to not let her collect of abundance rot in the field. The second story, which I'll tell on Polly Carl who's gonna be one of her mic runners and you guys remember from Monday afternoon is Polly like me, I think sort of came up professionally in offices where you sort of had assistance and you had people who did things and particularly who did things for you. And when Polly first came to start working in the commons environment, she was in that same mind frame and she would turn to a colleague and say, hey, I need this. And the colleague would smile right back at her and say, great, let me show you how to do it. And Polly would say, no, no, no, you don't understand. I need this. And her colleague would say, yeah, no, I know. Let me show you how to do it. So this isn't necessarily about you guys telling us what art play should be doing and this certainly isn't about art plays telling you guys what you should be doing. But I think it's about sort of figuring out what we need to get done and figuring out how we're gonna do it. So that's my version of a sort of blessing and invocation. And with that, I'd love to sort of ask Maria, you've sat through the same sessions that we've all sat through collectively and you've had some thoughts and I would just love to sort of, what are some of the things that have resonated with you and what are some of the things that you would like to see us get done as a creative place making community? So one of the things that I heard over and over is under the big banner of connectivity. So there's a lot of energy around connecting whether it's connecting to each other or connecting outside of a particular policy silo, connecting places, whether it's physically linking up across or down the Mississippi as somebody had suggested or thinking about sister cities. I heard that come up as an idea. So this notion of connectivity in many, many different manifestations seems to be really important. That got my attention because of what I did for so long around metrics and measurement, the question about measurement got my attention and how there is such an opportunity to think creatively and expansively about what we intend to do when we set out to measure something and how we go about it, to think not only about quantitative information but qualitative information as well and not to dismiss it as only anecdotal as if it's not as important but to give it its heft in the way that it deserves alongside quantitative. I heard that. And some of that is sort of similar when Professor Pestler was talking about ground truthing. Yes. That it's an important, right? It's not anecdote, it's actually a check. That's right, that's right. I mean, sometimes we call it a smell test. You know, does this smell right? When you have numbers fed back to a group and they're asked to interpret it and people will say, does this seem like what's going on in the place that you're familiar with? Does this data tell you that? So there's a whole set of things that can be done around that. I think when Don from Irvine had us do that exercise where he asked how many people here think they're working in community development? How many people think they're in economic development? How many people think they're in the arts? It made me think about how agile people in this room are with switching hats and being able to act effectively in different contexts. It's work that has to happen in order for creative placemaking to be, right? So you have to know how to behave not only in the arts world, but also in community development, sometimes in social services, sometimes with transportation, and that there's a lot to be learned from people who have been able to do that over time and do it well. And so there's a lot of opportunity for sharing about that kind of agility and strategic thinking. There's a lot of that in the room that has to be harvested. So I think that's really important. So those are some initial things that come to mind for me. And I'm sure people come here with different prisms. So what got my attention may not be exactly the same thing that got somebody else's attention, but we'll hear that. In terms of the things Maria sketched out, folks find that fairly resonant, fairly relevant to what you're doing, yes, hands, yeah. Anyone who wants to wildly disagree with anything Maria just said. Okay, all right, so in terms of sort of, in terms of sort of putting us into the right mind frame, are my sister city's friends here? There's one of them, excellent. Can you guys, can we get a mic to both of these guys? And I just would love for you guys, it's all right, it's all good. Would you guys just sort of introduce yourselves and just talk to the group about the idea we talked about last night at, by the way, what actually was the best party I've ever been to in Los Angeles. So I don't know if Nancy and Gamin are here, but it was absolutely, there's Nancy in the back. If everyone could give them a huge thank you once again. So in the middle of all this wonderful food and the fabulous Thai shadow puppets and the visual art and the jewelry and all of that, two people had a very interesting idea which they brought to me. So I feel free to stand up, come to the center, whatever you guys would like to do. Maybe I'll come over there. All right, we can come together. I'm Angela Damiani. I'm with a group called New Walkie based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm Richard Young. I'm with the North Limestone Community Development Corporation in Lexington, Kentucky. So the idea is really simple and that's that we want more of the cross-pollination and the fellowship and the idea exchange that we've had in the last three days and we want it over the length of the grant period. So what if when you got your notification saying that your idea is going to be funded and you had the specifications about the blogs you need to write and the reporting that needs to happen, you also were assigned to a sister city and it could be random, we haven't flushed this out or it could be because your projects have sort of like discrepancies or similarities that would be really interesting to learn from and then throughout your project, you have an opportunity to go and visit that city for a few days, really drill down into what the successes are, what the challenges are, how you can... How you know this is the best idea. We just have to pause for the best telephone ring. I hope it's an actual theremin, not just the telephone ring. Okay, all right, sorry, go ahead. And we also talked about how, even if it wasn't people that are in the same grant funding cycle, but it could also be someone that just got their grant versus someone that got their grant two years ago, so you could sort of compare the strengths and weaknesses of what you were doing. Right, I think that in a lot of ways we're all very fortunate to have had this experience. I know personally for me, I keep telling everyone, I'm so excited that there's 200 people in the room that know exactly what we're doing. In our communities, a lot of times we spend a significant amount of time just advancing the vernacular and trying to explain what placemaking is, and I think we've all experimented with that in the last couple of days about what is the field gonna be? How do we self-define? To be able to commune with someone who can get past all of the defining and just get into some of the meat of how do you build community? Where does economic development go after this project? How do we make it sustainable? It would just be an incredible value that only I think our place would be able to provide. It's totally separate from having a community partner even within your community. And not only that, I think it'll provide a lot of emotional support for everything that happens throughout your funding cycle. Finally, I think when we're talking about building a field, it'll have a really densely woven network then. You have other people across the country that you know very intimately, you know their projects, you know what the resources are nationally, and so it could be that third piece of the field building beyond having a digital platform and a once-at-your-conference. Excellent. So let's do a couple of things. I think let's applaud. Let's two for social media friends in the back. Let's capture that and throw up something on Facebook about creating pairs of grantees, creating an opportunity to travel and visit with each other, something like that. And then just, I mean, from the applause it seems like folks feel this is generally a good thing to do. I'm seeing lots of nodding heads, I'm not seeing lots of shaking heads. So that, yeah. Let's borrow back one of your mics. Keep one up there. All right, so some of us have already started to do that informally, okay? So Laura and Yuli came out to Cleveland and actually presented not only to our entire arts network, but also specifically to my merchants and my artists, and then provided us technical assistance just for kicks and giggles about something that we launched kind of post art place, and I'm supposed to return the favor, but we haven't figured that out yet. But I don't suspect that, so it's a great idea. I love the formalizing of it, but I suspect that we're not that special in that I'm sure if we surveyed people we could find a bunch of little grassroots nexus models of that, like, you know, what we did. And we can capture that as kind of to percolate to that, make it some level formality and learning lessons that we had from that engagement. Brilliant. Sounds good. Brilliant. Any other quick. Yes. Leave them a mic up here just for the moment. Anything else quickly? And then we can move on to the next topic, yeah, these guys over here. Sorry, I'm really making poor Polly run around today. She dressed for the walking tour, which you should all go on later. On occasion when we have visitors like that, we also invite them, the strangers from the outside to speak to local funders and other organizations to talk about their experiences as people do tend to listen a little better about concrete projects from without. Great. And then was there someone right behind you who I think wanted to get in? Hi, I was just gonna say that there's a funding cohort here of the Diverse Art Spaces cohort within the Ford Foundation. And so for the last two years, we've been able to, with the modest travel funding to do exactly that and go and visit our colleagues in other places. So I'm Miami Light Project. We went to visit AS220 and La Mama and Chen Dance Center through this very modest support, but it was massive at the same time. And then locally we have some access to grants where we can have a little travel fund and then fly someplace to see somebody, but also we have some deals at hotels and it's Miami and we can host, oh, you can come visit us there. And so there is, I'm just sort of affirming what you said that this is this network is this is going on and absolutely we should do it more with art place folk. So this sort of set up perfectly what I thought was gonna take a little longer to do. So I'm actually now gonna turn with another question for you two and say if we were at art place able to identify a pilot pool of funds, would you guys be willing to show us how to set up something that captures this idea? So if we were able to make something available, say $50,000 in a travel fund, would you guys be able to figure out how we could set that up, how we could deploy it, how we can engage with the folks in this room and the folks who weren't able to? Absolutely. Okay. Yes. Excellent, all right. So I think we have our first actionable idea. I think that's fabulous. So I will be emailing with both of you guys afterwards and literally I don't know anything other than the conversations we've had. We've been able to identify a small amount of money as a pilot and then would love to sort of try this out and would love to sort of look for you guys to harvest the collective wisdom in this room. Absolutely. To sort of do that. Yes. Excellent, fantastic. And just so you know, there is one person who's interested in creating a Mississippi River cohort of grantees. So if you guys need someone to talk to about a regional idea, Sarah Hernandez, do you want to say a word about it or do you want to remain? Hold