Programming Series
Creative collaborations tackling the vital issues of our time
Deepen your understanding of the innovative new work being done in our field. We invite you to connect with FORWARD, our fresh digital publication and conversation series highlighting how artists are partnering with cities, institutions and communities to courageously tackle the vital issues of our time, from public health to the fate of our climate.
Designed for anyone who wants to keep their pulse on work happening at the intersection of arts, culture, place and equity, this conversation series began with the vision of taking expertise off the pages of our legacy print magazine Public Art Review and bringing it to you direct from leading practitioners and artists. Now, we invite you to explore creative civic challenge solutions through conversations with cross-sector leaders.
Join us for a series of conversations.
Scroll down to preview upcoming conversations and refresh yourself on our previous discussions.
UPCOMING
PREVIOUS FORWARD SERIES EVENTS
Public Art In Context
Public Art Now guest curator Ebony Dumas sits down with artists Ashley Teamer and Monique Verdin to discuss their respective artworks, Tambourine Cypress and Nanih Bvlbancha, and the neighborhood, historical, and urban design context, both in Public Art Now.
Join us to explore how these public artists consider context in their work and create spaces alongside community.
This panel, hosted by Forecast, features the following speakers:
- Ashley Teamer‘s collages explore the relationships between the body, nature, space, and time. These themes are represented by original snapshots and found materials that are sewn and glued together. As a visual artist and DJ, she uses sound to creatively intervene with indoor and outdoor architecture, revealing the malleability of our built environment. Teamer received her MFA from Yale University in 2022. She has had solo exhibitions at Siena Heights University, Adrian, MI and 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago, IL. Teamer’s work has also been included in group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and Prospect 6 the future is present, the harbinger is home in New Orleans, LA. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ACRE, and Ox-Bow School of Art.
- Monique Verdin is an art maker, a wild gardener, story keeper, citizen of the Houma Nation and steward of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange. Monique co-stewards Bvlbancha Liberation Radio, an urban earthwork Nanih Bvlbancha, and is a SwampNet collaborator – experimenting with autonomous and alternative communications that operate as both archives and emergency channels for community connections.
- Moderated by Ebony Dumas, FORWARD Issue 8 Public Art Now guest curator and Director of Planning + Engagement at Forecast Public Art. Ebony is an urban and regional planner who enjoys building consensus among stakeholders for local and national projects in economic development, creative placemaking/keeping, and neighborhood planning. She has led, managed, and supported local and national projects in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and is interested in creative and public spaces as they intersect with inclusive economic development. Ebony directs Forecast’s planning and engagement portfolio, manages national teams of consultants and artists, and ensures that cross-sector projects align with Forecast’s mission.
This is part of our conversation series for our digital publication, FORWARD. Issue #8 focuses on civic health and engagement.
Forecast is a nonprofit organization and offers this program free of cost, but donations are appreciated.
Thursday, September 25, 2025
How Art & Culture Builds Civic Health
A conversation exploring how art and culture are central tools advancing civic health in local communities around the country.
Watch and leave inspired by how initiatives from Philadelphia to rural Kentucky to Arkansas can be models for cross-sector practice to create a healthy democracy in your community.
This panel, hosted by Forecast, features the following speakers:
- Lisa Hicks Gilbert, mayor, historian, community builder. Born and raised in Elaine, Arkansas, Lisa serves as the volunteer program manager at the Lee Street Community Center and as the founder and managing director of Descendants of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 (DOEM1919)—an organization dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of the 1919 Elaine Massacre.
On December 6, 2022, Lisa made history in a landmark runoff election by defeating the incumbent to become the first Black and first elected female Mayor of Elaine. Sworn in on January 1, 2023, she began her four-year term with a bold vision: to confront the economic, health, food, and educational disparities that have burdened her community for generations. Lisa holds an Associate’s Degree in Paralegal Technology, providing her with a strong foundation in legal research, documentation, and advocacy—skills she applies daily in her work as Mayor and community restoration.
Her mission is clear—to help build a thriving Elaine for all residents. She leads with a spirit of resilience rooted in community, believing that leadership is not measured by title alone, but by service, sacrifice, and the courage to uplift others—especially in places where silence and struggle have long endured.
