 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday and thank you for joining us again. My name is Lillian Corral and welcome to Coast to Coast. I'm joined by my colleague Lillian Weinberg. How are you Lillian? How's it going in Miami? It's going well. How are you Lillian? I'm good. We're in Los Angeles just watching our world unfold and seeing a lot of like really interesting stuff happen across our community in particular around questions of I think in particular this week really talking about this question of defunding the police and what does that really look like? I don't know what you're hearing in Miami and how the conversation is going over there. I think that's what's been really important right now is now you know it's moving into action and many cities across the country and so so yes you know definitely a conversation around budgets and and how to think about equity around the budgets whether that's around police and other other areas and and then I also think more broadly I had a few communities interesting enough reach out to me after our last episode with St. Paul to ask what is a chief equity officer? How can we potentially bring that to our to our community especially for some of the small to mid-sized markets that that don't have that so I thought that was really interesting to see you know cities are thinking about this they're really thinking about how do we address systemic racism so that's right yeah and that's great and so Lily why don't you tell our guests who've joined us a little bit about coast to coast and why we talk about these issues every week? Sure sure so for coast to coast we are looking at the future of cities especially for building communities in a time of rapid change that we're experiencing right now we started by doing a deep dive around public space we looked at streets we looked at the public realm and and we're gonna continue to move into relevant topics related to engaged communities such as mobility and technology equity inclusion has been at the heart of what we've been talking about in every single episode last last week we did a deep dive and and lastly we we've made a commitment between you and me and and for our audience that we want them to leave with with actionable tangible ideas that they can bring back to our community that's right and so today our episode is titled place making for justice and it's really was inspired by what you and I saw and our colleagues in our communities program here at night foundation we were engaged in a discussion about what was happening in DC around Black Lives Matter plaza and the the art that was being developed around it on the street and then we were seeing it pop up in cities like Charlotte and Detroit and so we thought well what a better time than now to talk about place making and what does that look like so we have two really great leaders joining us to think through this issue of how communities across the country are responding to the ongoing conversation around race and equity in different ways in public spaces and through cultural and arts as a medium culture and arts as a medium so I'm excited to welcome our first guest who is Taiwo Yahyoba who is this assistant city manager and director of planning design and development for the city of Charlotte and then our second guest today is Sidney James a Detroit based muralist whose work around public art has really focused on centering Black women in communities and in particular Lee thinking about how we position the Black woman in America as the last release among others in society and bringing up that theme so Taiwan Sidney and thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Yeah. Hello. Hi there. How are you? Very good. How are you? How are you both doing today? You know, exhausted like everybody. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of work happening and you both are at the center of it in your cities, which is really exciting for us to talk about. So I want to start by saying so today we really wanted to explore explore the plot, the power of place and how the arts culture creativity can really in a lot of ways drive that broader agenda of change that communities are really are really asking for and mobilizing around like we've never we haven't seen in decades, frankly. So first, it'd be great to just start by some context. And so maybe what I would ask is for both of you to start by sharing a little bit about yourself, but also just telling us what are you seeing in your respective cities? Sydney, you and Detroit, Taiwo, you and Charlotte. So I don't know who wants to start, but it's Sidney Go. Okay. My name is Sidney James. I'm Detroit bread, fine artist slash muralist. I've only been I'm a lifelong artist, but I've been painting murals for about five years now. And one of the first murals I painted was for the murals in the market festival, but it was it stemmed the idea behind it like stemmed from police violence against women as well as men. But so it was a black woman holding protest. I saying that they're literally nothing that that conflict protect black people in this country. So that's kind of that was where I got my art activism. It kind of it was it started like in 2016. Well, nice to meet you, Sydney. My name is Taiwo Jaioba. I'm the planning director for the city of Charlotte, but I'm also assistant city manager. I truly believe that people are the ones who make cities matter. And if people make cities matter, then cities should make people matter. And when there are people in the city who are feeling that they don't matter at all, we should use every available resource like painting murals, you know, just creating an environment spaces for people to be able to be themselves to cities should do that to make sure that every voice matters to the environment and to the discussions of place making and they are safe. Yes, and feel safe in those spaces. That's great. So I'm going to start by asking you