Consulting and Cultural Exchange

Civic Art Works is a series of screenings and projects with a companion guide created in connection with the Civic Art as Infrastructure project of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. The series includes the feature documentary Civic Art: Four Stories from South Los Angeles, which engages with neighbors throughout the process of developing civic artworks with local artists. The series was shared in the featured neighborhoods of South Los Angeles County including A.C. Bilbrew Library, East Rancho Dominguez Community Center, Victoria Community Regional Park and Woodcrest Library, as well as other media channels and public spaces regionally and nationally. The guide offers worksheets, strategies and recommendations for exploring civic engagement through the arts in Los Angeles and beyond.

Series production work includes 18th Street Arts Center, California African-American Museum, Forecast Public Art, Hawthorne Library with City of Madison, Los Angeles County Channel, Milwaukee Film Festival, Public Art Coalition of Southern California, Reimagine Public Art with City of Los Angeles and Skid Row History Museum and Archive with Los Angeles Poverty Department.

Civic Art Works Guide (PDF Link)

Civic Art as Infrastructure (Website)

Civic Art: Four Stories from South Los Angeles (YouTube Trailer)

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers develop guided hikes, campfire talks, field kits, and other interpretive tools to spark creative explorations of everyday habitats, in our home megalopolis and beyond. The rangers are dedicated to equip themselves and others to ask questions about the abundant and often unseen complexities of the places in our lives, whether a freeway, a neighborhood, a park, an office park or a living room. They proudly serve the public from their headquarters in the L.A. basin, while accepting temporary posts to operate projects at other sites in the US, Mexico and Europe.

Fieldwork includes Public Access 101: Downtown L.A. for the 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art and Engagement Party at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Public Access 101: Malibu Public Beaches was offered on-site and in exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and Casa de Túnel in Tijuana. SITE2F7 Ontedekkingstocht (Explorer’s Hike) was formed with Enough Room for Space at the Museum De Paviljoens in Almere, the Netherlands. Interstate Road Trip Specialist traveled from High Desert Test Sites to Socrates Sculpture Park. The Portable Ranger Station was part of By the People: Designing a Better America, a traveling exhibition by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum.

Los Angeles Urban Rangers (Website)

Los Angeles Urban Rangers Official Map and Guide (PDF Link)

Malibu Public Beaches Guide (PDF Link)

Field Guide to the American Road Trip (PDF Link)

Public Access 101: Downtown L.A. (YouTube Link)

Public Access 101: Malibu Public Beaches (YouTube Link)

Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles: Artists and Communities Working Together (Book Webpage Link)

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Building Healthy Places Initiative leverages the power of ULI’s global networks to shape projects and places in ways that improve the health of people and communities. As part of this national and global  initiative, the ULI Health Leaders Network empowers real estate and land use professionals with the skills, knowledge, and networks to improve health outcomes in their professional practice and communities. Participants gain valuable skills and connections that support them to advance their careers, as well as practical knowledge about the intersection between health, social equity, and the built environment. In connection with the regional council of ULI Los Angeles, the Building Healthy Places Committee creates and implements a comprehensive program of work that emphasizes the connections between health and built environment, serving the local communities of Los Angeles and nearby counties.

Facilitation and strategy work in collaboration with Ron Milam Consulting includes co-facilitating four cohorts of the ULI Health Leaders Network for forums in a range of US cities and online, as well as additional online work sessions. Additionally, the collaborating consultants provide advice to a learning community across cohorts along with leading experts for an international cross-sector network focused on health equity and the built environment. With the ULI Los Angeles Building Healthy Place Committee, the consultants conceived and facilitated convenings of local policymakers, health leaders and real estate developers to discuss effective collaboration for improving collective health in the Los Angeles region. This included identifying a short set of transformative projects, facilitating a parks and open space workgroup in East Los Angeles and Southeast Los Angeles, securing multi-year funding support for ongoing work and building a convening framework and conversation guide published online through ULI’s global platform. These learnings were fed back into the ULI Health Leaders Network as a best practice for local cross-sector collaboration to achieve equity goals.

Urban Land Institute Health Leaders Network (Website)

Urban Land Institute, Los Angeles Building Healthy Places Committee (Website)

Convening New Partnerships, Breaking Out of Silos Conversation Guide (PDF Link)

Building Healthy Places Convening Framework (PDF Link)

The Beerline Trail exemplifies the City of Milwaukee’s commitment to reimagining and repurposing formerly underutilized spaces to bring new investment and energy to neighborhoods.  The Beerline Trail Neighborhood Development Project was formed as a cross-sector collaboration among the City, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Rails to Trails, community development corporations, business improvement districts, artists and other local and national partners. A former rail corridor has been transformed into a multi-use trail diagonally connecting the Harambee and Riverwest neighborhoods and providing green space for gatherings, performances, installations and other public art with neighbors who live and work nearby. Prior to this partnership, this corridor was significantly impacted by blight, disinvestment, and a lack of perceived safety. Now as a vibrant, healthy public space, the trail serves as a symbol of Milwaukee’s focus on access and equity amidst the complex racial dynamics experienced in these neighborhoods and the city. The process of developing the Beerline Trail through creative placemaking that aligns art and design with community development has created new civic gathering places and amplified local voices and cultures. 

Facilitation and strategy work with Kimberli Meyer as a long-term advisor includes creative programming and media-making with neighborhood artists and designers alongside the City and partners. This led to identification of long-term investment ideas for the trail and surrounding neighborhoods, including development of an innovative linear park, improved connections to adjacent neighborhoods, increased creative programming and public art, and complementary redevelopment projects along the trail. Currently, the partners are working with internationally recognized MacArthur Fellow Walter Hood of Hood Design Studio on implementing a comprehensive plan for landscape art and design called a Lifeways Plan, along with an Equitable Implementation Plan for neighborhood development and stewardship with existing and new residents, business owners and workers. 

Beerline Trail (Website)

Beerline Trail Lifeways Plan (YouTube Link)

Beerline Trail Playlist (YouTube Link)

Beerline Trail Lifeways Plan Executive Summary (PDF Link)

Beerline Trail Equitable Implementation Plan Executive Summary (PDF Link)

A Series Celebrating Beerline Trail Part 2: Black Landscapes Matter (YouTube Link)

Black Landscapes Matter (Book Webpage Link)

Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles: Artists and Communities Working Together (Book Webpage Link)

A Pathway to Connect Communities: A Case Study of the Beerline Trail Extension in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Report Webpage Link)

Embedding Equity into Placemaking: An Examination of the Milwaukee Method of Creative Placemaking in Practice (Report Webpage Link)

MKE<->LAX is a cultural exchange initiative with bases in two US American regions, with Milwaukee and Los Angeles as epicenters. This initiative explores cultural exchange across the boundaries that typically separate US regions, with an emphasis on regional poetics and market expansion. Through ongoing mobility, MKE<->LAX asks questions about the influence media, location, scale, values and other regional factors have on production of the arts and cultural identities.