Houston’s only live stream of Creative Time Summit on UH campus Oct 25 - 26

Center for Arts Leadership and Project Row Houses host screening, local version of international creative placemaking conference

Houston’s redevelopment efforts have increasingly incorporated artists and arts organizations.

Buzzwords like “creative placemaking” and “creative economies” circulate constantly in international philanthropic circles and policy chambers in recognition of the arts as a catalyst for economic development and a magnet for capital.

Locally, Discovery Green Park, Metro rail and bus stations, and newly designated arts districts are some of the most recent creative placemaking projects in Houston. Those efforts reflect an international trend to converge urban planning and arts and culture to revitalize city corridors, neighborhoods and public spaces.

To examine and expand Houston’s creative placemaking activity, the Center for Arts Leadership has partnered with the nonprofit Project Row Houses to present a live stream of the 2013 Creative Time Summit, “Art, Place and Dislocation in the 21st Century,” on Oct. 25 and 26.

“We hope to convene community members and students, artists and architects - to use this national broadcast to highlight some of the great things we do locally, as well as spark conversations on what else we could be doing,” said Sixto Wagan, director of the Center for Arts Leadership.

Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit that commissions and presents public arts projects. Since 2009, it has convened an annual summit of global public thinkers, artists, curators, and policy makers in New York City to explore the intersection of art making and social activism. This year’s conference tackles the ideas of creative placemaking.

“Art is an integral part of the viability of contemporary cities, and its implications are as complex as the cities themselves,” said Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s chief curator.

The University of Houston will be one of about 50 international sites to live stream the 2013 summit.

The on-campus presentation in the KIVA Room 101 of Farish Hall will be an opportunity for local creative placemaking practitioners provide opportunity to discuss and engage with peers and community members.

Local attendees will also have the opportunity to publish their reactions to themes from the Creative Time Summit on the Center’s website.

“Big thinking should lead to deep conversations,” Wagan said. “This is a good start to address a larger question of how artists and organizers can seize opportunities while still being responsible community members.”

Not far from campus, Project Row Houses has been using art to focus community redevelopment efforts for twenty years.

Project Row Houses Founder Rick Lowe will be a speaker at the 2013 summit, along with artists Vito Acconci and Mel Chin, architect Alfredo Brillembourg, and Detroit’s Heidelberg Project director Jenenne Whitfield.

The keynote addresses will be delivered by art critic and curator Lucy Lippard, writer and TomDispatch contributor Rebecca Solnit, and Harvard professor of Urban Theory Neil Brenner.

The Houston Screening of the live stream will take place in Kiva Room 101 of Farish Hall on Friday, October 25 from 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday, October 26 from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

For more information about the Center for Arts Leadership, visit www.uh.edu/class/ctr-arts-leadership. Information about the Creative Time Summit is in the News and Events section.