- Phoebe Bachman, (she/they), a South Philadelphia–based artist, facilitator, and curator, whose interdisciplinary practice is grounded in collaboration and social justice. Their work amplifies resistance movements, focusing on economic and criminal justice through methodologies such as public art installations, popular education, and community mapping. Key projects include The People’s Budget Office (2021-2024), a project that aims to educate Philadelphians about the City Budget, provide opportunities for advocacy, and imagine what a fully funded city looks like.
- Savannah Barrett, exchange director for Art of the Rural, a national organization that works to resource rural and Native artists and culture bearers to build the field, change narratives, and bridge divides. She co-founded the Kentucky Rural–Urban Exchange in 2014, and leads this work alongside hundreds of Kentuckians to combine grantmaking, leadership and network development, narrative change, and institutional bridging to strengthen Kentucky’s communities across racial, economic, and geographic divides.
Savannah brings two decades of experience in cultural organizing and arts administration, beginning with a local arts agency she helped to found in high school. She is a current board member of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, an advisor to Shared America, and a facilitator for PA Humanities and has previously advised bridging and philanthropic initiatives in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Oregon, New York, South Carolina, and more. Savannah holds a Master’s of Arts Management from the University of Oregon. Her work has been uplifted by the New York Times, the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Wall Street Journal, the Kennedy Center, Christian Science Monitor, the National Rural Assembly, and more. She is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a Kentucky Colonel, and a Commonwealth Ambassador. Savannah is a 12th-generation Kentuckian and was raised in Grayson Springs, where she now stewards a historic site. She lives with her husband, daughter, and beagle in Louisville.
- Moderated by Richard Young, FORWARD Issue 8: Civic Health guest editor and the founder and executive director at CivicLex, a nonprofit in Lexington, Kentucky, dedicated to strengthening civic health at the local level. A practicing artist who has been working in and around civic engagement and community development for almost a decade, Richard has a deep interest in how the creative process can positively impact democracy.
This is part of our conversation series for our digital publication, FORWARD. Issue #8 focuses on civic health and engagement.
Forecast is a nonprofit organization and offers this program free of cost, but donations are appreciated.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Public Art Now: Monuments & Memorials
A conversation exploring the relationship between public art and monuments & memorials, through an artist’s lens.
Featuring:
- Edra Soto (artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin),
- Charmaine Minniefield (artist-activist).
Moderated by Public Art Now guest curator Anna Lisa Escobedo, of New Monuments Taskforce.
- Anna Lisa Escobedo is a multifaceted artist, encompassing roles as a visual artist, muralist, artivist, event producer, cultural worker, and networker. As a cofounder of the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, she chaired the Cultural Arts and Assets Committee, leading a team of more than 20 active members. Anna Lisa’s most fulfilling accomplishment lies in her direct engagement with the community and fellow artists. Having contributed to numerous art projects and collaborated with community-based organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Anna Lisa is deeply rooted in the local artistic landscape. Her overarching goals revolve around supporting artists and creators, with a keen focus on nurturing the vibrancy of the arts and culture ecosystem in the Bay Area. Anna Lisa Escobedo photo by Alexa Treviño.
- Edra Soto (b. 1971) is a Puerto Rican-born artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago community, the artist has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism.Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at Comfort Station, Chicago, IL (2024); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2023); Abrons Art Center, New York, NY (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2018); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2017); The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2017). Her work has been featured in notable recent group exhibitions including Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2024); Entre Horizontes, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); and Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2021).
She has been awarded the Joyce Award, 3Arts Next Level 3Arts, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; and US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship; and MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. Soto has received numerous public commissions, for Graft for Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park (2024); Noor Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); Now & There, Central Wharf Park, Boston, MA (2023); the Chicago Architecture Biennial, IL (2023); and Millenium Park in Chicago, IL (2019). Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico; and Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. Edra Soto photo by Steph Murray.
- The work of artist-activist Charmaine Minniefield preserves Black narratives as a radical act of social justice. Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, her work draws from indigenous traditions as seen throughout Africa and the Diaspora, to explore African and African-American history, memory and ritual as an intentional push back against erasure. Her creative practice is community-based as her research and resulting bodies of work often draw from physical archives as she excavates the stories of African-American women-led resistance and spirituality and power.Minniefield’s recent public works which include projection mapping and site-specific installation, insight dialogue around race, class and power. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, she incorporates other art forms to virtually bridge the past to the present. Recent projects include the mounting of “Remembrance as Resistance” during the 2018 Symposium on Race and Reconciliation presented by her alma mater, Agnes Scott College, which opened with the removal of two Confederate monuments from campus grounds and closed with the work as backdrop for the closing talk by Alice Walker on art and activism.