both a couple of questions to get the conversation started, but I'm encouraging everyone online watching us to please share their questions in the Q&A. If you're on Facebook, please also note that we're tracking those questions or if you're on Twitter, please use the hashtag night live and we'll answer will be taking up your questions and answering and answering those and addressing them. So we're seeing protests across the nation obviously spread and art has really become public art is really taking hold within those activities. So from your individual perspective, Taiwo from the city, Sydney as an artist. Can you talk first Taiwo about how place can address race and equity in our communities? I mean, you started to kind of talk about it in your intro, but what do you think? What do you from a planning perspective? What is the what is the importance of place really helping cities address race and equity and how can we how can we think about it on a practical level? It's an opportunity to bring people together. So first of all, when I saw what Mayor Bowser did in DC with the Black Lives Matter and Plaza, the planner may just thought, how do we do this in a way in Charlotte and use it as a way to bring artists together, but also make sure that it's an urban main street where usually black and brown people do not come. It's only the corporations that come there because I'm mostly white people. How can we turn this Black Lives Mirror instead of just being political into an inspiration for individuals? So we engaged artists who came in and we paid each artist, you know, a letter of the of the of the world from, you know, be all the way to our paid them $500 of them to use their creativity to express their vision. And so it was a way to bring people together. Occupying that space between place and race is so important. And art occupies a valuable part of that space. So that's what we did. That's great. And I think this question of bringing people together is an important one because the community is engaging in a lot of different ways right now because of the urgency of the moment. But I think, you know, just sort of thinking more long term, maybe I'll just follow this question up with you, Taiwo, like how do we keep that momentum going? Because sometimes places are not engaging or they're not designed to be engaging for people. So can you talk a little bit more about the long term vision that you and the city of Charlotte have been developing to make sure that I mean, is there a vision and I'm assuming and and just just from what I know about you. And so and how do we make sure that we continue to have a place really matter for the people that that circulate that space that live around it that work in it. So all this work from the vision phase to the time it was installed took about five days. Normally it would take months to happen. But you know, it definitely showed that there was momentum that this is not just a moment but a movement right. So the first thing we did right over was to close that section of the street. The artwork itself is permanent until the time happens in the future when we re-surface that street. But one way by which we can actually create these in a permanent ways close that. But can we also close other segments of the street? Maybe not just temporarily but going forward, we're having conversations around that right now. And I would like to also start this annual arts festival muralist painting, you know, streets. Can we do that? And you know, not just around this, but this is really galvanized. You see in that picture you see all those boards on these buildings. Those are different now. The spin off from this is the muralist and artists have gone there started painting on them. And you know, all kinds of beautiful artwork. So division is to expand from what we started into something that could be great. We have about $160,000 in our project for placemaking. And out of that, we dedicated about half of it to artists. We awarded about 18 different grants this past year to artists that they can go and paint different different areas in our city. And we're beginning to see a lot of that. And hopefully I can with this, I can actually increase that amount of money. That's amazing. That's amazing. I'd love to talk a little later more about how you as a city are creating that space for that. Sidney, can you tell us a little bit more about how you see the other side of this equation, which is the art, the artist side. How are artists activating and joining the protest efforts? Talk a little I mean, share with us a little bit about your your 14 day turnaround in Detroit around your own mural and work. But how are you also seeing the rest of artists, whether in Detroit or or in other cities really respond to this moment? Well, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, and Harry Bella Fonte and I'm sure others from the past have always said it's the artist's duty to reflect the times, right? It's our responsibility and our burden to tell our truth. So with my particular project that I took on that I created and completed with the team with the help of the community, it was a big, a very large mural of Malice Green that I wanted to paint. Malice Green was murdered here in Detroit in 1992. After he by the pole at the hands of police, they literally beat this man to death in his own neighborhood. So back then, Benny White, Jr. painted a small mural in Malice Green's community of Malice and Malice was a handsome man. And he kind of resembled what we probably would paint a black Jesus to look like. So in original painting, Benny White Jr. like painted black tears streaming from Malice's eyes. So after George Floyd was murdered, an article came out about the Malice Green case because what was special about his case is Kim worthy actually got a conviction. It wasn't the conviction that we deserve, but it was still a conviction. Whereas we see right now even currently, even