Art in Public Space with Mallory Rukshana Nezam- Ep 20
This week on First Coat we have Mallory Rukhsana Nezam. Mallory is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more just and joyful. She specializes in public art, creative placemaking/keeping/knowing, organizational development, strategic planning, facilitation and the public domain. Through her cross-sector practice, Justice + Joy, she engages stakeholders across sectors to de-silo the way we run cities and build new models of creative, interdisciplinary collaboration.
In this episode we talk about using play and absurdity to create connections in public space, embedding artists into the process of city making, and how to use art and culture as a tool for transportation justice and equitable development.
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LINKS
CAIR Lab with Amanda Lovelee and Johanna Taylor
Guest | Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, Cross-Sector Culture Maker
Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more just and joyful. She specializes in public art, creative placemaking/keeping/knowing, organizational development, strategic planning, facilitation and the public domain. Through her cross-sector practice, Justice + Joy, she engages stakeholders across sectors to de-silo the way we run cities and build new models of creative, interdisciplinary collaboration. She has helped build inaugural arts & culture teams in non-arts organizations at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston, Transportation for America and PolicyLink. Raised in St. Louis, MO, she served as the Founding Director of St. Louis Improv Anywhere, and co-founder of the St. Louis Artivists. Through her art practice she disarms and disrupts public space norms using play and participatory performance. She holds a Master of Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and her research focuses on the racial equity impacts of artists residencies in local government. She is a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow, was a 2019-2020 inaugural Practices for Change Fellow at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute of Design & the Arts and is currently the Curator of Partnerships and Programs for FORWARD, a publication by Forecast Public Art. She seeks to be in every room she’s not supposed to be in.
Find Mallory on Instagram @nezombie, on Twitter at @activatethecity and on her website at mallorynezam.com.
Your Host | Stephanie Eche, CEO & Founder of Distill Creative
Stephanie Eche is an artist and art consultant based in Brooklyn, NYC.
Follow Stephanie on Instagram (@distillcreative or @stephanie_eche), Twitter (@stephanie_eche), YouTube (Distill Creative), LinkedIn, and check out her art website.
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