This first session will outline the definition of creative placemaking within Pittsburgh’s public realm. Guest speaker Njaimeh Njie will provide an overview of her experience working on Homecoming: Hill District, USA.

Artist Edith Abeyta will be in conversation with filmmaker Tony Buba and Judy Barricella. Buba and Barricella worked together as a team on the film Small Differences,and on Voices of Our Region, an oral history project featuring 57 first-person stories from Western Pennsylvanians living with disabilities.

This session will be an interactive, dynamic process to define equity within the context of cultural work, challenges in regard to achieving it, and tools needed for building it.

For this session, Joseph Claunch will be presenting on Ho'n A:wan Community Park, in conversation with lead artist Daryl Shack, and the important role that community artists and culture-bearers played in the design of the park.