on for one sec, let's just get it, Mike. Hello, I'm Sarah Hernandez with the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis. So the river starts in Minnesota and of course, as you know, it goes through the middle of the country down to New Orleans. And after being involved in a number of funder affinity groups and having the opportunity to visit Memphis and New Orleans and meeting all the great creative placemaking individuals and organizations along the river cities, I was just overwhelmed by their creativity and their work and I thought how fabulous would it be if these creative placemakers could connect and share their ideas and experience each other's cities in ways that can only happen in person. And so just thinking about how we can make those connections and how we can bring people like Eric Robinson in Memphis up to Minneapolis to connect with people like Andy from NAFTI and other creative placemakers in Minneapolis. So this whole idea of sister cities and connectivity, perhaps along a geographical entity like the Mississippi River is something to think about. How many people are... I hear a river cruise. I hear a river cruise, that'd be great, our place. Let's get a boat. Right, we'll fund it through Gambley. How many people are Mississippi River adjacent? Okay, excellent. How many people are just river adjacent, period? Any river, anybody of... Any river. Everybody. It's just interesting to think about common land features and how that feeds into how we think of plates, how we think of home and communities and how it connects to that, yeah. Oh yeah, please. So I work in the community development portion of the McKnight Foundation. Our arts program is also representative here. So part of our thinking is around economic development, regional development. And so development along the rivers and how rivers have influenced the development of cities are things that we think about. So that's the lens that I bring to this work. And I won't say that Sarah is one of those people who didn't wanna talk to me. She was very happy to talk to me, but she was not sort of involved in this work. She knew it as a nice thing that some of her colleagues did. And I think you said to me this morning that you're going back a sort of advocate to incorporate more of this thinking into work. So anyway, we've got a convert. Hallelujah. Holly, did we have something? Oh great. So one of the things that I wanted to say is that there's lots of great energy in this room and that the art place grantees occupy obviously a special place within the whole constellation of creative place making. However, I'd like to take us back also to the very first day and the notion of the commons and looking for ways to expand the conversation, whether it be the pairing or the toolkit or all the things that have been talked about beyond the folks who are art place grantees or our town grantees or any other grantees to other folks who may be doing this work in more or less formal ways around the country. Because I think that level of synergy is what's going to build a movement, not just the 40 or 50 grantees here or in other cohorts, but as you start to link with other organizations around the country that are also doing the work in different ways and unique ways. And in similar ways. So I would encourage you to push your envelope beyond the in group to widen who's in the in group to include other folks who are doing the work around the country. Richard and Angela, you guys caught that? I was gonna just say that really syncs up with the idea of delegate that came up earlier. I mean delegate implies that there's some representation of something bigger in a sense. And I think that's a useful concept. And let me just add. So one of the many hats that I wear is actually working with the recovery community, addiction recovery, people recovery. Did you say which community you're working in? I'm from Tucson, Arizona. Not a grantee, but it was a reviewer a couple of years ago. So the Feds had this pilot initiative for like 15 years. So it was a little bit longer than I call the Recovery Community Services Program. Long story short, the peer-to-peer recovery support services organized themselves into an association of recovery community organizations because those RCSP grantees were in a very privileged position, realized that. But they wanted to make sure they were able to seed peer-to-peer recovery support and RCOs throughout the country. And so they realized they needed to reach outside the 50-some grantees that had been granted over those 15 years to try and ensure that every community had access to these tools and resources. And that's why they organized in the way they did outside of the grant program, the pilot program, to make sure that they were sharing information resources and what they learned in their three-to-five-year grants. So I would just encourage that among this group as well. And then would you pass them? I think Laura wanted to get in. Hi, I'm Laura Zabel from Springboard. To that end, I just wanted to sort of put in a little plug. Springboard, some of you in this room have been really involved in this and have helped a lot. But Springboard's been working on a platform to share stories and toolkits and resources of our programs, but also of other people's programs to try and create that exchange between communities, between practitioners, and for us, most importantly, between artists. And we're gonna launch a little beta thing of that next week, and I would love input and help. And I feel like it's at this very early and very flexible stage where it can be what we want it to be and what feels useful and practical to the people in this room and the people that you work with in your own communities. So if I haven't already, I'll be reaching out to all of you about that. Excellent, excellent. Thanks, hi, Cindy Ornstein, Mesa Arts Center and Mesa Department of Arts and Culture. I have two things I wanted to say. The first one is on the area of networking and connectivity. Something happened quite naturally the other day, a conversation that Tracy and I had after her talk about what's happening in Ajo. She mentioned the desire to attract young people. And I was thinking about the fact that separate from our project, our art place project, we are also working on an art space project and we are very excited about what she's doing in Ajo. So we talked about a creative exchange where only two hours apart. The idea of taking one week when I bring, our project involves a lot of young people that are only two hours from her and maybe have never been to Ajo. So bringing a group of young people and artists from the Phoenix area down to spend some time seeing what she's doing and getting excited about it and then having a different week when we bring up artists from her community that enable, that can see what we're doing. I mean, we would learn about their live work project since we're planning one and a lot of young people would be turned on to what they're doing in Ajo. And I think that kind of pairing that's very, very much built around need in your community would be very cool where if we had, as part of this exchange idea if we could list things we desire that someone in another project can recognize as something they can bring to the table so that we're very strategic about these partnerings. I think that could be very cool as well as perhaps having the money for some creative exchanges would be amazing. I have a funder in mind for ours but that's something that could be very helpful. The other thing I wanted to comment on was this question of field versus movement and I've been thinking about it a lot. And I think somebody said, but a movement gets someplace and then is over. But that's not really true. A movement, I just recently completed after many years going back to school and getting my master's. I did my thesis on 20th century protest songs. So I spent a lot of time looking at movements. And a movement tries to change a norm. And I think that's what we're doing. And when I think about a field, one of the things that makes me anxious is I think about some of our stakeholder groups who are really excited about the work we're doing in Mesa and want to be part of it. And if I were to think of it in terms of a field, they would feel excluded from that. They would feel that that was for the professionals, the administrators, the people who were staff. When I think about a movement, I can see how well they fit into and can get really passionate about being part of a movement. And I think we're in a time when there aren't enough movements and has someone who's been immersed in studying movements for the last five years doing my thesis. I want to say that we need a movement and we need this movement. We need a movement that brings together the people who want to change the way we build community. And the arts have a unique power to do that. And I think that there's something very important about thinking about what we're doing as a movement. But I want to also dispel the idea that a movement lacks rigor. I mean, that it has to lack this learning and this strategic focus and this sharing that we're talking about. The civil rights movement would never have been what it was if the Highlander Folk School wasn't there teaching a lot of people about how to use songs like We Shall Overcome and make it a singing movement that had power. I mean, there is a lot of rigor in the way people who form movements make them successful. And I want to just put my vote in for a movement here. So I think we've got someone on deck here and then there's someone over there. And just before we go, I think words are incredibly important. I've spent most of my career involved with words in one way or another. I think this is a really important conversation to have. I think what I have heard is although we don't necessarily yet have consensus on what the right word is, I think there are some aspects of it that we all agree on, which is that we're a community of folks who has something in common, a way of working and thinking. We want to be a community that's open. We want to be open to different kinds of ways of working, different ideas, different knowledges. We do want something around which to organize ourselves. So we want to be able to say that we are creative place makers or something so that people know whether or not to show up to the meeting. Do you know what I mean? Everyone in the world shouldn't show up because there'd be too many people for the ballroom at the Omni. So we need something around which to organize ourselves. If there are other thoughts about those aspect things, I think it'd be useful, those attributes, I think it'd be useful to get on the table. And then in terms of the words we use, whether it's a field, whether it's a movement, whether it's a commons. I think it's Marcus here. Marcus was talking about a community of practice and maybe there's something around the community that might be a useful word or something like that. I'd love to sort of pick that up. So maybe on Facebook, let's just capture what is the framework we should use to organize ourselves or something in that area to do that. So I just think that's important. So let's go here and then, yeah, let's go here and then. Oh, well then we've got to go Damon after you. Hi, I'm Andy Hussness from the Native American Community Development Institute in Minneapolis and I've been thinking a lot about our place in this kind of new direction and how we're thinking about these words and movement field and building. And I really want to echo the comments about expanding the people who are in this room and how we can use this gathering as a platform to kind of accomplish some of the other goals. So I really started to think about what some of the other models were and I've been to the Rail Evolution Conference a number of times and I think that's a really interesting approach where they've brought together really diverse skill sets and I don't know if people are familiar with that conference but it's tagline is something like building livable communities with transit and I think a lot of what we're doing is building livable communities through creative place making or whatever term we're using and that conference has been going on for 