October 1, 2025 • 29 mins
Culture is often treated as a niche area but is actually integral to the successful design and adoption of other areas of urban planning and policy. Hear how cities like Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Baltimore are embedding cultural approaches into planning, policy, and recovery efforts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawhut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Most cultures around the world understand that arts and culture
is inherently connected to the health and well being of
the population. So it is never arts for the sake
of art, It is art for the sake of health.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
This is Lucas Grinley from Next City Show about change
makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions to
the problems of pressing people in cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. In this episode,
we're looking at how culture is being used as a
tool for building equitable cities. It's part of a series
connected to the release of the Rutledge Handbook of Urban
(00:43):
Cultural Planning. All our guests today are contributors to the book,
and they're bringing practical examples from their own work. So
we'll hear from Randy Egstrom. He's the former director of
Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture, and he'll show us
how cultural strategies can guide downtown recovery. Doctor David Falconne
Morgan State University is here to talk about how storytelling
supports public health. Catherine durgra leads Martyr's Art Bound program
(01:07):
in Atlanta, and she'll share how art is changing the
transit experience. Plus, we have Jules Rochelle Siebert of Northeastern
University here to explain how cultural organizing is helping communities
in Boston resist displacement. So you're definitely gonna leave this
episode knowing what it looks like when cities plan with
culture at the center. To begin, here's Rana Amirta Massabi
and economic development and cultural planning strategists who's worked at
(01:29):
the World Bank and now leads at Park Urban Strategies.
She co edited the Rutledge Handbook with Jason Schupack of
Drexel University. By the way, Jason's also a former board
member with that city.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I usually work particularly with cities in developing countries or
in very poor communities where culture is not necessarily something
that is like the priority for the city builders. But
we're seeing that, like how nowadays culture is acting as
a software for development in addition to the hardware of development,
which is infrastructure, which is hospitals, which is housing. That's
(02:09):
one of the reasons we decided to do this book
because when Jason and I were students years ago, there
were basically a few books you can count in one
or two hands that address culture planning, and the field
has changed so much. This panel today speaks to one
of the themes that we explore in the book, and
that's how to plan with culture. It's one of the
(02:30):
things that emerged when I personally started working on this,
and I was quite surprised, pleasantly surprised that, you know,
we always as planners, we always try to plan for culture,
to how to include culture in different topics, but there's
a whole section of the book that it talks about
planning with culture.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
At the Center really Extreme teaches cultural policy and advocacy
at Seattle University. He's the former director of Seattle's Office
of Arts and Culture. When he first started working with
the city, the office had a staff of twelve people
with a seven million dollar budget. Then, with an emphasis
on cross sector work, they grew to forty five people
and a budget closer to forty five million.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
The chapter that I wrote with my dear colleague, doctor
Jasmine Mahmud, was around the eight pillars of cultural policy
in America, and we wrote that because we were well.
I spent nine years as the director of the Office
of Arts and Culture from the City of Seattle, a
job that has no sort of roadmap or graduate program
that prepares you for it. And so, in teaching the
(03:34):
Cultural Policy and Advocacy class in the MFA Arts Leadership
Program at Seattle University, where Jasmine and I taught together,
we thought this could be an instructive tool. What are
the eight interventions that the public sector uses to invest
in culture? And most local arts agencies at the local,
county or state level do some version of grant making,
(03:54):
public art festivals, cultural facilities, creative economy, racial racial equity,
or DEI creative placemaking, and arts education. In the summer
of twenty or the guess it was, Yeah, late summer
twenty twenty three, I was approached by the city because
they had done this large downtown activation plan because Seattle's downtown,
(04:16):
like many downtowns around the world, was still suffering sort
of the laughing impact of the pandemic, in particular the
lack of daily office commuters. And I think the way
I sort of described the state of all downtowns from
my experience locally and nationally is that basically most of
(04:37):
our downtowns are a version of Detroit in the early eighties,
except it's not disused auto factories, it's disused office towers.
I think remote work has forever changed the way in
which people will do their day to day jobs in
the same way emailed it, in the same way AAI
is about to. And so we're sitting on millions of
square feet of office space that probably will some of
(04:59):
it will be used, and there will still be a
need to convene, there will still be a need for
an office, but by and large, we're just not going
to have that vehicle to bring half a million people
into our city day to day. That's a that's just
a reality. The most inspiring time I spent in local
government was the first six weeks of the COVID pandemic.
Seattle was the first city hit they're speaking of times
(05:21):
with no roadmap. There was no roadmap, and the way
that I saw the city come together, cross sector to
try to meet the needs of the community was pretty inspiring.
And you know that was That's what I was thinking
about when the city reached out to my colleague Andy Fife,
and myself and my colleague Venuin. The three of us
together authored this plan. But the idea is given that
(05:43):
the conditions have changed in our center city. How might
we use cultural strategies to reimagine and revitalize our downtown.
I think that some of this is very unique to Seattle.
Some of it is applicable anywhere. We talked with ninety
five external stakeholders representing sixty six organizations in the downtown core,
and we reviewed ninety six reports, studies, article through our
(06:04):
document and field scan and that was the raw material
with which we attempted to leave a story, a set
of goals and strategies that could help transform the conditions
in our downtown. But the reason that we believe culture
could be this engine for civic transformation was based on
two historical precedents. One was in nineteen fifty two when
(06:25):
there was a Boeing boom. Amazon and Microsoft are not
the first companies to find themselves in Seattle and transform industry.
Boeen was having a moment in the early nineteen fifties.
They were hiring a lot and the Seattle was growing
really quickly, and there was a concern about how the
city would grow, and a group of artists and architects
and academics got together informally at first through something called
(06:45):
the Beer and Culture Society, and within a year that
group of people had grown into over one hundred members
and they formed the Allied Arts Foundation. The Allied Arts
Foundation would go on to save the pipe Place Market,
helped catalyze the word World's Fair in nineteen sixty two
to create the historic Pioneer Square District. So we have
this example of at a moment of growth, the creative
(07:08):
community shaping the trajectory of a city and protecting the
things that are important to it, like a pipe Place Market.