Minniefield’s work is featured in a number of public and private collections, and as a muralist, her walls can be seen throughout the City of Atlanta and beyond. She was honored by Mercedes Benz as a part of their Greatness Lives Here campaign. She and her recent mural in Brooklyn, depicting women who shaped the future, is featured in the 2020 US Census commercial. Minniefield currently serves as the Stuart A. Rose Library artist-in-residence at Emory through a collaboration with Flux Projects. Charmaine Minniefield photo by Jery Siegal.
This is part of our conversation series for our digital publication, FORWARD. Issue #7 focuses on monuments & memorials, and was guest edited by New Monuments Taskforce.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The Future of Monuments
A cross-sector panel discussing FORWARD7: Monuments & Memorials, and exploring what is next for monuments across the world.
What do our monuments and memorials say about who we are, what we value and who holds power? How are leaders changing this to reflect the world we want? Our cross-sector panel of leaders will share their thoughts in conversation on this important topic in communities around the world.
Featuring:
- Bethel Abate (Design Director, MASS Design),
- Macy Siu (artist, foresight strategist)
- Darion Jones (Deputy Director, Office of Arts & Culture, City of Portland, OR).
Moderated by Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, FORWARD Curator of Partnerships & Programming.
This is part of our conversation series for our digital publication, FORWARD. Issue #7 focuses on monuments & memorials.
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Climate Artists in Residence
How agencies and organizations are embedding artists as creative partners to address climate issues.
This cross-sector discussion, hosted by Forecast and in partnership with CAIR Lab, features the following speakers:
- Benny Starr, musician and cultural strategist who served as the U.S. Water Alliance’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence and Senior Arts & Culture Fellow, and is the founder of Watercolor Creative.
- Maura Jarvis, award-winning water communications specialist and One Water superhero, previously with Philadelphia Water Department’s Public Affairs division and Program Manager for Equitable Infrastructure at the US Water Alliance.
- sTo LeN, interdisciplinary artist whose recent work has centered on collaborations with abused landscapes and municipal agencies.
- Barry Keppard, head of Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s Public Health Department and supervisor of the agency’s regional and local public health department projects as well as the department’s Health in All Policies and healthy community design projects.
This panel is moderated by Johanna K Taylor, PhD, a hybrid scholar and arts administrator whose work explores how artists and designers collaboratively expand democratic actions in arts institutions, Associate Professor at Arizona State University and co-founder of CAIR Lab.
This is part of our conversation series for our digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD #6 focuses on climate.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Artists + Climate Change Solutions
How public artists are, and can be, critical partners for climate resilience
Featuring the following speakers across sectors:
- Emma Robbins (Diné), an artist, activist, and community organizer, Managing Director of Planet Women and the founder of The Chapter House.
- Travis Sheridan, Chief Community Officer at Wexford Science + Technology, where he forges strong ties with university partners, civic leaders, and community groups.
- Dr. Galen Treuer, head of Climate Tech and Economic Innovation for Miami-Dade County.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #6 focuses on climate.
Friday, December 8, 2023
Public Art Now: Indigenous Public Art with Jessica Mehta and Gregg Deal
A FORWARD series discussion of contemporary public art by Native artists, featuring curator Jessica Mehta and artist Gregg Deal
In her introduction to the Public Art Now collection in FORWARD Issue #5, guest curator Jessica (Tyner) Mehta writes: “I believe the works of these artists and their recent contributions will spark necessary discourse, provide a framework for information exchange and culture bearing that breeds real change, and, overall, make big strides toward re-Indigenizing Turtle Island.” Join Forecast Public Art‘s FORWARD series for a conversation between Public Art Now guest curator Jessica (Tyner) Mehta and artist Gregg Deal (featured in the publication) about how Native artists are critically engaging the public realm.
