Mayor Taveras to Host 2012 Senator Pell Lecture on Arts & Humanities at AS220

Annual event honoring the late Senator Claiborne Pell's commitment to the arts and humanities will feature expert panel discussing creative place-making

Mayor Angel Taveras, the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism, and AS220 will present the 2012 Senator Pell Lecture on Arts & Humanities on Thursday May 24 at 6PM at Pell Chafee Performance Center.

"Senator Pell recognized the great power of the arts and humanities to enrich our democracy and cultural life," said Mayor Angel Taveras. "His visionary leadership in support the arts and humanities continues to benefit our nation, and played an important role in making Providence one of the most artistic and vibrant cities in America and a nationally recognized hub of 21st century creative place-making activity."

The Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts and Humanities is a free event. Reservations are recommended, visit: as220.us/creative_providence to reserve your seat today.

The fourth annual lecture honors the late Claiborne Pell, who represented Rhode Island in the United States Senate from 1961-1997 and is best remembered for being a champion of education, the arts and humanities. The event is free and open to the public.

The 2012 event, Creative Place-making: Providence the Creative Capital, Fact or Fiction?, will be a conversation about the role of arts and culture as a tool for building strong communities, revitalizing neighborhoods, catalyzing economic activity, and fostering meaningful connections between people and places. The panel is comprised of noted national and local experts: Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, Jason Schupbach, Colin P. Kane and Manya K. Rubenstein.

The discussion will be moderated by Marc Levitt and will address many aspects of creative place-making in contemporary America, including the following topics:

• The correlation between arts and culture and dynamic urban communities
• Best practices for planning inclusive urban environments that improve local quality of life
• The relationship of cultural vitality and creative place-making to economic development including workforce development and job creation
• Providence as compared to other locations - the capital city's competitive advantages and challenges
  

Creative place-making is an approach to neighborhood development where public/private partners make investments in arts and cultural infrastructure, policies, and programs as a means to build urban vitality, animate public and private spaces, and rejuvenate structures and streetscapes. It is a process that brings diverse people together to ideate, create and celebrate the local character of a place. Communities across the nation are strategically shaping the physical, social, and economic environments around the arts and existing local assets to foster livable, sustainable, diverse places; to enhance quality of life; to increase creative activity and to promote a sense of place and healthy local economies.

Panelist Bios

Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center at the Urban Institute (UI) and director of UI's Culture, Creativity and Communities Program. Her research expertise includes neighborhood revitalization and comprehensive community planning, the politics of race, ethnicity and gender in urban settings, and the role of arts and culture in communities. Her projects in cities throughout the United States have explored the characteristics of place that lead to cultural vitality, the measurement of arts and cultural vitality and the integration of new topics into policies and programs concerned with quality of life.

Jason Schupbach manages the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) urban design initiatives, including the Mayors' Institute on City Design and the Our Town program. He previously served as the Creative Economy Industry Director for Massachusetts, where one of his primary focuses was the growth and support of all types of design businesses. Schupbach has also worked as Capital Projects Manager for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Director of Boston's ArtistLink, an organization that creates a stable environment for Massachusetts artists as they seek workspace and housing. From 2003 to 2007, Schupbach served as National Artist Space Initiative Consultant for Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) where he was the key editor for two reports from the Urban Institute on developing artist space.

Colin P. Kane is Chairman of the 195 Commission, a Rhode Island workgroup tasked with planning the redevelopment of 40 acres in downtown Providence created by the relocation of Interstate 195. Kane is also the lead partner at Peregrine Group, LLC, in charge of project transactional activities, project planning, asset acquisition and sales, leasing, financial analysis and debt/equity capitalization. Prior to helping found Peregrine in 2001, Kane worked as a Development Manager for Gilbane Properties. Kane currently serves as Admiral of the RI Commodores, appointed by Governor Lincoln Chafee. He served in the United States Navy as a guided missile destroyer division officer and Flag Lieutenant, is a combat veteran of Operation Desert Storm, a graduate of Harvard Business School, Georgetown University, and the US Naval Academy.

Manya K. Rubinstein is co-founder and publisher of Outpost Journal, an annual non-profit publication on art, design and community activism in smaller cities, as well as Bandit Consulting, an online marketing consultancy. Prior to that, she worked at Google for 3 years as a Senior Analytical Lead and before then at CondeNast, with stints at PAPER magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and CondeNet. She is currently an associate partner at Social Venture Partners RI, as well as an advisory board member for The Wooly Fair Art Carnival and the Institute of Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Rubinstein holds an MBA from Columbia University, an MA in media studies from the European Graduate School, and a BA in comparative literature from Brown University.

Marc Levitt, moderator, is a writer, storyteller, educator, radio and TV host, filmmaker and audio artist living in Wakefield, RI and NYC. Levitt has won awards for his story recordings, for work in his unique musical/narrative historical storytelling style, for his work in radio and for his work in the arts and in the humanities. A 1971 graduate of Cornell University, Levitt created the nationally recognized Charles Fortes Elementary School Museum-in-a-School Project and the educational philosophy called Site Specific Education. He is creative producer and host of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Rhode Island Council for the Humanities funded Action Speaks, Underappreciated Dates that Changed America, a 16 year old live panel discussion and radio show, presented at AS220 and heard in over 300 markets in the last two years, that looks at contemporary issues through the lens of history.

The 2012 Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts & Humanities is sponsored by RI Council for the Humanities; the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage; Regency Plaza Apartments; the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau; Durkee, Brown, Viveiros, Werenfels Architects; Barbara Sokoloff Associates; The Hotel Providence; and Trinity Repertory Theater.