You've probably heard of pipe Place Market.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
It almost got.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Redeveloped, but Allied Arts and a lot of great civic
advocates helped stop that. We've also had examples of in
the worst of times, culture being a strategy by which
to transform conditions. And in nineteen seventy one Boeing had
a very different situation than they had in nineteen fifty
two and they laid off fifty thousand employees. There was
actually a sign on I five that said, with the
(07:37):
last person out of Seattle, please turn out the lights.
And it was in that year nineteen seventy one, the
thirty seven year old mayor Wes Ullman Commission chartered the
Seattle Arts Commission, our local arts agency that's now the
Office of Arts and Culture. And when they asked him
why he would chartered Arts Commission amidst the worst recession
in the city's history, he said, because we have to
give people hope. And I think those two what Seattle
(07:59):
finds itself in now is actually both of those realities.
We're still one of the fastest growing cities in America,
and we're still wrestling with the intractable problems that our
downtown is facing, everything from income inequality and houselessness, addiction, safety,
and a lot of that is driven by vacancy and
lack of affordable housing. So we talked to all these people,
we read all these reports, we looked at what other
(08:20):
cities around the country and around the world we're doing,
and we came up with these with these five goals.
One is a sense of alignment, which is really about
an organizing strategy. How do you create a cross sector
coalition that is sort of driven by a collective impact
model that can bring enough people together to advance change.
So that's like the first piece is around a sense
(08:41):
of alignment. There's a bunch of goals underneath that. The
second is around a sense of belonging. It's really about cultivating, shaping,
and amplifying a scenic narrative. What is the story that
we're going to tell the world about this place and
what is unique about where we are and how we
find ourselves. It also creates a sense of shared identity
and as a Seattle relatively young city, as the colonized city,
(09:02):
and so you know, it's got a lot of different
neighborhoods and a lot of different moving parts. The third
piece is around vibrancy, which is really how you experience
the public realm. It's about special events and festivals. It's
about storefront activation. Yes, it's about murals, and it's about pickleball.
It's about everything else. But really it's about strategic ways
to advance more public programming in more places, in ways
(09:23):
that feel authentic to the communities that they're located in.
The fourth bucket is around a sense of place, and
that's really thinking both about existing tools like cultural districts,
but also about more aggressive adaptive reuse of those office talents.
You know, artists live work housing is the only housing
that's legal in light industrial and commercial zones in Seattle.
(09:45):
There's also models like co ops and co housing communities
where you know, we're told that it's impossible to convert
these office buildings into traditional apartments. Maybe traditional is the problem.
Maybe we could look at them more as co housing communities,
more as artists live or studios. Anyway, that's what the
place is about. And then prosperity is really a lot
about economic and workforce development. We have an incredibly strong
(10:08):
cultural ecosystem, we have an incredibly vibrant creative economy, and
we have an incredibly robust tech economy. Can we bring
those three things under one tent and position Seattle as
the global leader of culture, creativity, and innovation. Those are
the goals, you know. I think a number of these
things move forward. A number of them didn't. It's a
complicated time in the world and in cities. We're all
(10:29):
facing the sort of budget uncertainty that's brought up about
by sort of national instability and sort of philanthropic concerns.
But a lot of it is moving forward, and even
whatever isn't moving forward could still do so. All of
these strategies are fairly evergreen, and most of them could
apply to most city centers in most cities in North America.
(10:50):
I really do believe in collective impact. That was part
of the first strategy around alignment, and I think collective
impact is an interesting organizing tool. We use it for
our arts education initial and we're able to restore arts
learning to Seattle Public schools over a span of about
a dozen years. And it's about having a shared north star,
but autonomous interrelated activities, so everyone doesn't have to walk
(11:11):
in lockstep. We just have to agree where we're walking.
And I think that could be a really powerful way
to organize different interests who have enough aligned value as
unperlign values, and enough aligned goals that we could really
transform our city through a broad and inclusive coalition. And then, finally,
in power of narrative, the power of story, the power
of naming who and how we want to be, how
(11:32):
we want to show up in the world, and what
it's going to take to get us there, and letting
that be something that can truly and authentically have people
see themselves reflective.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
After the break, will learn more about the role of narrative.
We're joined by a doctor, David Falconlay in Baltimore, who
argues that storytelling can be a tool for public health
and Community Safety. Welcome back. Before the break, we heard
from Randy Ekstrom about how Seattle is turning to culture
(12:11):
as part of its downtown recovery strategy. Next, we go
to Baltimore, where doctor David Faucinlay has developed a framework
called the Existential Determinants of Health. I love that. I
think you will too. Here's David.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
There's growing science and growing literature that shows arts and
culture is good for health. A lot of the work
is led by the University of Florida, the Center for
Arts and Medicine, with whom I'm very grateful to say
I used to teach there still have active connections and research,
and so the overall effort is to show that our
creative energy it's good for us mind, body, spirit, wallet,
(12:46):
and everything in between. Any dimension of health you want
to list, there's a way that arts and culture can
support it. And so when I discovered that and discovered
the Center for Arts and Medicine, it completely changed my
whole world. And that is really a foundation for what
EDIOH is. The existential determins of Health sounds like the
(13:07):
social determins of health.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
That's very, very intentional.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
For those who are not familiar with SDOH, it is
about the circumstances of life. To put it quite simply,
everything around you has a connection to your health and
well being. Where you live, where you work, your networks,
your relationships, everything is related to our health and well being.