About the panelists
Jessica (Tyner) Mehta, PhD, is an Aniyunwiya (citizen of the Cherokee Nation), Two-Spirit, full-time working artist, writer, and researcher. Jessica has sustained herself as a writer and artist for over a decade thanks to her founding of the writing services company MehtaFor in 2012 and the support of countless fellowships, residencies, grants, and awards for their creative works over the years. Most recently, Jessica was a 2021 GLEAN: Portland artist and created a series of works titled Strong FoundNations that brings attention to the history of the “Indian boarding schools” (of which her father was a survivor). As a Native artist, she knows first-hand the depths and intricacies of systemic racism within the world of “western art,” particularly in settler-based spaces like major art galleries and museums. Jessica is a Fulbright Nehru Senior Scholar in Bengaluru, where she is teaching poetry workshops at Christ University and curating an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry written in the colonizer’s tongue. Jessica is also Forecast’s Change Lab Research Fellow focusing on Indigenous visibility in public art, where she is examining the language used in open calls for Native American public artists.
Gregg Deal, (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and “disruptor.” His work is informed by his Native identity and includes exhaustive critiques of American society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals, performance work, filmmaking, spoken word, and more, Deal invites the viewer to confront these issues both in the present and the past tense.
In a 2018 TED Talk, Deal described his work as “honoring Indigenous experiences, challenging stereotypes, and pushing for accurate representations of Indigenous people in art.” It is in these “disruptions” of stereotypes and ahistorical representations which Deal uses the term to describe his work. Gregg Deal has exhibited his work at notable institutions both locally, nationally, and internationally including the Denver Art Museum, RedLine Gallery, and The Smithsonian Institution. The artist currently lives with his wife and five children along the Front Range of Colorado.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #5 focuses on housing.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Not Just Housing: Artists addressing the housing crisis
How artists are helping to address the housing crisis.
Amidst a national housing crisis, artists continue to push for bold solutions that aim at alleviating the root causes of housing instability and inequity. Learn how artists are partnering with housing organizations and others to make changes to help bring about housing justice. With:
- Dr. Lisa Yun Lee (National Public Housing Museum, featured interviewee in FORWARD 5)
- Tiff Beatty (National Public Housing Museum, featured interviewee in FORWARD 5)
- Mark Valdez (artist, and co-creator of The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, featured in FORWARD 5)
- Jennifer Lamb (Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, and helped create A Prairie Homeless Companion, featured in FORWARD 5)
- Moderated by Paul Singh (NeighborWorks America, and FORWARD 5 guest editor)
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #5 focuses on housing.
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Art, Design, and Justice
How the built environment can uplift a community’s notions of art, culture, and place
How can we center artists & culture bearers alongside designers to overcome bureaucratic racism in the design field? Design impacts peoples’ lives. Let’s talk about it.
Joseph Kunkel is the director of MASS Design Group‘s Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab and citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. Joseph also served as the guest editor of FORWARD Issue 4. Jeremy Liu, is an award-winning artist, social impact strategist and real estate developer. Jeremy also served as the featured essayist of FORWARD Issue 4. Angela Two Stars, an artist, curator, and director of All My Relations Arts, is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #4 focuses on redefining sustainable design in Indian Country.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Public Art Now with Amina Cooper
FORWARD Issue #3 guest curator in conversation with artists Lava Thomas and Martha Jackson Jarvis
Guest curator Amina Cooper says in her introduction to the Public Art Now collection in FORWARD Issue #3, “Across the full range of materials, styles, and degrees of permanence, public artworks by Black artists have made essential contributions to the built environment and to community spaces.”
This second Public Art Now selection in the FORWARD series features projects by Simone Leigh, Abigail DeVille, Dr. Fahamu Pecou, Jessica Moss, and April Banks. The curator was joined by guests artists Lava Thomas and Martha Jackson Jarvis for a discussion about contemporary public art policy, their experiences as Black artists entering this field, challenges, and policy changes they would like to see.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #3 focuses on community safety.
Thursday, January 6, 2022
The Role of Artists in the Future of Community Safety
with Andrea Jenkins and Dr. André de Quadros
One of the most pressing and precarious issues of our time is community safety. Safety is a basic human right. Community safety emphasizes community/ies self-determination of what it means to be safe. Artists have long been integral to these efforts to center the needs of the most marginalized members of society as they reimagine safety through criminal justice, emergency response, gun violence reform, policing, community control and freedom from harm. They have done this by creating pathways for transformative confrontations, by highlighting the unseen, by helping people feel welcomed and whole, and more.
Thursday, September 16, 2021
This panel discussion featured Minneapolis City Council member and poet Andrea Jenkins, as well as ethnomusicologist and human rights activist Dr. André de Quadros. It was moderated by Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, Guest Editor of FORWARD #3.