getting officers who commit murders arrested is still a is a is a hard feat. So Malice Green for the city of Detroit and really this nation that was a symbol that we won a little bit of justice in these this multitude of injustices. So I read in an article the day after George Floyd got murdered that the original Malice Green mural was destroyed. It was demolished. It was on the party store. And against the community's will, they demolished the painting to like they literally could have preserved his pain. And it put me in motion like I hadn't been doing anything because of COVID because my family has been doing dealing a lot with it and I haven't been inspired. But this was something I felt compelled to do. So I engaged the community by literally just posting a sketch of what I wanted to do. And it's a Malice Green mural, but I painted him as he was a statue, and he's holding a scroll and the scroll contains a lot of names of people who have died at the hands of police. Now, interestingly enough, it's not interesting. It's actually horrible. My initial goal with the scroll was to list every name of people who have died at the hand of injustice in this country since my date of birth July 6 1979. It was an impossible feat because just 2014 2015 is over 1000 names. Like and just think about it. Every is clearly not 1000 headlines. These are names that people most people have forgotten or didn't even know exist. So I took this on I put up a go for me the second day after I put I put the sketch out and I needed to go for me because the wall is just so large is 3500 square feet. And that takes equipment that takes boom lifts, a lot of paint and it took a team. Now, I did not get paid for this mural. I am not taking any of the money. I put up a gold fund me for 10,000 I reached my goal in two and a half hours. I exceeded my goal by 8000 by the following day I shut off donations because I exceeded what I needed. I needed a little bit more than what I asked for. So I was good to have the overages. But everything else that I don't use will be donated to the back of the black youth power power 100 group and those donations directly feed into the legal fees of protesters Detroit resident protesters that were arrested during the protests unjustly. So yeah, that's how involved the community because these names are our names. We are all bounds. And whether you white, black, whatever, like when you see this wall, I painted it beautifully. Yes, but it's extremely oxymoronic. Aesthetically it's gorgeous. You know, and I'm not to my own horn, my team were very hard to get it to look exactly how I wanted it. But at the heart of everything at the heart at its core. It's a very, very ugly piece. It's a very Yeah. Yeah. And so Ty wall from the city perspective, you know, we're constantly hearing I'm hearing these threads about like, you know, the community we've been having these conversations for a long time. We've been saying these they're way too many names to, to list on a wall. Can you talk a little bit about it sounds like you're trying to create concrete ways to support this dialogue, at least through this through this avenue of place making. Can you talk a little bit more about like, what specifically you're doing so that other cities, we get a lot of city practitioners on our on our guests on our audience. And so like, what can they be doing? And then the other thing too is, can you also just share a little bit about like, what are the challenges you face? You know, this is a, this is an ugly and tough conversation is that need just alluded to. And so like, what are the challenges that you face? And how are you addressing them more specifically to some of the things that you're working on? So we've had the same things that you all have had, whether it's in Detroit, or it's in LA, or it's in Miami, or wherever you are things related to equity, policing, systemic racism. Now the knee jerk reaction, in my opinion, is for corporations to say, you know what the way to address this is by promoting a few black people and put them in executive positions management that as far as I'm concerned, that's not enough. That's just like a window dressing. You get really be forceful about this and be deliberate about this, go into these communities and put your money where your mouth is. If you're really truly going to make a difference, I don't want to be hearing that we did this economic analysis and it tells us that there's not enough income on that side of town to support our business, making work, revise the economic model. As government entity, I am committed to taking a good look at our policies that have systemically segregated us in this city. In Charlotte, we're referred to a wedge and refer to a crescent. The wedge is where most white people live. It's also the most affluent place. Also where you have the full service grocery stores, the full service banks is where you have the quickest responses to fire incidents. The crescent on the other hand is where we have a black and brown communities. That's where you have the poorest quality of schools. That's where the people don't take you when you're moving into town deliberately. How can we go into these communities and begin to change the narratives? We're not saying that because of crime, we won't go there to invest. No, let's invest because of crime so that we can affect that. That's my job as planning director. How can we invest in mobility to create equity? How can we make sure that we do things differently? Yes, I'm going to have challenges. I would tell you now that this heart was installed on Tuesday since then I've been fending off a lot of racist emails, phone calls, people wanting to also paint white lives smarter. On the prominent city street, that's not the way we build an equitable city. It's by paying attention to those who have been undervalued, the least among us, we've been to make sure that we also uplift them to a point where we can see