So based off of that framework, I came up with
the existential determines of health. And it's not something I
(13:33):
intended to do. It is something to happen as a
result of life and the experiences of being my own
self as a human being, but also being yes, a
public health professional. And this is a framework and a
theory that I propose as something that.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
We can all hopefully relate to and understand.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And those components of the existential determins of health are acknowledgment, appreciation, respect, understanding,
and love. EDIOH was born as a concept and one
of its primary modalities is storytelling, something that we all
do is a universal art form.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
It allows us to share our voice.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Listening is just as important as telling a story, so
it is the end to the yang of storytelling.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
You cannot have one without the other.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And the whole point is that when we tell our stories,
it's mutually beneficial. With ETIOAHS as an initiative. We wanted
that to be the hallmark of what participants experience. Their
voice matters, their stories matter, They are worthy, and when
people listen to it, they can learn, they can change,
they can be transformed.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
But then we take those stories and use them as
opportunities to provide learning experiences. So we do bring in
content experts around these various dimensions of health and so
our aim is that the personal growth that participants will
engage in will lead to community impact, however they decide
to involve themselves. This was an initiative that was supported
(14:57):
by the Johns Hopkins University Innovation Fund for Community Safe.
They were concerned about making healthier communities focusing on criminal behaviors.
We wanted to focus on the circumstances that may lead
people to be victimized through violence and criminal activity, and
so we set it up as such that again we
were bringing in people who had some manifestation of trauma.
(15:17):
In this case, substance use.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Disorder and opioid use disorder was where we started with
the charm City Care Connection. We worked with over about
one hundred unique people, but ultimately came with a cohort
of fifteen. We did a second year, where we definitely
learned from our teachable moments in year one and started
to really kind of hone in on this cohort structure,
and again it culminated with a creative performance of the
(15:41):
collective story that the participants created during the experience. And
so we're grateful for the improvements that people experienced, and
the stories of what they said to us are the
most powerful evidence we could ever have.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Acknowledgment, appreciation, respect, unders standing, and love. Our access to
those make up our existential determinants of health. The art
support all of those determinants, and what David describes through
EDOH is one way we can better understand how arts
and culture directly supports health. But artists have always known
this was true.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
It usually doesn't take long when you listen to an
artist or a culture bearer to hear some element of
health and what they're saying and why they do what
they do.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
That's why I genuinely.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Believe that arts and culture as a field overall will
benefit greatly when it embraces its inherent connection to public health.
And that's something I didn't get until I became a
public health student.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
It became like a revelation. To me, it's everywhere. The
nature of public health is preventing things from happening.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And that's the argument that I certainly would make with
edio weights in any type of arts, culture and health work.
If done well, it stops things from happening. And ultimately
that's something that we as the taxpayer, will have to
pay for if we don't stop it before it happens.
People that do not have healthcare, yeah that's going to
(17:19):
get covered by somebody's usally gonna get covered by the
tax payer in some form of fashion. So to me,
the challenge for public health overall is we tend to
work in the background. We are moving the chess pieces,
so to speak, and yeah, that's not always sexy. So
if nothing happens, no one notices. But again, thanks to
public health, nothing happened. And so I think being able
(17:42):
to show that arts and culture is a valid, scientifically
proven modality by which a whole spectrum of public health
issues can be addressed, whether it's the issue itself, whether
it's certain populations, it will demonstrate and hopefully move you know, lawmakers, politicians,
whoever the case may be, out of this false narrative
(18:03):
that art is just for the sake of art.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
That is a Western approach.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I will say that most cultures around the world understand
that arts and culture is inherently connected to the health
and well being of the population. So it is never
art for the sake of art. It is art for
the sake of health. That's what makes the difference. People
may argue about the validity or the value of arts
and culture, but they will not argue the validity of
health and well being.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
After the break, Catherine Durger shares Harmarda is bringing art
and performance into Atlanti's transit system, and Jules Rochelle Seabert
explains how cultural organizing at the intersection of art and
law is helping Boston communities resist displacement. Welcome back today.
(18:51):
We're talking about what happens when culture is treated as
part of the core infrastructure of city building, not as
an afterthought. We've already heard how that idea takes you
in Seattle, where Randy Extreme describe cultural strategies for downtown recovery,
and in Baltimore, where doctor David Beckenlay is using storytelling
to support public health. Now we turn to Atlanta. Marta
is the region's public transit system, and through its art
(19:14):
Bound program, Catherine Derga has been bringing art and performance
directly into stations, which makes transit feel like part of
the community.
Speaker 7 (19:25):
In my essay for the Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning,
I talked about how the arts can widen the lens
of transit planning, and when we look through that wider lens,
we can see more.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
Than technical challenges.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Then, you know, I feel we can see opportunities for
community and for belonging and for identity. And so you know,
I'm leading Marda's public art program called art Bound, and
so I think that it allows us to see opportunities
for community building, for our ridership to feel like they belong,
for identity, and in Atlanta at least, the context.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
Is really unavoidable.
Speaker 7 (20:03):
MARTA has traditionally faced resistance to expansion into funding, but
today we're also struggling with ridership that hasn't fully bounced
back after the pandemic.
Speaker 8 (20:13):
So if we want transit.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
To grow and thrive, MARTA really has to be perceived
as an integral member of the community, and so culture
is one mode we can use to do that. We've
gone a little further by also looking at who is
representing Atlanta's culture through art Bound. The legacy program that
was established in nineteen seventy nine was comprised of thirty
eight artworks across each one of our stations, and it
(20:37):
represented eighty three percent white male artists. That's not any
way reflective of our current service area or the current
Metro Atlanta community.
Speaker 8 (20:47):
So we've been very intentional about shifting that balance, and.