20 some years and really bringing people together. So if we could start to create a national gathering where these ideas start to come together and we can still draw from different skill sets but use the opportunity of coming together to create that learning experience and the other great thing about the Rail Evolution is it's really interested in those tours and getting out into the field in those communities where the conference happens so it's very grounded in place. That it's not a perfect model but I think it's something we could learn from and they're really starting to transition from conference into movement themselves so interesting synergy I think between the two. Which is funny for Rail. Yeah. Right, movement. Yeah. Just as a quick straw poll how many people have been to the Rail Evolution conference? So we do have some people I see Eric in the back. Yeah, so we have Jason, great. So we do have delegates to and from Rail Evolution which I think is great. So I think there's something to capture around making creative place makers present in already established gatherings as well as what are the gatherings that we need to establish for ourselves that are sites for the sort of interdisciplinary work. I think that identifying the overlap, right? Oh yeah. If there's the idea of meeting year to year a lot of times what I've seen is you have conferences that happen every year and people go away revved up about a theme and then it kind of dissipates and then the next year they come back and they get revved up about another theme and it kind of dissipates. It would be really interesting to figure out how to track progress within this community and I don't mean in a hard quantitative way necessarily but just to be able to check in and say the project that I was working on two years ago here's what it looks like now. That kind of progression where you're looking at indications of moving in the right direction and building the space for it within this community. So I know we've got a lot of hands but I saw Damon in the back and at this point Damon gets to do whatever he wants. So let's give the gentleman a microphone. Peace family, how you all doing this morning? Good morning. Good to see you all up bright and early. First and foremost I just want to say happy birthday to Carol Coletta. Coletta. Sister who was the art place ED last year, her birthday today is a happy birthday wherever you are in the world. She's on Facebook so you can all go to Facebook. Is she on Facebook? So please quote that I said happy birthday today. I did first thing this morning. For sure you have to hit Facebook. So I'm really grateful to be a part of the conversation right now and there's so many rich ideas coming up. I wish I could have heard more context from yesterday and Monday but just around some language I think around like field or movement. I think art place in and of itself is a lifestyle brand. It's bigger than just a movement. It's bigger than just a field. It's something that's embedded in community because community lives this every day. Like it's a part of their everyday interactions with how they engage with space, with how they engage with people in space. So I think building this concept of community engagement on a person-to-person level, community leadership on a person-to-person level and then having the organizational piece in the mix. So there's like organizational engagement in the community, organizational leadership and then this financial piece that's engaged in the community and I'll give you an example. Esperanza has been really, really blessed this past year to work with so many institutions in LA like the Music Center for example. They had, they rolled out a project, Active Arts to do things in the community but they didn't necessarily have relationships in the community. So they leveraged their relationships with different organizations but what we found out that community members didn't like that type of approach because it was more so outside looking again, we're gonna bring you what we think is a good idea and the community didn't respond as such. They were more excited about the process because every single day they live this process in this conversation. So I think getting more embedded in the lifestyle, the culture of what it means to activate space in time is bigger than just a movement or a field. And I love the idea of collaboration, like figuring out mechanisms that we can all stay in touch with one another, share ideas, share inspiration, share theories, but also sharing our best practices is something that's key. I think that's all I got for right now, cool. I think that's great. It's a lifestyle brand. And I think, and I could even suggest we might wanna even push it one tick further, which is I'm of an age where I grew up being told that I had a lifestyle and my lived experience was that I had a life. So it may even be beyond a lifestyle brand. It may be our life. Totally. I mean, look at hip hop, for example. You know, it's not just a movement. This is something that has embedded globally and it's embedded from corporate America all the way down to the person in their mom's garage making music, you know what I mean? So it became something that our culture has imparted or embedded in their life every day practice. So our place getting to the lifestyle. Excellent. Does someone have a mic? Polly is pointing. First, I just second the comments made about movement. I think those are great. I think one of the other things that is characteristic of a movement is that a lot of stuff may happen organically and on its own. And I think one of the things that would be really helpful would be to continue to identify folks that aren't grantees that are doing this, even if they're not calling this kind of work, create a place making and figuring out how to connect them to what we're doing so we can both learn from them and communicate with them. I think that idea of are also going to the entities that are out there doing community building in different ways, whether it's the big community, community development corporations, American Planning Association, Urban Land Institute, these entities that have gatherings and making sure that there's a creative place making conversation there. And that's also one of the ways where we'll find out, oh, somebody over here has been doing this, they're not calling it that, but they're interested and there's a connection and then they become a part of the community. And I think one of the other reasons that connecting to some of those entities like the CDCs or nonprofit housing entities is important is because sustainability, you know, we go and we get a grant from you guys, but then how do we find the institutional partners to have the sustainability and support to keep going? And I think one other point related to that is because to be able to go back to former art place grantees and have at least some of them, you know, coming back three years, five years, being part of a conversation, so you get some sense of the continuity of issues and a little bit of historical memory about these conversations as well. So I heard two ideas in that. One was a sort of amen to the real evolution idea about sort of infiltrating other conferences. And then the second idea was figuring out who doesn't yet have delegates in the room, who are the people who aren't represented in the room who need to be. So let's capture that second one about sort of how do we identify the people who need to be represented in the conversation because they're doing the work or because they're from a network of institutions or something like that. Was it Julia? Great. And then we'll come right here to Michael. Thank you. Julia Taylor from Milwaukee. I just wanted to build on the stream of thought because I saw the impact that the Bloomberg Awards had on our mayor and the way he looked at community engagement. And I think the ability to bring people with us who could be influential and creative. Just so folks can follow along, will you just say a word about what that is in case folks don't know what the Bloomberg Awards were? Sure. There was an award put out for the top five cities to come up with ideas that could be transformative for the city and our mayor actually used a whole pitch and challenge approach to the community to bring the idea forward and then to continue to inform it. And even though we didn't win the challenge, that project's moving forward in our community and it's really changed the way he looks at this whole engagement component. And I think, you know, I'd love to bring our mayor, Tom Barrett, to an event like this. Or if we thought about people that we need to have influenced by the creative place making movement in our communities that could help us carry the work forward, to have them be a part of this type of gathering, I think could be transformative in many ways. And I think also to follow up on your idea about going out to the other groups, you think about the National League of Cities or the US Conference of Mayors, be great to have some symposiums there and create a place making and start to call out some of those civic leaders that are moving this whole idea forward. Excellent. So I heard, I think three things in that. I heard an amen to the idea of continuing to stay in touch and continuing to see former grantees as part of the community. I heard an amen to the idea of reaching out to folks who either became finalists but didn't become grantees or even those who didn't even become finalists because there's a lot of great work happening in that project, in those projects as well. And I heard an amen to making sure we get new people into the room. But there was also building champions. I think, right? So the whole idea of getting elected officials and other gatekeepers in a sense. So building champions I think is a new one. So let's capture that. Michael. I really like this conversation around partnerships and travel. I was one of the groups when you said raise your hand if you have a big travel budget. I couldn't raise my hand. So the idea that there could be more resources is wonderful. And I just met Sarah over breakfast and she told me about this raft that went from Minneapolis to New Orleans and this arts group made it. And I thought, well, that's hard. I don't have time to make a raft. And I started thinking about the Macaw tribe on the Washington coast that does this amazing endurance canoe trip to visit other tribes. And if we want to do more connections, maybe there's a central funding there about. Maybe Art Place or McKnight should fund a raft that then anyone can use to take down the Mississippi River and then send it back up and use it again. And there might be, it's good branding for you guys too. So the idea I think is the USS Art Place, right? Excellent. So I think capturing something about, and I think there's both a physical idea there as well as a sort of possibly a virtual idea. So I think raft is in some ways a kind of placeholder, but are there ways that we can physically connect each other, us as a community? And then what are the virtual ways? So I think there's something around that connectivity. So I really like that raft idea. Polly, whoever you're, I can't see who you're standing next to. Okay, so Megan and I were just having a conversation about how many artists are actually here at the convening. So it would be helpful for me just to know visually if they could raise their hand. How many people self-identify as an artist? Cool, because we were thinking more artists should be here, but I don't know how many that is out of the whole group. Yeah, no, so I think that this is an interesting kind of question, because I've heard that, right? Where, why aren't there artists here? Why aren't there artists here? Raise your hands again. Why aren't there artists here? So no, so say more about that. Or anyone, I heard some murmurings. Yeah. So I think just one thing, just there's, in every sort of funding philanthropy conversation I've been to, there's always this sort of failure conversation throughout. I think one big art place failure that I will tell on ourselves is, I don't think we've done a very good job as an organization of identifying all of you guys to each other. I don't think we've sort of