From cultural districts to arts-led disaster response, to artists serving as civic leaders, this conversation will examine how the arts work to reimagine and rebuild the social and physical infrastructure of our communities and what policy and funding mechanisms are needed to sustain and grow culture-centered civic collaboration. 

A panel of leaders and innovators from around the state will explore a number of questions: Can cultural districts act as a mechanism for community building and cultural placekeeping? As our communities face crises from pandemics to wildfires and earthquakes, what role can artists and arts organizations play in disaster preparedness? With a historic infrastructure package passed, how can the arts access the funding coming to our communities and how can we be better integrated into community planning and development. And what is the role of a cultural strategist in public policy? 

With this conversation, Californians for the Arts hopes to identify what is next for creative placemaking/placekeeping and what is required to further embed the creative workforce into the design, creation and success of our communities.  

Panelists:

• Roberto Bedoya, Cultural Affairs Manager, City of Oakland

• Vanessa Whang, Senior Program Consultant, Cultural Strategists-in-Government

• Matthew Kowal, Majestic Collaborations, The Art of Mass Gathering

• Mikey Goralnik, Community Design and Development Planner, County of Mariposa, CA

• Scott Oshima, Director of Community Arts, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center

Moderator:

• Erik Takeshita, Interim Director, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council

Panelists Bios

Roberto Bedoya, City of Oakland, Cultural Affairs Manager

Roberto Bedoya is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland where he shepherded the City's Cultural Plan. - 'Belonging in Oakland: A Cultural Development Plan'. Through-out his career he has consistently supported artists-centered cultural practices and advocated for expanded definitions of inclusion and belonging in cultural sector. His essays‚ ”Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging,” ; “Spatial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City‚” and “Poetics and Praxis of a City in Relation” has reframed the discussion on cultural policy to shed light on exclusionary practices in cultural policy decision making. He is the recipient of the United States Artist 2021 Berresford Prize.

Vanessa Whang currently is the design and operational lead of the Cultural Strategists-in-Government program, a partnership of the City of Oakland's Cultural Affairs Division with the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation. This experimental program, piloted in 2018, places artists/cultural practitioners into a wide variety of departments across the City of Oakland as strategic thought partners to promote transformational change in government to advance equity and belonging for all communities in Oakland. She is also the lead designer for the grantmaking program, A Just City Cultural Fund, a unique public-private funding partnership of Oakland's Cultural Affairs Division, the Akonadi Foundation, and East Bay Community Foundation to support BIPOC artists/cultural practitioners to spark radical imagination and create new narratives and tools for building a just and equitable Oakland. The lead consultant and author of the City of Oakland’s cultural development plan, Belonging in Oakland, Whang collaborated with Cultural Affairs Manager Roberto Bedoya, with input from Oakland communities, to create a new foundational role for cultural equity in the work of city government. She currently serves on the boards of The Whitman Institute (a funder and advocate for trust-based philanthropy) and the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (a cross-cultural training center for youth in Richmond, CA).

Matthew Ché Kowal, Co-Founder at Majestic Collaborations

Matthew Kowal is co-founder of Majestic Collaborations, whose mission is to empower communities to address environmental and humanitarian concerns with art, culture, design, and planning. Over his career, Kowal has presented 100+ festivals raising $5M for community organizations. Thanks to his guidance, one million attendees have celebrated bicycle culture/art/music while prioritizing gender/diversity/equity in talent booking and leadership. His festival’s solar/bio-power/water/waste programs remain state-of-the art. He is a Performing Arts Readiness emergency preparedness consultant for disaster planning and staff training. He has developed multiple hands-on skill-sharing symposia, including “Creative Resilience: The Art of Mass Gatherings,” bringing together event production experts, artists, and agencies to practice advanced planning, networking and resourcing to serve vital roles in disaster response and recovery. His collaborations with artists, community partners, and national media outlets have made sustainability, accessibility, and safety communications memorable across nationwide initiatives. Emmy-Nominated as an Executive Producer of the Virtual Five points Jazz Festival. His “whole community approach” for disaster and extreme event preparedness trains and redeploys our creative sectors in support of community response and recovery, rather than shuttering their operations in times of emergency.

Mikey Goralnik, Community Design and Development Planner, County of Mariposa, CA

With backgrounds in both community planning and landscape architecture, Mikey applies a broad skillset to articulate and implement bold ideas for building community and enriching the lives of the people who live there. He is the Senior Community Design and Development Planner at the Mariposa (CA) County Planning Department, where he manages a range of interdisciplinary planning and design initiatives, all of which seek to blend ecological design, economic development, public health, and storytelling to nurture and build community.

Scott Oshima, Director of Community Arts at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center

Scott Oshima (they/them) is the Director of Community Arts at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center and a yonsei/fourth-generation Chinese Japanese American artist and organizer. With 15 years of experience in community arts nonprofits, they use community-driven and arts-based strategies to advocate for cultural sustainability and equitable development in Los Angeles’ communities of color. Scott has presented at national conferences and convenings, such as People & Places, ArtPlace Summit, Western Arts Alliance, and Arts for LA’s State of the Arts Summit, and has written for the forthcoming ArtChangeUS FUTURE/PRESENT, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Journal, Orlando, X-TRA, and more.

Erik Takeshita, Interim Director, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council

Erik Takeshita is passionate about supporting the development of stronger BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of color) and rural communities and has worked from the neighborhood to the national level. He currently serves as the interim director of the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. Recent roles include: senior fellow for ArtPlace America; portfolio director for Creative Community at the Bush Foundation which included working with partners from Grand Rapids to Grand Marais to support BIPOC and rural communities; and director of creative placemaking for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), one of the nation’s largest community development financial institutions. He also co-led the Creative Community Leadership Institute in the Twin Ports, a nationwide effort to support community-based organizations with resources to integrate art and culture into comprehensive community development efforts. Takeshita has served as president of Springboard for the Arts in St. Paul, and currently serves on the boards of the F.R. Bigelow Foundation and OF/BY/FOR ALL. Takeshita was trained as a ceramic artist and holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.