Read the FORWARD publications:
Self-Initiated Public Art: A Public Art Now Conversation with Muna Malik
Our first Public Art Now guest curator, Tricia Heuring, in conversation with artist Muna Malik
The first event in our Public Art Now series features a conversation between artist Muna Malik and guest curator Tricia Heuring. Malik discussed her public art project, Blessing of the Boats, featured in the inaugural Public Art Now collection. The artist shares more about her process of building this self-initiated public art project from the ground up, and joins Heuring in reflections on the collection. Watch the conversation on the Public Art Now page within FORWARD, or on Forecast’s YouTube channel.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #2 focuses on transportation.
March 18, 2021
Freedom of Movement: Art, Culture and Transportation in 2021
with Charles T. Brown, MPA, CPD, LCI
How are artists and the transportation sector collaborating to solve intractable problems and envision a more just future of mobility & infrastructure? Amidst a change in political leadership, our roundtable features leading voices at this intersection and tackles issues like transportation policy, construction mitigation, COVID-19, safer streets, local ownership and creative solutions. With Charles T. Brown (Rutgers University), Naomi Doerner (Nelson Nygaard), and Melvin Giles (community artist and organizer); moderated by Ben Stone (Smart Growth America).
This virtual roundtable features:
Charles T. Brown, MPA, CPD, LCI (senior researcher and adjunct professor within the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and a fellow of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication)
Naomi Doerner (Principal and Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at Nelson Nygaard)
Melvin Giles (Peace Maker, Curator, Community Artist and Organizer in St. Paul, MN)
Moderated by Ben Stone (Director of Arts & Culture at Smart Growth America and its program Transportation for America, and the current guest editor of FORWARD‘s Issue #2)
- Charles T. Brown MPA, CPD, LCI, is a senior researcher and adjunct professor within the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and a fellow of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. As a “street-level researcher” and “pracademic,” he has gained international attention for helping to create safe, healthy, and livable communities for all. His recent and notable contributions through research and practice include understanding barriers to biking and walking for women and minorities; analyzing the impact of crime on walking frequency and propensity; centering and prioritizing equity in transportation planning and decision-making; and analyzing barriers to accessing parks and open spaces. Follow him on Twitter: @ctbrown1911
- Naomi Doerner is a nationally recognized transportation equity and mobility justice strategist with expertise facilitating and implementing systems change inside of organizations, agencies and institutions for fair and just community outcomes.
She currently serves as the first national Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at Nelson/Nygaard, a national leader in transportation planning, where she’s developed a firm-wide internal EDI training curriculum and applies a racial equity approach to transportation projects for clients.
Prior to joining Nelson/Nygaard, Naomi served as the nation’s first citywide Transportation Equity Program Manager at the City of Seattle Department of Transportation. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders cohort member, a multi-year professional development program for leaders doing multi-disciplinary systems-change work related to creating a culture of health and racial equity. Ms. Doerner is the co-founder and a national co-organizer of The Untokening, a multiracial collective of leaders advancing mobility justice. She also serves on the Advisory Boards of PlayBuild and the Vision Zero Network, is a NextCity Vanguard alum (2017), and a recent TransitCenter Women Changing Transportation mentor (2019).
- Melvin Giles is the Co-Coordinator of the Urban Farm & Garden Alliance and is a veteran peace and diversity educator. His current work includes being a member of Forecast Rice Street Artist Liaison Team and on the Engagement & Outreach Team of Bolton& Menk, Inc. Since 2010, Giles has facilitated a community & citywide peace campaign – The Peace Pole and Peace Message Campaign. This campaign is intended to decrease violent crime as well as creating places, spaces, and opportunities for peaceful gatherings and racial and cultural appreciation, education, and healing in the greater St. Paul area.
- Ben Stone is Director of Arts & Culture at Smart Growth America and its program Transportation for America. Ben leads the organization’s broad efforts to help communities across the country better integrate arts, culture and creative placemaking into neighborhood revitalization, equitable development, and transportation planning. Ben has written and lectured extensively about the intersection of art and transportation; he holds a Master in City Planning from MIT.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD issue #2 focuses on transportation.