introduced you to each other before you got into this room. I don't know that we've shared contact information or whatever the kids do instead of listservs now. What do they do? Snapchat? I don't know, what do we, or what's app or whatever that is? But I think, but that is, and I'm saying, just because this is all about sort of modeling good behavior, how many representatives from Art Place Foundations are in the room? Just raise your hands, my foundation colleagues. So in front of my foundation colleagues, I am saying flat footedly that Art Place has done a lousy job at doing that. And so that's something that we need to learn from and iterate. So it's interesting that folks said, I wasn't aware that there were that many self-identified artists in the room. And I'm not saying that's enough, I'm not saying that's too few, I'm not saying that's too many, I didn't, we didn't help you guys have the information you needed to have to do that. So I think there's something we need to capture around the idea of sort of making sure we all know who's already, before we even get to sort of inviting other people into our community, I think we need to make sure our community knows each other and knows each other by the multiple subject positions. I'm a transit-oriented development project, I'm near a river, I'm led, you know, a project that's led by an artist, whatever else. So this is, I think, a failure that I think we need to address on that. So I've lost track, I'm relying on the mics. Polly's pointing, so let's go to Polly and then, oh, and then, sorry, I've been ignoring HouseWrite. My name's Bob Barza, I'm a Desto Art Museum at Desto, California, and I have to say being here is gonna change the way that I write my blog every month, because I never had an audience before, and whether or not you read my blog, I'm now gonna be writing it as if you will be reading the blog. And I have read some of your blogs, one or two here and there from month to month, but there are some that I'm gonna make a point because I've met you and I'm excited about what you're doing and I'm gonna read your blog. And as I travel around mostly Western United States for other reasons to see family or friends, I'm gonna look up to see if there's an art place, grantee anywhere near where I'm gonna be traveling, and you might hear from me because I might wanna go out for coffee with you to hear how you're doing and what you're doing, and whether or not we get money to travel to a sister city, if I'm in your city, I'm gonna come to your play or go to your art center or whatever it is that you're doing and I'm gonna look for that. And we have- And you're also gonna welcome people to Modesto. Oh my gosh, yes, that's on my list. Thank you. And if you come anywhere near Modesto, California, you're very, very welcome to look me up and I'll have more than coffee with you. I'll give you a tour of the entire city. And then we have one, Modesto has had two projects. Jessica had the Building Imagination Center and we didn't wait for our art place to put us together. We have been very, very much involved. We have partnered with each other and she's been much involved in our project and we have been much involved with her project. So we just, the sister city thing could be more than just getting together to meet but we can actually help build each other's projects. I'm seeing nods from our two sister cities leads. All right, so we see a lot of hands we wanna get to everyone. So I know this is incredibly dorky. This is what Marie and I were just whispering about. But in so that we sort of get to everyone, would you guys hate us if we suggested that we sort of set up three lines so that we can get to everyone in the sort of half hour we have remaining? So if you'd like to- So can we, we'll go to this mic and then if anyone wants to speak, feel free to come either behind Liz or Polly if you would come to the front and come behind Polly. And I know it's awkward and it's awful but we've got about 30 minutes or so left and I wanna hear from as many people as possible. So I just wanna give everyone a chance to speak. So let's start here and then we'll just take one, two, three and keep going that way. Okay, so it's like city council kind of model. Right, this has now become part of the wreck. I get to be in the corner. So you know, this is, you know, it's so crazy. So I was just gonna, an observation that's interesting is I do this socially engaged art stuff. We have this conference called the Creative Time Summit with artists that are really engaged in community from around the world. And there's a whole scene of it I would say but what's weird to me that I just gotta get my finger in is a lot of them aren't here but I'm not saying it's bad news. It's super interesting because I don't know a lot of you but I go to a lot of art stuff with, you know, amazing practice from artists that are doing stuff in this kind of vernacular I would say. So that is to say the community can get bigger which is good news but also I'm so perplexed ethnographically of our own field about the gap. You know, how is that happening because like some of the most sick work in the world is happening in this field and they're not in this room and I know also from having conversations with these folks there's a lot of frustration that like Rick Lowe, he's like how am I not getting an art place grant? This is insane. So there's a really easy answer to this which I'll tell only because Rick and I were just emailing. Yeah, okay. The big driver of that is the fact that he didn't apply. Ha! So now I told that on a funny story. I don't know if Rick, I don't know if Rick is watching and I don't know if his executive director is watching but art place is three years old and particularly in the first year and second year we were figuring out who we were. We were figuring out how to apply. So I did this as a funny thing to get your attention but there's a serious point to be made which is there are folks who applied in the first year and the second year who sort of said, well, forget it. Right, I'm not gonna do it, I'm gonna opt out. So this is a sort of, I wanna say publicly that this is an opportunity to be welcomed back in. Now having said that, I wanna be really serious about the numbers. We received 1,300 letters of intent. We made 97 finalists and we're probably gonna make something around 40 or 50 grants. So the odds aren't great, right? When I was at the National Endowment for the Arts, 50% of the applications we receive get funded. One in two gets funded at the National Endowment for the Arts. 50 out of 1,300 get funded at art place. So it ain't easy but the only way to win it is to be in it. So I just, I wanna make both of those points very seriously. But if I could also just be proactive on this note because I think it's a real opportunity when we're saying about the artists in the room and stuff, you know, maybe there's a space in art place even if they don't get grants that at this convening you could bring in some of these artists that are doing, because it'd be nice to just hear some specific practices at the beginning of the day to get your juices going and to really get in the magic of arts because it really helps, you can see it and feel it. So maybe they don't have to necessarily get a grant but just to build the community with artists I think would help too. Fantastic, all right, let's go to Barnaby. Yes, applaud, applaud, applaud. Just liking on Facebook but in real life. Well, and echo what Nato was saying is it's sort of walking the walk also to have art inform our community here. But there was another idea that came up in the conversation here that when you were mining out of it, I got skipped over, which I thought was really important, which is this idea of infiltrating this idea of creative place making into the existing fora of community building, of associations of planners, foundations and things like that because I think there's an opportunity there that in field building, and I like the idea of movement because it's action and accomplishment, but just getting this movement out there is articulating the goals and giving examples of great practice in those fora because they have existing professional relationships and that was mentioned there. I just wanted to make sure that was considered. Thank you, Barnaby. So I think to build on what Barnaby was saying and Nato, Sherry Dobbin, I'm with Times Square Arts and to bring back this point of artists. So we may identify as an artist, but are we listing ourselves under artist fees, for example, when we put our grant? So I think part of the question about artists at the tables is making sure that the artists and the projects are involved. But when I worked in theater and we held talk back sessions, what's the first question everybody asks actors? How did you learn all those lines? So one of the first questions I'm always asked is, how do you find your artists? So Nato is talking about Creative Time Summit. Creative Capital is a grant making agency that has a lot of artists who are exploring ideas, but we need to start building that sort of sector and that practice also within the arts. And we also need to start connecting to it. And it's another reason why each of us then who identify as artists should be involved in as many other activities with artists networks so that we can start to find those artists and mentor them and build them and also be able to share them. So we might wanna look at a platform or a way in all of our social media that we're also either advertising the opportunities or artists are able to post like bios about themselves or a simple link or something like that. But everybody here, if we're more successful, we're gonna need more artists who work in this way. And we all know that not every artist can go into every situation you need to find the right match. So I just wanna say that individually, you can start to do more networks. Every time I do something for like curate NYC or whatever, I always try and find one artist who works in that way or another sort of platform so that it raises the attention. So if we all do that and then we all find a way that we can start to share our networks, then we'll have better artists call upon. Did you wanna jump in? I think that's a really good idea. And to have examples of the kind of work that artists can do. In my own work, one of the biggest hurdles in trying to infiltrate other systems, if you will, is that there's a really limited understanding of what artists do and the kinds of relationships that they have to place so that they have to people. So certainly getting an expansive notion of how artists contribute and what they do make and how they connect is really important just for the infiltration strategy, if you will. There is a weird branding thing at play. I'm gonna get the numbers wrong so if there's anyone here from USA Artists, I apologize in advance. But there was a project that Holly Sipford did that led to the establishment of that, that's something like 97% of Americans appreciated having art in their lives, 30% appreciated having artists. That was the Urban Institute. Was that the Urban Institute? Okay, sorry, I'm quoting Maria in front of Maria. Holly was involved. So do it correctly, do it correctly. Holly was involved too. Holly was the key player in it. But it was the Urban Institute study on investing and creativity. It was a study of the support structure for US artists and it was that, that there was this high appreciation for what artists make, but there was very little appreciation for the artist as a professional or as a contributor to society. So there was this odd disconnection, right? People didn't understand that people actually created these things that had this great value. And the tagline I think that developed out of that was art comes from artists, which to everyone in this room is sort of duh, but to 60% of Americans was a revelation. Hi, Jody Farrell from the Adrienne Art Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. Whether it's a movement or a field, one thing that I came away with was a long list of books and magazine articles and things that I really wanna read based on what people have talked about. And it became clear to me that there are a lot of great minds who have