Speaker 7 (20:50):
Our commissions today do more accurately mirror the demographics of
the region. Writers now encounter murals, installations by artists of color, women,
younger voices, and they see themselves reflected in these because
we do showcase each artists as the works come online,
and we celebrate the artists as much as the work
that they're doing. So that matters too, and that's another
(21:11):
piece of community that we're focusing on. And I feel
that when writers do experience their own culture reflected back
in a transit space or public space, they feel ownership
of it and they want that space to succeed, that
organization to succeed. Station Soccer is another cultural offering at MARTA.
This is a system of soccer fields at all several
(21:31):
of our stations where children can learn how to play
soccer and play as part of a league that doesn't
require high fees to participate. Their parents don't have to
drive them or arrange transport for them because the players
ride Marta together from school to attend the trainings and
the games.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
The kids immediately wanted their own mural and.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
I guess maybe the most accessible form of culture is
probably music. So local musicians have performed weekly in our
stations and the writers really enjoy it.
Speaker 8 (22:00):
Stress.
Speaker 7 (22:01):
It creates a sense of safety, it makes more of
just the stations feel welcoming, and it also provides Atlanta's
musicians with visibility with reliable income. More than one musician
has told me that being able to do, you know,
one gig a week at Marta has made it possible
for them to work solely as a professional musician to
pay their bills. But unfortunately, like a lot of cultural
(22:24):
offerings right now, this one became vulnerable to budget pressures
and so we're now working to pivot our musician program
to a tips based model. The music will still be there,
you know, writers will still stop and they'll get to
listen and connect, but the change in funding is telling,
you know, it shows that when culture isn't treated as
(22:46):
core infrastructure, it is the first thing to go. And
I think that's the larger lesson that culture isn't just decoration.
You know, if we want planning and policy and these
things to succeed, then culture has to be structurally embedded
into these things.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
Art Bound builds community across.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
Neighborhoods and neighborhood organizations, through safety projects, through inclusivity, and
through these everyday interventions. And that community building is what
helps make planning and policy succeed. So no, culture is
not an add on. I consider the arts.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
To be the connective tissue of city building.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Jules Rochelle Siebert is an artist and legal educator at
Northeastern University School of Law. Through their work with New
Law Lab, Jewels focuses on the intersection of art, advocacy
and law and how cultural organizing can help communities respond
to displacement. They contributed a chapter to the reutla Cham
Book of Urban Cultural Planning based on a case study
they've been tracking in East Boston since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 9 (23:50):
I have been working at Northeastern University School of Law
for thirteen years and I am an artist I'm not
a lawyer. We've been tracking this project for since twenty seventeen.
The Eastpos's Special Justice Lab is a collaboration between New
Law Lab, Maverick Landing Community Services, which is a multi
(24:12):
service housing development organization right in the heart of East Boston.
We've been working with local artists and community organizers since
this project's inception and before we started working with artists
in the space of law injustice in twenty thirteen. We
continued that work because we felt that culture. Culture is
(24:33):
a way that we can build agency in the face
of injustice or the way people experience injustice. So this
idea of how culture, you know, within the context of law,
and you know many people experience law is a type
of violence or silencing, or the way laws experienced in
(24:54):
communities that are actively being displaced. Culture allows us to
build agency and voice. So the East Boston Spacial Justice
Lab has been supporting and funding a series of local
gatherings or learning pods, sometimes artistic events, film nights, poetry nights, etc.
All activating voices and local agency around the space of
(25:16):
displacement and gentrification that happens in East Boston. We've shape
shifted our name several times, beginning with the pandemic, when
we were offering pandemic relief and artists came into that
space to help us build an infrastructure to deliver legal services,
to make sure that people could apply for a rental relief,
(25:39):
to make sure people were fed, and come together. Our
community partners and our activists in the neighborhood were really
important and central to that work. And moving forward to
the East Boston Spacial Justice Lab, again, arts and culture
is central to holding space for those voices of all
the individuals that we have collectively organized over the last
(26:00):
six years. You know, our funding did come from the
National Anowment for the Arts for the East bos and
Spatial Justice Lab, but also we received kind of a
product funding from the Kresky Foundation over across a number
of years, both to support our work with Maverick Landing
Community Services and also to launch a way to embed
(26:21):
residencies within the context of new Law lab bringing artists
into the space of justice. You know, we did lose
funding in the cutbacks from the NEA. We are supported
by the Melon Foundation to continue to build this work
moving forward in the next couple of years, looking at
using arts and culture as a way to fight displacement
(26:41):
as a way to build a sense of legal empowerment
within local neighborhoods. Continuing to work with our coalitions doing
anti displacement training, to do arts and cultural events around
these issues as a way to bring people together in
the neighborhood to build a both agency and voice. Again,
(27:04):
this question of is culture and art amid for our community?
Speaker 5 (27:09):
I guess in.
Speaker 9 (27:10):
East Boston these are really closely related things culture, community, organizing, creativity.
How that has shaped what it looks like again, maybe
different from the art that you see in a museum
or in a gallery. It's deeply rooted in poetry, local voices,
being able to tell a story about one's history, one
(27:34):
sort of sense of place, one sense of resilience in
being able to stay in neighborhoods. And these are closely
connected things in the East Boston community that we're working with.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Thank you to our guests. Rana Amir Tava Savii, Co
editor the Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning. Randy Egstrom,
former director of Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture. Doctor
David Falconley, Assistant professor at Morgan State University. Catherine Durga,
Director of Martis's art Bound program and Jules Rochelle Siebert,
artist and legal educator at Northeastern University.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
School of Law.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
This episode is based on the Next City webinar. You
can watch the full conversation by visiting nexcity dot org
slash webinars. Our audio producers Savanna Alcala, show producers Maggie Bowles,
our executive producers Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Fridley, Executive
director for Next City. By the way, Next City is
a news organization with a nonprofit model. If you like
what we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support
(28:42):
our work. Visit nexsity dot org slash membership to make
a donation. We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners.