we live in a society that's equitable. But also our next budget, we're investing in six corridors, about $24 million. And these six corridors are in our poorest areas. Like I said, the goal is not to do a study, the goal is to have projects. And that involves people like Sydney who can actually help us make these things come alive. So it's not just building sidewalks, but how do they become vibrant places for people to gather and to do life? Great. So I'm going to bring Lily on who we're getting a flood of questions, but it definitely seems like run towards these issues don't stay away from communities and then really invest and do work, do the projects. Thank you all. Lily, what are you hearing on the Q&A? Yeah, no, this is a great conversation. And there's a couple of questions that are trying to get to understand how the arts and cultural can really address some of the very serious systemic racism that we have in our communities. One participant asked, how does this lead to economic justice? How do we take the next step? So it's an important question. Taiwo, you want to start? That's how to take the next step from here. So one of the things that we started to do and I think you can address one of the questions as well with regards to slow down in vehicles. One of the first things we did during COVID was to shut down certain streets to throw traffic. But we not only did that, we also engaged artists to paint the intersections of these streets. So there's a combination of shared streets, protecting pedestrians and bicyclists, but also installing hearts, creating visually aesthetic streets by also slowing down vehicles. And then the next thing is really less bring down, you know, restaurants to around or dining. I'll tell you this, we had a meeting with some of our restaurants yesterday where this mural is a Maccomix and Schmicks. The guy said to us that they had their best Saturday, their best weekend in months since the shutdown. Because we painted Black Lives Matter right at that location. They had their best and they said to me, can we keep this going? If we keep this going, I will bring more of my employees back. That's the power of heart in the public world. Yes it is. It is a power of heart in the public realm. It becomes a gathering place that people can actually combine business and life at the center. So that's what we plan to do going forward from this point. Yeah, because artists, we just want to create, right? We just want to create the space. But the community, especially if it's not ugly, like loves it. Whereas like the people in the communities, they see the art, but developers, they see opportunity. So they have to start seeing opportunity but not pushing out the community. So we need, it's like we need like to come together instead of like developers coming into the spaces where we have created art and then outpricing the citizens that were already residing in those spaces. It's like such a big conversation and it's actually the beginning of a hundred conversations. But I am grateful that we're starting to have them. But also with the city beautification, I really appreciate Tywo because he even pointed out this is our budget. Half of that budget went to pay artists. That's not what, like cities like to give artists stipends. They don't like to pay us for our work. Like honestly, had that been a city project that I did? Like I would have maybe profited a thousand books possibly off of a 35 hundred square foot wall. And that's just, that's not real. That's not artist pricing. That's not anybody's pricing. It takes more to prime that wall than what the city be offering like these community projects. So that's also part of these hundreds of thousands of conversations that need to be had. It's like, you know, properly pay somebody. Art is a job. There are thousands of art jobs. And we deserve it. It's not a hobby. We deserve to be paid because this is our life livelihood. Like we do it because we love it and we're going to do it regardless. However, if you want me to do it for you, you are the pay. And that should be, I don't know, that should just be common sense. But it's not. And Sydney, your point about about artists and getting paid is actually one of the questions that we had and the Q of questions. So important and certainly noted. And I think the bigger picture though is that these murals, the artwork is really bringing people together in our communities. It's bringing conversations. I mean, it's been extraordinary to see the pictures of how community have come together and then the next steps are hopefully around policy. So to that point, Sydney, I'm going to continue this thread a little bit. There's a question around how can we foster a tradition around cultural organizing? How can this become a tradition? Put art back in schools. Put art and music back in schools where you have art field trips. And kids know that art is for them because when you take art out of schools and then you take out these field trips to museums and stuff, now the kids, okay, the target is in this neighborhood. We don't have a target in the city of Detroit. You know what I'm saying? We don't have majors just like he was pointing out like, oh no, the full service grocery stores there over here in these areas. It's the same thing in Detroit. Detroit is 137 square miles and we don't have even a target. You know what I mean? So when you take all of these things out of the city and you don't have things in the city or in the schools, you really believe, subconsciously, oh, this don't belong to me. It's for others. For some reason, I'm not deserving of this. So at the basic answer to that question is literally put art back in schools. Like, because the seed has to be planted early and that's how you grow the seed. That's how you flourish. That's how you have a harvest. Like, because you see it's not just work that looks like work. Work doesn't always have to look like work. You know what I