Advancing Equitable Cross-sector Work in Metro-Atlanta
The ARC Community-Centered 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 communities that have faced barriers engaging with 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 a real-world community engagement project with a regionally-based community partner, Atlanta Harvest, and then connect and engage with local organizations and projects in their own communities. 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 under-represented communities.
This class is for:
CCD class participants will explore community issues around land stewardship, food sovereignty, and climate resilience by collaborating with Atlanta Harvest, a local organic farm and market serving the Atlanta community via Clayton County.
Co-facilitators Roshani Thakore and Rosten Woo hosted an information session on Friday, July 11 at 12p.m. EST. You can see the recording to learn more about this years class and the experience they are bringing into the work. View the recording HERE.
View the class schedule HERE.
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.
View our 2024 CCD Publication HERE
Learn about the 2024 community-engaged project with one of our community partners, The Village Skatepark ATL, on WABE.
Check out our coloring page we created for the Ke'nekt, another one of our community partners from, as well as a group photo of our cohort coloring!
This program is supported in part 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.