Please feel free to email us at info atnexcity dot
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your podcasts, spies in sn
Strawhut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Most cultures around the world understand that arts and culture
is inherently connected to the health and well being of
the population. So it is never arts for the sake
of art, It is art for the sake of health.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
This is Lucas Grinley from Next City Show about change
makers and their stories. Truth is, there are solutions to
the problems of pressing people in cities. If you're listening,
I hope it's because you want to spread good ideas
from one city to the next city. In this episode,
we're looking at how culture is being used as a
tool for building equitable cities. It's part of a series
connected to the release of the Rutledge Handbook of Urban
(00:43):
Cultural Planning. All our guests today are contributors to the book,
and they're bringing practical examples from their own work. So
we'll hear from Randy Egstrom. He's the former director of
Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture, and he'll show us
how cultural strategies can guide downtown recovery. Doctor David Falconne
Morgan State University is here to talk about how storytelling
supports public health. Catherine durgra leads Martyr's Art Bound program
(01:07):
in Atlanta, and she'll share how art is changing the
transit experience. Plus, we have Jules Rochelle Siebert of Northeastern
University here to explain how cultural organizing is helping communities
in Boston resist displacement. So you're definitely gonna leave this
episode knowing what it looks like when cities plan with
culture at the center. To begin, here's Rana Amirta Massabi
and economic development and cultural planning strategists who's worked at
(01:29):
the World Bank and now leads at Park Urban Strategies.
She co edited the Rutledge Handbook with Jason Schupack of
Drexel University. By the way, Jason's also a former board
member with that city.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I usually work particularly with cities in developing countries or
in very poor communities where culture is not necessarily something
that is like the priority for the city builders. But
we're seeing that, like how nowadays culture is acting as
a software for development in addition to the hardware of development,
which is infrastructure, which is hospitals, which is housing. That's
(02:09):
one of the reasons we decided to do this book
because when Jason and I were students years ago, there
were basically a few books you can count in one
or two hands that address culture planning, and the field
has changed so much. This panel today speaks to one
of the themes that we explore in the book, and
that's how to plan with culture. It's one of the
(02:30):
things that emerged when I personally started working on this,
and I was quite surprised, pleasantly surprised that, you know,
we always as planners, we always try to plan for culture,
to how to include culture in different topics, but there's
a whole section of the book that it talks about
planning with culture.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
At the Center really Extreme teaches cultural policy and advocacy
at Seattle University. He's the former director of Seattle's Office
of Arts and Culture. When he first started working with
the city, the office had a staff of twelve people
with a seven million dollar budget. Then, with an emphasis
on cross sector work, they grew to forty five people
and a budget closer to forty five million.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
The chapter that I wrote with my dear colleague, doctor
Jasmine Mahmud, was around the eight pillars of cultural policy
in America, and we wrote that because we were well.
I spent nine years as the director of the Office
of Arts and Culture from the City of Seattle, a
job that has no sort of roadmap or graduate program
that prepares you for it. And so, in teaching the
(03:34):
Cultural Policy and Advocacy class in the MFA Arts Leadership
Program at Seattle University, where Jasmine and I taught together,
we thought this could be an instructive tool. What are
the eight interventions that the public sector uses to invest
in culture? And most local arts agencies at the local,
county or state level do some version of grant making,
(03:54):
public art festivals, cultural facilities, creative economy, racial racial equity,
or DEI creative placemaking, and arts education. In the summer
of twenty or the guess it was, Yeah, late summer
twenty twenty three, I was approached by the city because
they had done this large downtown activation plan because Seattle's downtown,
(04:16):
like many downtowns around the world, was still suffering sort
of the laughing impact of the pandemic, in particular the
lack of daily office commuters. And I think the way
I sort of described the state of all downtowns from
my experience locally and nationally is that basically most of
(04:37):
our downtowns are a version of Detroit in the early eighties,
except it's not disused auto factories, it's disused office towers.
I think remote work has forever changed the way in
which people will do their day to day jobs in
the same way emailed it, in the same way AAI
is about to. And so we're sitting on millions of
square feet of office space that probably will some of
(04:59):
it will be used, and there will still be a
need to convene, there will still be a need for
an office, but by and large, we're just not going
to have that vehicle to bring half a million people
into our city day to day. That's a that's just
a reality. The most inspiring time I spent in local
government was the first six weeks of the COVID pandemic.
Seattle was the first city hit they're speaking of times
(05:21):
with no roadmap. There was no roadmap, and the way
that I saw the city come together, cross sector to
try to meet the needs of the community was pretty inspiring.
And you know that was That's what I was thinking
about when the city reached out to my colleague Andy Fife,
and myself and my colleague Venuin. The three of us
together authored this plan. But the idea is given that
(05:43):
the conditions have changed in our center city. How might
we use cultural strategies to reimagine and revitalize our downtown.
I think that some of this is very unique to Seattle.
Some of it is applicable anywhere. We talked with ninety
five external stakeholders representing sixty six organizations in the downtown core,
and we reviewed ninety six reports, studies, article through our
(06:04):
document and field scan and that was the raw material
with which we attempted to leave a story, a set
of goals and strategies that could help transform the conditions
in our downtown. But the reason that we believe culture
could be this engine for civic transformation was based on
two historical precedents. One was in nineteen fifty two when
(06:25):
there was a Boeing boom. Amazon and Microsoft are not
the first companies to find themselves in Seattle and transform industry.
Boeen was having a moment in the early nineteen fifties.
They were hiring a lot and the Seattle was growing
really quickly, and there was a concern about how the
city would grow, and a group of artists and architects
and academics got together informally at first through something called
(06:45):
the Beer and Culture Society, and within a year that
group of people had grown into over one hundred members
and they formed the Allied Arts Foundation. The Allied Arts
Foundation would go on to save the pipe Place Market,
helped catalyze the word World's Fair in nineteen sixty two
to create the historic Pioneer Square District. So we have
this example of at a moment of growth, the creative
(07:08):
community shaping the trajectory of a city and protecting the
things that are important to it, like a pipe Place Market.