written about this and researched on this in the past 20 years. And I'd love to see a bookshelf or a recommended reading exchange between people and grantees on what they found particularly insightful or informative, whether it was 20 years ago or yesterday. I know that it is somewhat in the insight section on the website, but something more specific where before Amazon.com creates a bookshelf for it. So just three quick things. Let's capture something around that notion of a bookshelf or a reading list. I forgot to say let's capture something around that idea of self identifying artists as professionals and in a self evident way. And then three, on the to do list for Art Place is I think we need to do a rethink of our website and in some ways make it more useful to the people in this room, but also the people not in this room. And so that in addition to doing the great job of broadcasting out information about all of your projects, we also turn it into a site for conversation and exchange and you shouldn't have to be a grantee to get something out of the website. So we'll be looking for ideas and thoughts about our place's website soon. Anita. Hi, I'm Anita Kintini with Bloomberg Philanthropies, a funder and actually past performer, a past nonprofit arts group organizer. So first of all, I just wanna say I finally understand LA. I've been here, I have family here, but I think last night and the night before I really understood what was behind LA and actually the most wonderful part of what this city is about. So in that regard, I hope that the next time we all meet we either get to a rural area or we meet in a city that is not one of the big cities but one of the other cities that are doing some really important work. So I'd like to put that on the table. Sorry, Jamie, but I hope. No, no, no, I love that. And so here's where we model good behavior. So I need help figuring out how to do that. So of my rural people in the room, are there folks of the capacity and interest in potentially hosting an art place convening? Not paying for, but hosting. Okay, all right. So I think some sort of art place slash creative place making convening in a rural setting is an important idea for us to talk about. The other thing is that as a funder, I just wanna say it has been so inspiring to meet so many of you. I wish I could meet and talk to every single one of you because, and I do read the blog so I should let you know that. But I'd like to say that Jamie, I think you have a big job to get the best possible communications marketing person on staff very, very fast. And I think it's the best job, not the worst job because what great stories you have out there. And I think that's one way we not only tell each other what's going on, but the whole political arena that makes some very important decisions that affect us. And we need to have those voices out there because the stories are what is going to really communicate the breath and wealth of what's going on here. So I just wanna say thank you to all of you because I won't be here for the rest of the day, but I just wanna say this is really a pleasure. I'm so proud that we're a part of this. I know all of our funders feel the same way. So thank you. It's great. So yay. So I think let's capture something around that notion of sort of capturing and disseminating stories in a more strategic way because I think we do a great job of we sort of opened up a fire hose of information with your blog posts. And I think we might wanna move towards a laser model or something. Leslie. Hey Leslie Katz from Governor's Island. A little bit picking up on Anita, but I'm sort of transfixed by this studying protest songs and how that relates to gay marriage and where we should be going. So just, which is what are movements about? They're about changing the public conversation. What is the movement that has had the most incredible impact in my lifetime is the conversation about gay marriage. 15 years ago, my friends were gay activists. They wasn't even on the table. It is now normal, beyond normal, whether or not your state has gay marriage and how did that happen? It became, it changed the public conversation. And I think what we wanna do, where's the public, right? So I don't think a ULI conference changes the conversation. And it's not just about stories. It's about how do you create a public narrative about the work that's happening here, about the work that could be happening and encourage that, because that's how change happens. Politicians listen to the people and when people in their communities, but. Sort of. They do. I work for the mayor of the city of New York and I used to work for the governor as well. And if we had waited for the leaders to say, take this crappy, abandoned island, we went to the people and we made it a creative place and we welcome them. But I think more fundamentally, I learn a lot from watching what happened in gay marriage and how you change a public conversation. And I think we should all be thinking about how do we change the public conversation about the role of culture in every public space, in every aspect of life. And yes, that's a media strategy, but it's also a really embracing political public conversation strategy. So I think, yeah, I think changing the public discourse or changing the public conversation, let's capture that as sort of a placeholder. And then number two, let's get gay married. Hello everybody, my name is Marcus Young with Public Art St. Paul. I think this conference has done a great job in making me feel very connected to you. I see, you know, my Asian brothers and sisters here. I see my gay brothers and sisters here. I see my Minnesotan brothers and sisters here. But again, going back and, yes, in South Dakota, sorry, Culling, North Dakota. And so Fargo. And so, but oddly enough, back to the previous topic, I don't see my artist self reflected back at me. And I've just been thinking and thinking and thank you to Roberta for making me think harder about this. Because it's a little bit like what I learned in college where a friend would come up to me and say, I'm really sad about such and such. And I would say, oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, this is how you gotta, you know. And she said, no, I just need you to listen to me. Okay, so there's something about that. And what I mean, I think what I mean by this is that spending years and years of trying to figure out my own artist's practice and how to think and work like an artist and protecting that space. And then to come into this arena and say, oh, I see, they're asking me to think and work differently, which is a nice challenge. But at the same time, I'm still like protecting my own way that I figured out all these years. So at the same time, I wonder like, okay, so are the community development folks, those brothers and sisters, are they also feeling that? I've protected my way of thinking and working for so long. This is now my opportunity to join a movement. And why I resist the word movement for me personally is that I don't feel a part of that movement right now. I feel a part of the marriage equality movement, but not this movement. But the term communities of practice or community of practice says it's multidisciplinary. So it's not just about community development, but it's also about art. And so maybe I could be part of a community of practice for now as we figure out what the right term is. So I just am curious about artists who don't feel part of this movement or artists who don't feel that they're being asked to translate what they do into another space and way of working. And is there some energy and power in how others who are not artists or don't self-identify as artists say, this is my home, and how can that home or that belonging be just shifted or broadened a little bit more? I think that's great. And so I think there's sort of three things in that. One is that I think we need to make sure the artists who are in the room figuratively feel heard, feel present and sort of are in their artists' self as they're in this room. I think we need to make sure that we're open and welcoming two artists who would like to join this, sort of when Manuel was talking about sort of cultural displacement and only having the signs in Echo Park in English. We need to make sure that artists feel welcome. And then we also I think need to be explicit that not every artist should work this way. So I think the third thing should be that needs to be okay too. It needs to not be that you either need to work this way or you're wrong. So I think all three of those things are really powerful things that I heard in what you just said. So thank you. There's something about stretching and connecting. Yeah. That if there's an environment that's conducive to taking the risk to stretch and connect that that's an important space. That's an important kind of a context to create. Thank you very much for that. Nancy. Hi, I'm Nancy from the Cratsville Art Center. And this all is really exactly what I'm trying to think about how to say. I kind of wanna try and address the question of why people like art but not artists. And I think it's because artists go through a very difficult and kind of often negative process in trying to question things and critically explore before they make that thing. And often the thing isn't liked in the beginning but later there is a time of acceptance where now everybody thinks impressionism is great but at the time nobody liked it. I think that I've been a sponge here. I mean, I'm basically just an artist. This is like one of the first grants I ever wrote but I was compelled to become involved with my project because of the storm that took place and because I saw a need in the community. I like learning everything I'm learning here. This is incredible for me. I mean, I will never go back to being the ignorant person I was. But at the same time I think Art Place could be more selfish about what you could take from artists because it's not only that artists should be recognized as professionals because I think the kind of art that artists make that's innovative and different and truly challenging is often just so exploratory and different. And if Art Place wants to support projects which are truly different and innovative, we might need to think about how can we selfishly bring in people who don't necessarily think of professionalization as a goal. People who want to actually think differently. I mean, it works for Macintosh. Maybe it could work for us. And I think because the world is changing so much, artists really do have something to offer with that different kind of thinking but that's a very different approach than the kind of quantitative and qualitative analysis approach that we've been taking. And I wonder how could we synthesize that? How could we actually bring in the gains from the sort of eccentricity and difference and experimentation that artists know how to do? No, and I think again that's so resonant from what Professor Pasteur was saying about, we need to act as if the other is in the room. Always because we need to make that space so that the other can come in the room, the eccentric, the whatever else. I think that's a really powerful role. In a way, I don't know, Douglas Crimp used to say, as a gay man the thing I least want is tolerance. What I want is just be mad even, just hate me. But I don't want to be simply accepted. And I think to say that there are others and othering I think is something that might be actually more divisive than it needs to be. I think actually we all share a kind of insecurity at a gut level and artists are the ones who can make that public. Art is the place where the inside comes out and it's not always easy or pretty. And maybe that's not what we want to show to the governor or the mayor or the president. But I think it could inform the veracity and the viscerality and the relevance of the projects that we do. Thank you so much, Boston. Good morning. My name is Boston Christopher, I'm from Alaska, Perseverance Theater, I have five quick points. One, this is the second day in a row that Jamie has made me get up before double digits. So if we're playing Parks and Rec, I'm Ron Swanson. Liz won this third at 8.30, in my defense. Two, had a great conversation with a colleague of mine from Alaska about the idea that maybe every project doesn't need to be sustainable and that might be able to open up projects to other art place grantees down the line or thinking about your projects in a different way. Three, my point the other day about professional development, this is really why I'm standing at the microphone, but I think that every art place grant should come automagically with funds for an intern and or a mentee to work alongside the grant recipient. Just a quick question, how many of you guys included that in project budgets when you applied to our place? I see one hand, I see half a hand. I think it should be automatically included and not have to be in the budget that you submit. So how would I pay for it if it's, no, no, but this is a serious thing. No, I think it should be. And this goes back to the Rick Low point. Yeah. If you don't ask, I can't give. No, but I think it should just be part of what you do. That's what I'm saying. It should come with, if you get a grant from art place, you get an additional $25,000 for a mentee. That's automatic. Great. Yeah. For- And everyone wants this, right? 