mean? Like, and I think like it starts with education and then education also educates adults too. Like it doesn't just stop when you're at school. You get educated every day and I think that's also the importance of this particular mural that I just did because it's one thing for you to see this post, this post, this post, this headline. They're still just singular. It's a whole other thing if you literally look at this big, this big old wall, I was about to say this, and you see all of these names and you're overwhelmed by all of these names. And don't google one because if you google one, you're going to really find out the evil that's been done to our people. Most of the names, like on one side of the wall, most of the victims were under 18. Wow. Wow. For our audience members, we linked for more information on a murals and so please read more. It's really, really important. And thanks for highlighting the piece about the education for the arts. I'm going to pivot a little bit because we are running out of time. This deposed by very fast. You did. But Taiwo, we have a series of questions around how do you do this? How does a city, how do you get buy-in from the city to do this? One, and then the second piece is a component around businesses. You know, you did this in a business corridor and how do you also get buy-in from businesses? So I'll say leadership, very critical. It's also very important that you're not afraid. I'm a black dude who happens to be a planning director and as assistant city manager. It's easy for me to say I will see here I won't do anything so that I'm not labeled as being just a black guy trying to champion the cross of my people. That's not the point. The point is that I am in this position to lead what's best for our city. How that happens is by listening to the community, by listening to council members. A lot of ideas are not new. It just takes boldness to implement them. And so I've heard what the council members have been saying about triumph of the longest time. That's the corridor where we have museum. We have an arts gallery and so it just makes sense to do something along that corridor. But it also about not being you know afraid. And I think that that's very important because you have a vision and you've got to be willing to go all out for it. We met with the businesses. We met with them now three times, the most recent day yesterday. And we have another meeting coming next week with businesses, with fire department, police, if we're talking about closure of this corridor, how does it impact you? We're doing our own analysis. And so you've got to do all these things. So while you're doing your own internal work with your executive leadership, you've got to make sure that you're carrying your council along. And also this place making ground was approved by council a year ago. We're coming to the end of our fiscal year. We've got leftover budget and we just less used that. But we've got another morning coming from July. And so I know a lot of people are listening to me and you know artists welcome to submit and we definitely welcome you to do great work in our city. So it's really about collectivity and collaboration. Fantastic. You have a vision to continue this. And Charlotte, that's really exciting and important. There's a lot more questions, but unfortunately we can't get to them. And but I want to, yes, hey Lillian, Lillian will close us out. Yeah, it's a fabulous conversation and 30 minutes goes by fast. We do have a ton of questions left in the queue. But I think what we'll do is let's just turn it over to you for like one last big reflection. I mean, Taiwo, you just talked about leadership. So maybe Sydney, you can kick us off with like what's the one thing you would tell to folks in the audience who are a mix of, it sounds like a mix of artists, city practitioners, planners, futurists. What's the one thing to keep this kind of work alive and going that you think is critical? We can't forget like right now we're living in an interesting time because for once since 1619, the world has space and time because of COVID. So the world has time to look and actually see what's been going on. So that's why we have all this attention. We can't forget though. As soon as we get our, you know, our callbacks to go to work or go back to school or to these places, we can't forget. Like we can't, somehow we have to keep this momentum going and the conversation going. And we just have to individually do like we have to hold people accountable. Our friends, our colleagues, strangers, we have to hold the world accountable. We have to do better because this is the end. Like we're at our wits end. I don't know if we don't start getting results, what it would look like. Yeah. And I'll have to, don't get comfortable. Don't get comfortable. We need to get out of, you know, comfortable zone and do something. Open your eyes. Be involved in creative place making. This isn't just about planning and rules and regulations with creating vibrant and thriving communities. And artists are major, major part of that. Part of that. That's amazing. And that's at the heart of a lot of night's work in communities. So thank you both for joining us. I just want to let the audience know this is a really amazing conversation that we just started. Our colleagues in the Arts Department are actually doing another show similar in topic on the 26th of June. So if you're getting our emails, please look out for arts resilience and addressing systemic change on the 26th, led by our colleague Priya Sarkar. And thank you both again next week. I think we're going to delve a little bit into how various, how we do a little bit of cultural bridging, how various communities, minority groups really help each other during these times and support each other. And what are the challenges there? Because it's sometimes not as clear cut. Thank you all for joining us, and we will see you next Tuesday. Bye. Bye.