Thursday, February 18, 2021
How Artists Can Address Public Health Challenges
with Mindy Fullilove, MD, LFAPA, Hon AIA
Esteemed author and social psychiatrist Dr. Mindy Fullilove is joined by Elizabeth Hamby (NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene), and Miguel Angel Vazquez (Riverside County Department of Public Health), in a roundtable on the importance of the work around arts, culture, racial justice, and public health. Facilitated by Mallory Rukhsana Nezam (Justice + Joy).
- Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, LFAPA, Hon AIA, is a social psychiatrist and professor of urban policy and health at The New School. Since 1986, she has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities, with a special interest in the relationship between the collapse of communities and decline in health. From her research, she has published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs. She has also written: The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, and Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities. A third edition of Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People’s Power, which she helped her father, Ernest Thompson, write, was released in May 2018 by New Village Press. She is co-author, with Hannah L. F. Cooper, of From Enforcers to Guardians: A public health primer on ending police violence, issued by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2020. Her latest book, Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All, was released in September 2020 by New Village Press.
- Elizabeth Hamby is an artist who serves as the Director of Take Care New York (TCNY) at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Take Care New York is the City’s Health Equity Roadmap. Elizabeth leads storytelling campaigns, develops multi-sector collaborations, and designs policy to eliminate health inequities and advance social justice. Her art practice includes projects across media that make complex issues legible and help people work together. She has led a waterfront planning studio out of a neighborhood laundromat, formed a bike collective to address transportation issues in the Bronx, and worked with youth in public housing to develop haikus about littering. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, among other venues. She holds degrees from Eugene Lang College and Parsons School of Design.
- Miguel Angel Vazquez, AICP is one of the first planners hired by a public health department in the nation. His role at the Riverside University Health System-Public Health is to strengthen the integration of planning and health through collaboration with non-traditional partners. He is a member of the California Planning Roundtable and co-leads the California’s Planners4Health Initiative. Over the past 18 years, he has provided professional planning and community development services to the private, public, and military sectors. He received a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies and Planning from California State University, Northridge and is a fellow of the California Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health. In 2014, he was named finalist for the Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. The American Planning Association has recognized his leadership and projects with numerous awards and recognitions including the APA President’s Award in 2018 and the APA California’s 2020 Distinguished Contribution Award.
- Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is an civic artist and consultant who believes that we have the tools to make places more just and joyful. She runs the creative consulting practice Justice + Joy, serves on the Steering Committee for the Planning for Health Equity, Advocacy & Leadership (PHEAL) initiative and is a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow. She holds a Master of Design from Harvard University.
This is part of our conversation series for our new digital publication, FORWARD. FORWARD Issue #1 focuses on public health.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Virtual
PREVIOUS Forecast/Forward EVENTS
(events held prior to the digital FORWARD publication)
Decolonizing Public Art, Part I: Standing Rock
At this first conversation, artists Votan and Missy Whiteman explore how artists are standing up and fighting back against colonization and protecting land and water, and how this impacts the future of public art in the U.S. The talk was facilitated by Angela Two Stars.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
All My Relations Arts, Minneapolis
Art, Culture and Transportation: MnDOT Community Vitality Fellowship
MnDOT is among the first state transportation agencies in the country to participate in the artist-in-residence program by hosting a Community Vitality Fellowship position. Meet the new fellow, Marcus Young, and speak to the director of MnDOT’s program, and the Director of Arts and Transportation for America to talk about the future of arts and culture in our country’s transportation infrastructure. Facilitated by Forecast Board Member Hally Turner (Planning Program Coordinator at MnDOT), featuring Ben Stone, Transportation for America, Artist Fellow Marcus Young, and Highway Sponsorship Program Director at MnDOT, Jessica Oh.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, Lobby, Minneapolis
Designing for Justice and Equity: Creating Power through Spatial Design
A conversation about equity in architecture and design, facilitated by Forecast Board Member, Nathan Johnson, 4M-ULA Architecture, featuring Satoko Muratake from 10 x 10 and Kristine Miller, Professor at University of Minnesota.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Forecast Public Art, Saint Paul
Decolonizing Public Art PART II: from Puerto Rico to Mauna Kea
From Standing Rock to Puerto Rico to Mauna Kea, artists are standing up and fighting back against colonization and protecting land and water … how does this impact the future of public art in this country? Facilitated by Candida Gonzalez featuring Olivia Levins Holden, Kealoha Ferriera, and Aiyana Sol Machado.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, Minneapolis
(651) 641-1128
INFO@FORECAST
