Featuring STEAM Member Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller
Creative placemaking remains an important arena for debate as consequences emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Formerly used to describe how the cultural and creative industries could assist in urban regeneration, creative placemaking is criticized for paying too little attention to inequality and too much attention to narrowly prescribed definitions of creativity. The massive upheaval caused by the global pandemic is disrupting presumptions that shaped placemaking and opens space for reconsidering what placemaking is and could be.
This symposium contributes to the emerging debates about creative placemaking by attending to the role and responsibility of universities in shaping place. On the one hand, universities have a significant footprint as land developers, employers, and community partners. In this sense, universities have always leveraged the power of place by marketing their campuses and surrounding cities as attractive lures for students, scholars, and investors. On the other hand, universities are part of a massive two-year global experiment in reconceiving spatiality: physical distancing, online classes, flexible work, and budget models that construct internal markets for campus space are all posing questions about how universities will consume space in the years ahead.
At this crucial juncture when cities are confronting the limits to justice and equity that the pandemic exposed, this symposium asks how universities will position themselves relative to the orthodox economic ideals of creative placemaking. Has the pandemic affected the way universities relate to the places where they are embedded, and will new ethics of equity and justice be enacted by universities and community groups they partner with?
In order to build a working document of best practices, basic concerns, open questions, and opportunities at the juncture between the university and creative placemaking, this symposium brings together voices from community organizations in Pittsburgh, from academic research on creativity and urban policy, and from University of Pittsburgh administration.
This event is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh's Year of Creativity Initiative.
Session 1
11:00-11:05: Welcome and Overview of Session 1 from Michael Glass
11:05-11:10: Introductions by David Marshall
11:10-12:10: What is creative placemaking? Responses from Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller, Christiane Leach, Oli Mould, Henry Reese, janera solomon, David Wilson
12:10-12:20: Writing Prompt 1: How do these accounts of creative placemaking fit with what you imagine creativity to be and with how cities are using creative placemaking?
12:20-12:35: Open Discussion
Lunch Break
Session 2
2:00-2:30: Observations on Writing Prompt 1 from Caitlin Bruce and Kirk Savage and open discussion
2:30-2:35: Welcome and Overview of Session 2 from David Marshall
2:35-3:35: What roles can and should universities play in such creative placemaking? Responses from Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller, Christiane Leach, Oli Mould, Henry Reese, janera solomon, David Wilson
3:35-3:45: Writing Prompt 2: What opportunities, responsibilities, and/or challenges do you see for universities in creative placemaking?
3:45-4:00: Open Discussion
Coffee Break
Session 3
4:15-5:00: Observations on Writing Prompt 2 from Michael Glass and David Marshall followed by open discussion