100% of the people in the room want to take on a mentee. No. No. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm not saying I'm right. It's an idea on the mentee. Yeah. No, no, no. No, but I think, the only thing I'm pushing back on is the automatic. Yeah. I think the idea is really important. And again, this is about making people feel welcome and giving people the space to say, if I want to include a mentee, if I want to include an intern, if I want to include a staff person in my project budget, I can. So if we can capture something around that, notion of making that feel welcome in the front. Point four, I just want to say that I thought this venue was very wonderful and that always looking for venues that provide opportunity for outside of conference time networking. And I thought that patio upstairs was perfect day and night. So thank you for that. Whoever did that. And finally, point five, does everyone have the same urge I do to always throw the mic down when you're done? Yeah. I think that's great. My name is Latisha Ivins. I'm from Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. And this conversation has really given me an opportunity to think about how I prosthelitize and I'm somebody, if anybody has encountered me over the course of this conference, I'm kind of pushy. I'm kind of aggressive. Like with the dancing last night, I arrived at nine o'clock and I was like, why isn't there dancing? Get on the dance floor. But so I have to temper myself. And I think with this idea of infiltration, cross-pollination, worthy investments. But I also think that the way that I'm able to shift the minds of other departments and politicians is by just being demonstrative and doing really kick-ass work and having deliverables at the end of the day that are really translatable to what they need, that can inform policy change, that can inform master planning for the long run. And just an example, one project that we just completed, we worked with an artist who fortunately, we hired him because what we were looking to do with him, the way we were hoping to instrumentalize him was very much in keeping with his natural practice, Rostin Wu. And what he delivered among many other things was this book that made a pretty unsexy and cultural asset mapping project that was funded, thank you, NEA, through the first R-town grant, really, really appealing. And now the Department of Regional Planning, Public Works, Parks, they want Rostin at the table. They don't care about me. They want Rostin as like a God to them. Whereas before, this idea of, okay, you're bringing an artist, okay, do that over there. And we'll see what you come up with. But now the conversation has really shifted. And so I think it's important to be careful about what, to Nato's point the other day, was kind of overcompensating and really being listeners and hearing what the needs are and making sure that you're staying strong to your artistic integrity, but also really dovetailing with kind of the larger agenda of your municipality or your community. I think that's great. And in that, I heard your main point and amen to that. I also heard Public Works, which is a theme that I've heard come up. And where's my Public Works colleague? So we have an idea about sort of infiltrating the Public Works National Convention and making sure that these ideas get into it. And where are my Bunnell Art Center Homer colleagues? Are they here? Are they out? Oh, they just ran out because they were terrified, it was been put to them. Anyway, there's some fabulous Public Works projects that are happening up in Homer, Alaska as well. So just in terms of making some connection on that basis, I wanna do that. John. Thanks. John Davis, Director of Lanesboro Art Center, Lanesboro, Minnesota, population 750. Couple comments, one quickly on field movement. I don't think the two necessarily are mutually exclusive. So it's not an either or. I think the speaker yesterday that talked about strategy and Tai Chi with these huge ideas of just being strategic about it. So I mean, I think creative place-making can be a field and there's a kind of an academic vernacular that might go with that. Art Place I think is becoming a movement and an organization. So just comment there. And just before you leave that comment, yesterday in a session you talked about how sometimes you use different people to talk to different audiences and different languages to talk to different audiences. So would you just do a version of that as well? Because I think it's related to this. Yes, I mean, if you're talking with a city councilman, you're gonna have a different language than perhaps talking with a colleague at an arts conference. And I think if we're talking about creative place-making or this kind of urgent work, say at a planning conference or just at a smart growth conference, it's a wonderful opportunity to just learn different languages of how other people are basically talking about the exact same thing, but they're using a different language. So just being strategic about that can really help promote this whole concept on a broader national scale, which is the essence of a movement. So I think there's a lot of overlap. Thank you. Another comment and just hearing stories and getting to meet just a few people from urban projects and urban areas, I think that there are unique strategies and philosophies from small town projects and rural projects that overlap amazingly with urban neighborhood projects and vice versa. Also, there are unique aspects about urban projects that would be really applicable to small towns and vice versa. So from funders in the audience, I think there's a real opportunity for this unique connection between the two and don't forget about that. So for sister cities, maybe not necessarily just like to like. Correct, I think there's opportunity there. Let's see, third. Oh, just as a maybe check-in thing for our place conference or even after this, one of the most amazing exercises was that needs and haves. If organizations before they came here, just what are your four haves and then what are your four needs? And then other people could sort of look at that and then kind of match and say, oh, I've got this, I could help you or it's just a way to connect and maybe even after that, we could do that. I think that's great. Sarah, can we capture something around that formalizing that have a need? Because I was fascinated in reading the Twitter feed that for probably 80% of the needs, someone else was listing them as a have. And that sort of shopping in our own closet and figuring out what is the abundance we already have. Let's make cheese, let's not make rot. And just talking with Nancy about something like frack mining, rural, urban. I mean, we had a great conversation about that and some of the strategies we both used. John, thank you so much. Janet. Yeah, thank you. I'm Janet Kagan, I'm with Art Force in North Carolina. My comments are five and they're a little out of sequence. But for those of us who have been doing this for some time. Hold on, can everyone hear her? Oh no. Try it again. Try it again. Yes, perfect. Is that better? Okay. Closer, closer. Even better. I'm Janet Kagan, I'm with Art Force in North Carolina. For those of us who have been doing this for some time, they're a multitude of organizations that exist at a national level and they're all resources, not that infiltrating them with this agenda is not important. In North Carolina we have something called the Institute for Emerging Issues. They've tackled creativity big time and it's fabulous. What they've been able to do is successfully connect future networks for all the attendees so that they actually live on. The same is true with artists who have an opportunity to register through CAFE. There are other local artist registries that exist for people. So maybe there would be an opportunity for a bibliography, a bookshelf, whatever it is that gets placed, but somehow listing all those existing organizations. The second piece of that I think that would be at least helpful for people like me is that there be better descriptions and this goes into the communications piece of each of the grantees. So it's not just a sentence as to what got funded but maybe it's a paragraph and it lists all the project partners. Because by me knowing that there's somebody else in the CDC working in another community I think that would be very helpful and potentially to track the longitudinal impact of this every year, every project for the next seven years has to come back with a one page, two page white paper of progress, what's happened, where did it go? What are those longer impacts that I think would inform all of us working? I think Sarah, can we just make sure we capture something around doing a better job with capturing descriptions of the projects and the project partners? And this is actually, I would love your thinking on this too Janet. What's fascinating to me and what I'd love to figure out a way to do is if we showed you how people describe their own projects particularly in the LOI or application, there's a wild variation in terms of how good people are doing that. And I don't think people necessarily understand and we haven't done a good job of communicating this that the way you title your project, your one sentence description and your paragraph description are how people know it. When you're reading 1300 LOIs, that's your shot to get it right. So I think there's an exchange, I think Art Place and the grantee community and the applicant community all needs to work together on that because some people, there are projects that are titled like The Big Box which is great but for someone who's reading 1300 is sort of don't know what that is. So anyway, I just think this is a really important thing. Thank you for that. I think that and I am less familiar with some of what's going on but to that end, I think in the future looking at what gets funded and your long-term agenda of picking discrete cities, think about ways potentially that, or at least I'd like to suggest, that you look at programs as much as projects. That there are new initiatives that bring coalitions together and that maybe those are some of the opportunities that also exist for all of us to learn in the future. And two last quick things and then I'll stop. Moving and I credit Greg Esser with some of the discussion we had on a bus last night but the issue of how Art Place is looking more in a policy direction, I think is also important not to lose sight of what is the legislation. I hear all these political terms, I hear delegates, I hear meetings or convenings or conventions. It's all very political. What would be the end game? What would we all want as a piece of legislation that literally ties government agencies together, how money gets dispersed? That might be something worth considering. Policy comes and goes by thinking about long-term legislative impact would be a catalytic force I think for many of us. And the last thing is on this issue of rural and urban, I tend to work in economically distressed areas. I think that a lot of the lessons that