You've probably heard of pipe Place Market.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
It almost got.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Redeveloped, but Allied Arts and a lot of great civic
advocates helped stop that. We've also had examples of in
the worst of times, culture being a strategy by which
to transform conditions. And in nineteen seventy one Boeing had
a very different situation than they had in nineteen fifty
two and they laid off fifty thousand employees. There was
actually a sign on I five that said, with the
(07:37):
last person out of Seattle, please turn out the lights.
And it was in that year nineteen seventy one, the
thirty seven year old mayor Wes Ullman Commission chartered the
Seattle Arts Commission, our local arts agency that's now the
Office of Arts and Culture. And when they asked him
why he would chartered Arts Commission amidst the worst recession
in the city's history, he said, because we have to
give people hope. And I think those two what Seattle
(07:59):
finds itself in now is actually both of those realities.
We're still one of the fastest growing cities in America,
and we're still wrestling with the intractable problems that our
downtown is facing, everything from income inequality and houselessness, addiction, safety,
and a lot of that is driven by vacancy and
lack of affordable housing. So we talked to all these people,
we read all these reports, we looked at what other
(08:20):
cities around the country and around the world we're doing,
and we came up with these with these five goals.
One is a sense of alignment, which is really about
an organizing strategy. How do you create a cross sector
coalition that is sort of driven by a collective impact
model that can bring enough people together to advance change.
So that's like the first piece is around a sense
(08:41):
of alignment. There's a bunch of goals underneath that. The
second is around a sense of belonging. It's really about cultivating, shaping,
and amplifying a scenic narrative. What is the story that
we're going to tell the world about this place and
what is unique about where we are and how we
find ourselves. It also creates a sense of shared identity
and as a Seattle relatively young city, as the colonized city,
(09:02):
and so you know, it's got a lot of different
neighborhoods and a lot of different moving parts. The third
piece is around vibrancy, which is really how you experience
the public realm. It's about special events and festivals. It's
about storefront activation. Yes, it's about murals, and it's about pickleball.
It's about everything else. But really it's about strategic ways
to advance more public programming in more places, in ways
(09:23):
that feel authentic to the communities that they're located in.
The fourth bucket is around a sense of place, and
that's really thinking both about existing tools like cultural districts,
but also about more aggressive adaptive reuse of those office talents.
You know, artists live work housing is the only housing
that's legal in light industrial and commercial zones in Seattle.
(09:45):
There's also models like co ops and co housing communities
where you know, we're told that it's impossible to convert
these office buildings into traditional apartments. Maybe traditional is the problem.
Maybe we could look at them more as co housing communities,
more as artists live or studios. Anyway, that's what the
place is about. And then prosperity is really a lot
about economic and workforce development. We have an incredibly strong
(10:08):
cultural ecosystem, we have an incredibly vibrant creative economy, and
we have an incredibly robust tech economy. Can we bring
those three things under one tent and position Seattle as
the global leader of culture, creativity, and innovation. Those are
the goals, you know. I think a number of these
things move forward. A number of them didn't. It's a
complicated time in the world and in cities. We're all
(10:29):
facing the sort of budget uncertainty that's brought up about
by sort of national instability and sort of philanthropic concerns.
But a lot of it is moving forward, and even
whatever isn't moving forward could still do so. All of
these strategies are fairly evergreen, and most of them could
apply to most city centers in most cities in North America.
(10:50):
I really do believe in collective impact. That was part
of the first strategy around alignment, and I think collective
impact is an interesting organizing tool. We use it for
our arts education initial and we're able to restore arts
learning to Seattle Public schools over a span of about
a dozen years. And it's about having a shared north star,
but autonomous interrelated activities, so everyone doesn't have to walk
(11:11):
in lockstep. We just have to agree where we're walking.
And I think that could be a really powerful way
to organize different interests who have enough aligned value as
unperlign values, and enough aligned goals that we could really
transform our city through a broad and inclusive coalition. And then, finally,
in power of narrative, the power of story, the power
of naming who and how we want to be, how
(11:32):
we want to show up in the world, and what
it's going to take to get us there, and letting
that be something that can truly and authentically have people
see themselves reflective.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
After the break, will learn more about the role of narrative.
We're joined by a doctor, David Falconlay in Baltimore, who
argues that storytelling can be a tool for public health
and Community Safety. Welcome back. Before the break, we heard
from Randy Ekstrom about how Seattle is turning to culture
(12:11):
as part of its downtown recovery strategy. Next, we go
to Baltimore, where doctor David Faucinlay has developed a framework
called the Existential Determinants of Health. I love that. I
think you will too. Here's David.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
There's growing science and growing literature that shows arts and
culture is good for health. A lot of the work
is led by the University of Florida, the Center for
Arts and Medicine, with whom I'm very grateful to say
I used to teach there still have active connections and research,
and so the overall effort is to show that our
creative energy it's good for us mind, body, spirit, wallet,
(12:46):
and everything in between. Any dimension of health you want
to list, there's a way that arts and culture can
support it. And so when I discovered that and discovered
the Center for Arts and Medicine, it completely changed my
whole world. And that is really a foundation for what
EDIOH is. The existential determins of Health sounds like the
(13:07):
social determins of health.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
That's very, very intentional.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
For those who are not familiar with SDOH, it is
about the circumstances of life. To put it quite simply,
everything around you has a connection to your health and
well being. Where you live, where you work, your networks,
your relationships, everything is related to our health and well being.
