The ARC Culture and Community Design class helps planners, community-based organizations, local governments, and culture bearers to better understand each other’s perspectives. Each class collaborates and co-designs innovative, community-centered projects around regional land use and transportation challenges. Participants will practice creative community engagement methods, prioritizing marginalized communities that have been historically excluded from planning processes, to advance systemic change in our region.
Students will collaborate and network with local and national speakers, community influencers and other socially engaged creatives working on the forefront of creative civic engagement. Students gain experience by working on two real-world community engagement projects with locally based community partners. Students will leave the class with a fresh understanding of what creative community “co-design” really means and have a new network of like-minded individuals who are also seeking to engage and prioritize members of marginalized communities.
This class is for:
Co-facilitators Roshani Thakore and Rosten Woo hosted an information session on June 20th. View the recording to learn more about this year’s class and the creative engagement experience they both bring to the work.
Roshani Thakore (she/her) is a socially engaged artist and the director of community engagement and culture programming at ARC. She leads initiatives including integrating culture into long-range planning efforts and designing innovative and inclusive engagement practices that center under-represented voices in planning. Through her art practice, she has collaborated with social-justice organizations, universities, arts organizations, planners, incarcerated men, students, youth, older adults, and more. She is passionate about the intersection of art, organizing, and public spaces in Metro Atlanta.
Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles. He produces civic-scale artworks and works as a collaborator and consultant to a variety of grassroots, non-profit organizations, and local governments such as Los Angeles Poverty Department, the Black Workers Center, as well as the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. His work has also been exhibited internationally at art and design institutes as well as public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls and parks. Woo is also the co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, a New York Based non-profit organization and winner of the national design award for institution achievement, dedicated to using art and design to foster civic participation.
CCD class participants will explore community issues around mobility justice, collective ownership, and community preservation by collaborating with two Community-Based Organizations (CBOs): Village Skatepark ATL, a community space focused on mobility and design, and The Kɘ’nekt, a mutual-aid based cooperative space prioritizing Black community members and their local experiences.
The class will connect with The Guild, Los Vecinos de Buford Highway and Clarkston Community Center through site visits, field trips, and guest speakers.
Clarkston Community Center
Los Vecinos de Buford Highway
The Guild
the Kɘ'nekt
Village Skatepark
This program is supported in part by Fulton County and by Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency – the National Endowment for the Arts.
ARC’s Strategic Partners are committed to fostering collaborative regional approaches that improve quality of life in metro Atlanta. Their support elevates ARC leadership programs, research and events throughout the year. Learn more.