smaller communities have are applicable in urban neighborhoods, though not in urban context. And I think that that to me is a slight distinction from what you were suggesting. But we are gonna host in Greensboro in the fall conference which I cordially invite all of you and I'll post it up to the Facebook page. It's called Cross Currents, Art and Agriculture, Powering Rural Economies. And it's three days and we're gonna explore the role of artists, artisans and designers in those initiatives. So thank you. Three quick things. One, let's capture something around policy and legislation, informal policy, formal policy and legislative action. Two, just in terms of the sort of commons, identify yourself, do what you need to do, I invited myself to Janet's conference. So I emailed her last week and said, I just heard about this, I'd really like to come, may I come? So we don't always have to wait to be invited, we can also ask. And then three, it's getting to be 1030. Maria, Sarah and I don't have to go anywhere, I'm eager to hear from everyone. So people online, please do not leave. Anyone who needs to begin excusing themselves to catch your trains, catch your buses, catch your super shuttles, do any of that, please feel free to do that. And I don't want to turn this into a big applause moment and shut everything down. But I just want to, especially once again, thank Liz Crane, especially thank our colleagues from Esperanza and just thank everyone who's played a hand in sort of running this. So we're gonna keep going with this until I've had a chance to hear from everyone who wants to talk to me. But again, really you have permission to get up and leave as you need to and storm out, make it look like you're reacting to somebody's something. Great, I'll try to be very quick. Steven Zaks from Flint Public Art Project. And I just wanted to make a quick pitch for the idea that this is about an experience that is a process of community engagement on the one side and then there's on the other side an engagement of an artist who brings something that is unimaginable to me as an organizer, as an administrator that comes from their unique practice. And I would echo what NATO was talking about in terms of engaging the artist community. There's something I'm constantly trying to bring new artists from the most innovative practices of design, public art, architecture into Flint, Michigan to bring this kind of imaginative impetus that I don't have. But what happens is when you bring those two things together, something magical that transforms places, on the theme of the silo, one of our projects was to do temporary public art installations on six-story concrete silos in a natural spring, a couple of blocks from downtown Flint. Probably no one knew that those existed before we did temporary projects there and that was the point, transforming these unacknowledged places into public places where large numbers of people came and you had a six-story swing with people. If you put a six-story swing up, you swing very far. It's like becoming Superman. So things like that. And so I wanna just make a pitch for the idea that along with a movement or a field, it's also about an uncanny magical experience that happens when you combine really intensive, great community engagement with really imaginative art. So thanks to Art Place for supporting that, which wouldn't have been possible. And I think there's something sort of embedded in that in a lot of the artist's conversations that I don't know the right way to capture the Sarah, so fix this after I say it. But I think there's something around the notion of needing to invest in translators or needing to invest in the liminal figures who can help make those connections, who can help do the code shifting. Someone, I can't remember if it was John or who it was talking about having a permitting issue. And so when I was working in city government, we literally hired someone at the permitting office who spoke art and could sort of say there's a program in New York called Make Music New York which is celebration free outdoor music. I answered a Fetela music on June 21st. And when he showed up to his local police station and said I want to put 100 trombones on the corner, the police officers were like go away, just get out of here. But we were able to hire someone who was literally able to say oh, okay, we want to have a First Amendment congregation that involves non-amplified individuals, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you don't need a permit for that. And it was like okay. And so with this one code switcher, Aaron Friedman now sits down and has a meeting with all of the New York City precincts and does all the permitting for 1300. So I think there's something around that notion of code switching, the person who speaks the magical and the person who speaks the bureaucratic so that those adjacencies can happen. I think that's what we're telling. There's something about code switching and also the glossary development, right? So what are the terms that are beginning to be shared as this community field movement, whatever it is, moves on, what's the language that holds it together in addition to what's the language that allows it to grow? And what's the language we use differently? I don't know if my, I think some of my NEA colleagues might be here. We once had a hysterical meeting with the Office of Management and Budget about performance measures. And at the NEA, we were talking about something very different than they were talking about at OMB. So also what are the words that we use differently? That's funny. Hi, Cindy again, I'll be quick since I did give a couple of comments earlier. One is I think on the area of capturing stories, I think it would be really wonderful for us and maybe with the assistance of the new communications person to capture the stories about the unintended consequences of our work. We all go out with our initial goals and what we think we're gonna do. And I think some of the most amazing things happen with the unintended things that occur. For instance, because we're working with so many art and technology people, I mean really partly as a result of that and those relationships, we have the inaugural Southwest Maker Fest happening in Mesa in a couple of weeks was not part of our art place grant, but it's happening and it was directly related to the work. I think capturing those stories will be part of the ability to engender excitement and people outside our circle. So I think something around unanticipated consequences that needs to attach to both the sort of communication strategy but also the measurement strategy. That's right. I mean I think sort of we've gotta leave room for what we didn't know was gonna happen. Yeah and the second thing is similar to the reading list and the list of conferences but a little more specific would be, I would love to find a way for us to have on the site when it's redeveloped. A place where those of us who are art place grantees can post when we're going to a conference, whether it's an arts conference or community development conference or whatever. We could post it and among ourselves create the opportunity for a gathering, whether it's formal or informal, whether it's coffee or drinks or an actual meeting at the conferences like APEP that allow you to book a room for a cohort. But to create that opportunity to touch base at those different conferences and to bring interested colleagues from whatever conference we're at. So that can be part of our proselytizing but it also can be a way of building our network at places. We're all way to going, we're already paying to travel and we're gonna be there together sharing ideas and getting inspired. So why not use that to ignite some thinking while we're there? I love that and just one thing to sort of make explicit in that, I think as if we're sort of in this sort of commons delegate frame what's also really powerful about that is in some cases if one of us is going others of us might not have to go in a world of limited travel budgets and limited time and limited all of that if I get invited to attend the Rail Evolution Conference if I go to that conference with the responsibility of reporting into the conference from the field, from the movement, from the community as well as take the responsibility for reporting back out there's a way I think we can do more with fewer. So I love that idea. So we could capture something around sort of always be fully in our creative place making delegate subject position which is the worst sentence ever created in the English language. Laurie. Thanks. My name is Laurie. I'm from the Design Studio for Social Intervention in Boston working in Uppam's Corner in Dorchester. And I wanna come back to this conversation about forms and language. And I think as we think about a field or a movement like forms are slippery and they slide in ahead of us and this form is a particular form. So when we think about, oh, we could have done better. We could have identified the artists in the room. I think it's deeper than that because artists wouldn't engage in this form. We're very cloaked, you know? If we were creating this as a set of artists and we looked at how many hands there were it might look very different. So as a design studio supporting artists we would be thinking a lot more about how are we getting together in prototyping stuff? How are we getting our hands on stuff? How am I getting your ideas? How am I thinking about what would Kat and the Hat do? Like that's one of our superhero muses, you know? So like what would they bring? Not just like, oh, I'm an artist, you know? But what would that, how would this look different? And I think we talked some about movement, you know? And how many cloaked organizers are in the room? How many folks would identify as an organizer in their community? How would this space look different? You know, like organizers know a lot about language justice and we heard a lot about how our communities are changing. Like we haven't had any language justice. We haven't had any translation. We haven't even necessarily translated into field speak let alone into Spanish or other languages. So I think there's some things, I was talking this morning with someone thinking about the merchants in this area as LA, downtown LA starts to shift. Like how many merchants are in the room? You know, if you're a merchant like this, we might've had two hours and a bunch of vending booths. We might've had great swag. We might've learned just walking around a convention like what all of us do. Like there's forms that we could learn from that I think would be interesting and more than just saying, oh, I'm an artist or I'm a this or that. So I'd be interested in thinking like, when we convene something that looks like this, what are we leaving out of the room? So not just where we convene, not just who we convene, but how we convene. I think it's the H that's the really important thing that's been missing until now from the conversation. Thank you very much for that. And maybe that's a good segue. I'm Nancy from Esperanto Community Housing. Thank you. And thank you for this convening. This has really been a wonderful opportunity for us. I wanted to go back to something that Boston said earlier, that he had made a suggestion about mentees and interns. I'd like to suggest that Art Place take that very, very seriously in terms of encouraging grantees to think that way, even if they would opt out. Esperanto has been a very fortunate grantee of the Derpy Family Foundation, which is a Los Angeles-based foundation. And one of the things that they did for those of us who were awarded a sabbatical award from that foundation was to provide a professional development pot of funds that you could accept with the responsibility that you use it for staff-originated expressions of need for professional development. You could opt away from it, but the encouragement was there for every sabbatical awardee to really take very seriously the need for every member of the staff to have professional development opportunities. And I think if Art Place, just to honor what Boston suggested, we've, a couple of things that have been mentioned in terms of who's not in the room are youth, except now we have