Myra Kraft Open Classroom: 4/7/2021 | Cultivating Creativity and Community with the Arts

Featuring:

- Deborah Cullinan, Chief Executive Officer, Yerba Buena Arts Center
- Daniel Hernandez, Founder, PROYECTO
- Jamie Blosser, Executive Director, Santa Fe Art Institute
- Kara Elliot-Ortega, Chief of Arts and Culture, City of Boston
- Imari Paris Jeffries, King Boston

Artists and arts organizations have long served as cultural anchors, community builders, and catalysts for civic change. Yerba Buena Arts Center CEO Deborah Cullinan, Santa Fe Art Institute Executive Director Jamie Blosser, and PROYECTO real estate development consultant Daniel Hernandez will discuss the role of cultural organizations in cities and the impact of large-scale arts-based urban development including Yerba Buena Gardens (1999 Gold Medalist)—the redevelopment of 87-acres in downtown San Francisco into a cultural hub hosting museums, public gardens, a convention center and hotel, and mixed-income housing. They and Boston Chief of Arts and Culture Kara Elliott Ortega and King Boston’s Imari Paris Jeffries will consider how insight from the development and evolution of these places, cultural planning efforts like BostonCreates, and leadership and experience of arts and cultural organizations are informing and driving current initiatives like Midtown Santa Fe and King Boston.

Learning Objectives:

- Understand and describe how investments in arts and culture can address community welfare and affect economic, environmental, and social change.
- Discuss the value of integrating art and collaborative partnerships with cultural organizations into design, planning, and development processes and projects.
- Identify and describe examples of arts-based development initiatives, programs, and projects that foster community engagement and strengthen communities.
- Discuss the role of the arts in promoting creativity, innovation and civic pride in cities.

Semester Synopsis:

Design is everywhere.

It has become clear that the events of 2020 will have deep and lasting consequences for every aspect of society including the physical environments we inhabit—our homes, our neighborhoods, and our cities. What can we learn from previous experience that can be applied to current challenges and future efforts in Boston and other cities and towns in America?

Join us as we go on the road with the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence with some of America’s best thinkers on urban design to visit, discuss, and learn from award-winning places and people engaged in innovative urban design. We’ll hear from leading voices in architecture and urban design, planning and development, education and community engagement, and public policy and civic leadership.

Over the course of this 12-week lecture series, we’ll explore how people and cities across The United States are tackling tough challenges like: expanding affordable housing, addressing the impacts of climate change, fostering entrepreneurship and innovation, fighting socioeconomic disparity, improving public education, investing in public spaces, leveraging arts and culture, and providing access to healthy food. We’ll consider how we can apply these ideas as we plan for the future in Boston and other cities.

Music: Unity by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4564-unity
License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

• Category

  Non-profits & Activism