So based off of that framework, I came up with
the existential determines of health. And it's not something I
(13:33):
intended to do. It is something to happen as a
result of life and the experiences of being my own
self as a human being, but also being yes, a
public health professional. And this is a framework and a
theory that I propose as something that.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
We can all hopefully relate to and understand.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And those components of the existential determins of health are acknowledgment, appreciation, respect, understanding,
and love. EDIOH was born as a concept and one
of its primary modalities is storytelling, something that we all
do is a universal art form.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
It allows us to share our voice.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Listening is just as important as telling a story, so
it is the end to the yang of storytelling.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
You cannot have one without the other.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And the whole point is that when we tell our stories,
it's mutually beneficial. With ETIOAHS as an initiative. We wanted
that to be the hallmark of what participants experience. Their
voice matters, their stories matter, They are worthy, and when
people listen to it, they can learn, they can change,
they can be transformed.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
But then we take those stories and use them as
opportunities to provide learning experiences. So we do bring in
content experts around these various dimensions of health and so
our aim is that the personal growth that participants will
engage in will lead to community impact, however they decide
to involve themselves. This was an initiative that was supported
(14:57):
by the Johns Hopkins University Innovation Fund for Community Safe.
They were concerned about making healthier communities focusing on criminal behaviors.
We wanted to focus on the circumstances that may lead
people to be victimized through violence and criminal activity, and
so we set it up as such that again we
were bringing in people who had some manifestation of trauma.
(15:17):
In this case, substance use.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Disorder and opioid use disorder was where we started with
the charm City Care Connection. We worked with over about
one hundred unique people, but ultimately came with a cohort
of fifteen. We did a second year, where we definitely
learned from our teachable moments in year one and started
to really kind of hone in on this cohort structure,
and again it culminated with a creative performance of the
(15:41):
collective story that the participants created during the experience. And
so we're grateful for the improvements that people experienced, and
the stories of what they said to us are the
most powerful evidence we could ever have.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Acknowledgment, appreciation, respect, unders standing, and love. Our access to
those make up our existential determinants of health. The art
support all of those determinants, and what David describes through
EDOH is one way we can better understand how arts
and culture directly supports health. But artists have always known
this was true.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
It usually doesn't take long when you listen to an
artist or a culture bearer to hear some element of
health and what they're saying and why they do what
they do.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
That's why I genuinely.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Believe that arts and culture as a field overall will
benefit greatly when it embraces its inherent connection to public health.
And that's something I didn't get until I became a
public health student.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
It became like a revelation. To me, it's everywhere. The
nature of public health is preventing things from happening.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And that's the argument that I certainly would make with
edio weights in any type of arts, culture and health work.
If done well, it stops things from happening. And ultimately
that's something that we as the taxpayer, will have to
pay for if we don't stop it before it happens.
People that do not have healthcare, yeah that's going to
(17:19):
get covered by somebody's usally gonna get covered by the
tax payer in some form of fashion. So to me,
the challenge for public health overall is we tend to
work in the background. We are moving the chess pieces,
so to speak, and yeah, that's not always sexy. So
if nothing happens, no one notices. But again, thanks to
public health, nothing happened. And so I think being able
(17:42):
to show that arts and culture is a valid, scientifically
proven modality by which a whole spectrum of public health
issues can be addressed, whether it's the issue itself, whether
it's certain populations, it will demonstrate and hopefully move you know, lawmakers, politicians,
whoever the case may be, out of this false narrative
(18:03):
that art is just for the sake of art.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
That is a Western approach.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I will say that most cultures around the world understand
that arts and culture is inherently connected to the health
and well being of the population. So it is never
art for the sake of art. It is art for
the sake of health. That's what makes the difference. People
may argue about the validity or the value of arts
and culture, but they will not argue the validity of
health and well being.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
After the break, Catherine Durger shares Harmarda is bringing art
and performance into Atlanti's transit system, and Jules Rochelle Seabert
explains how cultural organizing at the intersection of art and
law is helping Boston communities resist displacement. Welcome back today.
(18:51):
We're talking about what happens when culture is treated as
part of the core infrastructure of city building, not as
an afterthought. We've already heard how that idea takes you
in Seattle, where Randy Extreme describe cultural strategies for downtown recovery,
and in Baltimore, where doctor David Beckenlay is using storytelling
to support public health. Now we turn to Atlanta. Marta
is the region's public transit system, and through its art
(19:14):
Bound program, Catherine Derga has been bringing art and performance
directly into stations, which makes transit feel like part of
the community.
Speaker 7 (19:25):
In my essay for the Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning,
I talked about how the arts can widen the lens
of transit planning, and when we look through that wider lens,
we can see more.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
Than technical challenges.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Then, you know, I feel we can see opportunities for
community and for belonging and for identity. And so you know,
I'm leading Marda's public art program called art Bound, and
so I think that it allows us to see opportunities
for community building, for our ridership to feel like they belong,
for identity, and in Atlanta at least, the context.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
Is really unavoidable.
Speaker 7 (20:03):
MARTA has traditionally faced resistance to expansion into funding, but
today we're also struggling with ridership that hasn't fully bounced
back after the pandemic.
Speaker 8 (20:13):
So if we want transit.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
To grow and thrive, MARTA really has to be perceived
as an integral member of the community, and so culture
is one mode we can use to do that. We've
gone a little further by also looking at who is
representing Atlanta's culture through art Bound. The legacy program that
was established in nineteen seventy nine was comprised of thirty
eight artworks across each one of our stations, and it
(20:37):
represented eighty three percent white male artists. That's not any
way reflective of our current service area or the current
Metro Atlanta community.
Speaker 8 (20:47):
So we've been very intentional about shifting that balance, and.
Speaker 7 (20:50):
Our commissions today do more accurately mirror the demographics of
the region. Writers now encounter murals, installations by artists of color, women,
younger voices, and they see themselves reflected in these because
we do showcase each artists as the works come online,
and we celebrate the artists as much as the work
that they're doing. So that matters too, and that's another
(21:11):
piece of community that we're focusing on. And I feel
that when writers do experience their own culture reflected back
in a transit space or public space, they feel ownership
of it and they want that space to succeed, that
organization to succeed. Station Soccer is another cultural offering at MARTA.