Damon here with us today, but the youth and also community members that if Art Place did include and opt out additional pot of funding so that organizations could be encouraged to think about what they would do with an intern or a mentee, it would regenerate some of these concepts into the next generation and bring other people in the room who aren't with us at this convening. It's important. I know we captured something around the staff intern mentee welcoming in. If we haven't, let's also capture the professional development theme because I know that's one that Boston also has brought up. Thank you. Thank you so much Nancy. Coming right back. Chris Beck with the US Department of Agriculture. Two comments, one very specific to our work at agriculture. My sense, one thing we've learned in the federal practice around placemaking over the last few years is that a lot of the communities that start doing land use planning, transportation integration, placemaking, they also end up doing stuff related to food. You all know that in your communities. And so I think that as you start looking at the practice of creative placemaking that we figure out what that food link is. And so it's not just incidental and ad hoc, but and that's one role that USDA can help with but other agencies as well. So that's one specific comment. The other one has nothing to do with USDA, but so I have a bias having been in government and politics most of my professional life. And I think when I go to sessions like this there's very little talk about our elected officials and our members of Congress and legislatures and sometimes local mayors and things. And I think we might think about how in this practice we are intentional, more intentional and get some help figuring out how to engage the people who are actually going to change the rules, the zoning, the funding for not just arts but creative placemaking. It's a lot of work and some of you are good at it and you know you have to deal with your local people for this and that. Some of us are not good at it. We just don't do it. The foundations that fund Art Place generally stay away from politics and this isn't really about politics. It's about just making sure that people who are gonna make creative placemaking work are informed about the work you're doing. A lot of them just don't know what you're doing really well. And then even when they find out about it what can we do to get them to do something else about it which changes the rules about transportation and land use, whether it's more street diets and integrating arts and all those things but it won't happen on its own. And you are also good social entrepreneurs and your stories are inspiring. They are non-political stories. Your work is essentially non-political and I think that is an advantage you have over other types of work which can engage politicians, elected officials on all sides of the aisle but I think you need help at Art Place, I would hope, would think about how to help you all as a group do that better with your people so that translates to better local, state and federal policy and funding. So I think that's so important. So just to translate it into one of those have-need dyads I think people have a lot of anxiety about what's appropriate ways to engage with government what's legal and all of that and I think what we need is to help people feel more comfortable with that. The rules are really clear and there are people who know them, the Hatch Act and all these other things so that it's absolutely allowable for us to get into the policy arena, it's absolutely allowable for us to get in the legislative arena, the zoning, all of that. So I think we need to add into that policy legislation thing to make sure we're sort of documenting how you do that to capture the ways you do that that are totally appropriate and fine for foundations, for 501c3s, for everyone else. It also underscores champion building, though. Yes, 100%. Champion building in really key places. And did we get champion building in that language, Sarah? If we haven't, let's add it. Thanks so much. Rika. Hi, I'm Rika Wuerl from Sealska Heritage Institute in June, Alaska. I had a, I like the ideas of the talk about movement and there's a lot of talk about bringing artists in but I think especially if we're talking about movement, we should be thinking about not how we're bringing artists in but how we're bringing what's here out to artists. And I have a suggestion is that, you know, I also liked the comment earlier, someone mentioned about it's, there's a lot of strength in lifestyle and branding. And I have a friend who's really kind of playing with the idea of hashtag creative hustle. And, you know, there's a lot of... Hashtag creative hustle. Creative hustle. So there's a lot of people out there that are doing that and they just relate to it. And so they start, you know, hashtagging that on things that they're, you know, working on. Another thing that I've, I'm a entrepreneur myself so I go to a lot of websites that have to do with creative entrepreneurship. And a suggestion that I was gonna make is that I think, you know, a direction that would be really powerful for our place's website is to be a place for sharing kind of resources or articles related to, you know, if we're using hashtag creative placemaking. You know, I go to a website that's 99U and I often share a website, share articles there to my fellow creative... I don't know 99U. What is 99U? It's just like a entrepreneur kind of website, just resources. So, you know, an equivalent for our place would be kind of be like articles about, you know, some articles about, you know, the things that we're doing in the room, but also like articles that say, you know, how do we deal with, you know, 10 suggestions of how to reach out to your city council and influence creative change? Or, you know, tools that I would be able to later email to other people in my office, you know, or other people that I speak to on my social media. So, just something that's, you know, shareable and that way it kind of influences the lifestyle. It gets into the lifestyle that's already out there because I know that for every one of us in here, there's like another 100,000 out there that's doing work that we're doing as well. And I think that's so important. And I think you in particular have some important lessons to share as someone who's fully an artist and as someone who fully sat on a planning commission. Right? So, I mean, you've inhabited some of these multiple subject positions and had to do some of that code switching. So, it's multiple how-tos. Yeah. Yeah, how to take it. Absolutely. Rika, thank you so much. I'm Margaret from the state of Connecticut and I just wanted to speak to the who's not at the table question. Besides space reuse, my other expertise is access. So, I wanted to talk about access challenges when we're taking over old buildings and that everyone makes places and how can we integrate further? The unseen populations, reentry, immigrant populations and everything we do because I really believe that that's some of the strength of this project is who's at the table. And I hope we could develop like a toolkit of problems and solutions. So, it sounds like you're both talking about sort of universal design physical access as well as sort of universal design in terms of the gestalt of a place, in terms of the programming so that people are both physically able to come in and all people are socially welcome, culturally welcome to come in as well. The disabled are the largest minority in the world. The numbers are growing. So, we have to really get ahead of the curb in when we're planning all of our cultural work to welcome these other cultural contributors that people don't consider usually but I think that everybody in this room is kind of on that page. So, I hope on the website we can have a dialogue or a little area where we could talk about how to further that movement. I think that's great. And I have a colleague at the NEA who does a lot of work around accessibility and the thing she said that's always a powerful reminder to me is that any of us can become disabled at any time. That's right. I mean, I can walk outside and get into an accident and lose a leg. And so, it's something that even if we're not currently it's something that each of us has a real personal investment in. We were able to leverage an NEA grant and an A grant from the National Artists with Disabilities Center to do more access work in our art place grants because our state was not one of the really great access state but it's going to become one and this grant has enabled us to get further on that path with everything we do. So, thank you. Fabulous. Are you in conversation with Beth Bienvenu at the end there? Yes. Great, excellent. Ha ha. Andrew Kazden, City of LA Department of Cultural Affairs. I wasn't planning on being the last person to speak. It worked out that way. You can do the opposite but welcome to LA. But I would like to thank you for hosting or for holding the conference in Los Angeles. It was truly an honor to have you there. One thing that really excites me is the fact that Art Place is going to be looking into creating a research component to its operations. And there's a thread throughout all of the Art Place grants of community engagement and in fact community organization can become a component. And it would be interesting to me to see what types of best practices various grantees have used successfully to ensure that there is some kind of community consensus that can be reached. Because one area that our department has put a lot of work into is to outreach and to engage not only the stakeholders or the institutions that are involved in projects but those that are disenfranchised that aren't necessarily artists or are community members that don't necessarily become involved in artistic explorations and community development projects. So to look at what types of best practices could be used in both urban and rural communities to bring various constituencies together to really truly create a community consensus that can have a lasting impact would be of great interest to me. I think that's great. Thank you. That's great. It's proactive inclusion. All right. So I think everyone who has wanted to has had a chance to speak. Excellent. Maria, any last thoughts? Any things you want to make sure get in the room? No. I think this has been really rich and we touch not only on the initial overarching themes that were brought up but went deep, really deep in some of them. I think that there were a lot of concrete doable ideas. I'm really eager to hear how this community becomes even more a community of doers as art place goes forward and is this whole idea of a common ground begins to blossom. Well, I think that's great. And I think it's the only the appropriate thing to do is give Liz Crain the last word of the art place 2014 LA conference. So Liz, how do you want to send us all home? That was a lot of logistics. I want to hear the word bus. That was a lot of pressure. I do want to thank Andrew Kasdan and the Department of Cultural Affairs and LA. They were a wonderful help in putting together this conference. And I also want to thank Leanne and Sarah who are over there working in the shadows who are doing wonderful things and been so great. There's been so many amazing people. Obviously Esperanza and Damon and everything that you guys did last night was incredible. We all know that. And the Irvine Foundation for being a part of that was wonderful. Josephine, yay! Yay! And our HowlRound folks, I just want to introduce Vijay here who's been doing all of the wonderful live streaming work. And he, once you look at it later if you decide to watch it all again you'll see just how amazing it's coming out for all of his hard work. And Polly and David and Jamie, I don't know if she's in the room, but they were a great help to us throughout this whole process. And all of the speakers and all of you guys and everybody who led a session or participated or sat at a table were just, again, we're so thankful for all of your input. And we're so excited to start this next iteration of what we're doing with the creative placemaking. I will talk about buses, but I think we can probably...