This is a system of soccer fields at all several
(21:31):
of our stations where children can learn how to play
soccer and play as part of a league that doesn't
require high fees to participate. Their parents don't have to
drive them or arrange transport for them because the players
ride Marta together from school to attend the trainings and
the games.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
The kids immediately wanted their own mural and.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
I guess maybe the most accessible form of culture is
probably music. So local musicians have performed weekly in our
stations and the writers really enjoy it.
Speaker 8 (22:00):
Stress.
Speaker 7 (22:01):
It creates a sense of safety, it makes more of
just the stations feel welcoming, and it also provides Atlanta's
musicians with visibility with reliable income. More than one musician
has told me that being able to do, you know,
one gig a week at Marta has made it possible
for them to work solely as a professional musician to
pay their bills. But unfortunately, like a lot of cultural
(22:24):
offerings right now, this one became vulnerable to budget pressures
and so we're now working to pivot our musician program
to a tips based model. The music will still be there,
you know, writers will still stop and they'll get to
listen and connect, but the change in funding is telling,
you know, it shows that when culture isn't treated as
(22:46):
core infrastructure, it is the first thing to go. And
I think that's the larger lesson that culture isn't just decoration.
You know, if we want planning and policy and these
things to succeed, then culture has to be structurally embedded
into these things.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
Art Bound builds community across.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
Neighborhoods and neighborhood organizations, through safety projects, through inclusivity, and
through these everyday interventions. And that community building is what
helps make planning and policy succeed. So no, culture is
not an add on. I consider the arts.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
To be the connective tissue of city building.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Jules Rochelle Siebert is an artist and legal educator at
Northeastern University School of Law. Through their work with New
Law Lab, Jewels focuses on the intersection of art, advocacy
and law and how cultural organizing can help communities respond
to displacement. They contributed a chapter to the reutla Cham
Book of Urban Cultural Planning based on a case study
they've been tracking in East Boston since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 9 (23:50):
I have been working at Northeastern University School of Law
for thirteen years and I am an artist I'm not
a lawyer. We've been tracking this project for since twenty seventeen.
The Eastpos's Special Justice Lab is a collaboration between New
Law Lab, Maverick Landing Community Services, which is a multi
(24:12):
service housing development organization right in the heart of East Boston.
We've been working with local artists and community organizers since
this project's inception and before we started working with artists
in the space of law injustice in twenty thirteen. We
continued that work because we felt that culture. Culture is
(24:33):
a way that we can build agency in the face
of injustice or the way people experience injustice. So this
idea of how culture, you know, within the context of law,
and you know many people experience law is a type
of violence or silencing, or the way laws experienced in
(24:54):
communities that are actively being displaced. Culture allows us to
build agency and voice. So the East Boston Spacial Justice
Lab has been supporting and funding a series of local
gatherings or learning pods, sometimes artistic events, film nights, poetry nights, etc.
All activating voices and local agency around the space of
(25:16):
displacement and gentrification that happens in East Boston. We've shape
shifted our name several times, beginning with the pandemic, when
we were offering pandemic relief and artists came into that
space to help us build an infrastructure to deliver legal services,
to make sure that people could apply for a rental relief,
(25:39):
to make sure people were fed, and come together. Our
community partners and our activists in the neighborhood were really
important and central to that work. And moving forward to
the East Boston Spacial Justice Lab, again, arts and culture
is central to holding space for those voices of all
the individuals that we have collectively organized over the last
(26:00):
six years. You know, our funding did come from the
National Anowment for the Arts for the East bos and
Spatial Justice Lab, but also we received kind of a
product funding from the Kresky Foundation over across a number
of years, both to support our work with Maverick Landing
Community Services and also to launch a way to embed
(26:21):
residencies within the context of new Law lab bringing artists
into the space of justice. You know, we did lose
funding in the cutbacks from the NEA. We are supported
by the Melon Foundation to continue to build this work
moving forward in the next couple of years, looking at
using arts and culture as a way to fight displacement
(26:41):
as a way to build a sense of legal empowerment
within local neighborhoods. Continuing to work with our coalitions doing
anti displacement training, to do arts and cultural events around
these issues as a way to bring people together in
the neighborhood to build a both agency and voice. Again,
(27:04):
this question of is culture and art amid for our community?
Speaker 5 (27:09):
I guess in.
Speaker 9 (27:10):
East Boston these are really closely related things culture, community, organizing, creativity.
How that has shaped what it looks like again, maybe
different from the art that you see in a museum
or in a gallery. It's deeply rooted in poetry, local voices,
being able to tell a story about one's history, one
(27:34):
sort of sense of place, one sense of resilience in
being able to stay in neighborhoods. And these are closely
connected things in the East Boston community that we're working with.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Thank you to our guests. Rana Amir Tava Savii, Co
editor the Rutledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning. Randy Egstrom,
former director of Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture. Doctor
David Falconley, Assistant professor at Morgan State University. Catherine Durga,
Director of Martis's art Bound program and Jules Rochelle Siebert,
artist and legal educator at Northeastern University.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
School of Law.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
This episode is based on the Next City webinar. You
can watch the full conversation by visiting nexcity dot org
slash webinars. Our audio producers Savanna Alcala, show producers Maggie Bowles,
our executive producers Ryan Tillotson, and I'm Lucas Fridley, Executive
director for Next City. By the way, Next City is
a news organization with a nonprofit model. If you like
what we're doing here, please consider pitching in to support
(28:42):
our work. Visit nexsity dot org slash membership to make
a donation. We'd love to hear any feedback from our listeners.
Please feel free to email us at info atnexcity dot
org and if you haven't already, subscribed to the show
on Apple, Spotify, good Pods, or anywhere you listen to
your podcasts, spies in sn
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