Gallery

The Art of Collaborative Community Conversations – Bridging Divides

By Todd / June 2, 2022 /
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One of the most powerful things art can do for a community is to help make sense of what’s going on around us. Creating art is about sharing stories, expressing oneself, and offering fresh perspectives.  Q: What happens when you bring a diverse group of people together and invite them to be in conversation with…

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Art Connects Us All

By Todd / May 18, 2022 /
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In Spring 2020, Jackson County Missouri set out on an ambitious process to establish a strategic plan for arts and culture in the community. The process was designed to engage the diversity of the county – from race and ethnicity to socioeconomic differences and age to the urban core and unincorporated areas to artists and…

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Finding the Courage to Create

By Todd / December 1, 2021 /
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In March of 2020, I started participating in The Gaia Journey, a process and experience facilitated by The Presencing Institute.   This 3-month journey designed to bring people from around the world for communal sense-making during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, involved bi-weekly Zoom meetings with over 1,000 participants from all over the…

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Nurturing Collaborative Leadership Capacity to Advance a More Equitable Learning System

By Todd / August 26, 2021 /
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For the past 3+ years, I’ve been honored to facilitate and nurture a dedicated group of early learning collaboration leaders from across the state of Illinois.  What started as an open space for exploration and support led to leadership growth, strengthened early learning collaborations, and ongoing influencing of state policies that will impact the lives of…

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Open Communication with Government – Identifying Priorities for Racial & Ethnic Equality

By Todd / July 24, 2021 /
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Starting in 2020, The City of West Palm Beach (WPB) began an effort to help address issues of racial and ethnic inequality that exists in their community.  The mayor formed the Task Force for Racial and Ethnic Equality and hired Justice and Sustainability Associates (JSA) to manage the process.  A critical component of the effort was to engage the…

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DC Taxi Drivers Converge on Priorities for Industry

By Todd / March 24, 2021 /
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It’s always a pleasure to collaborate with our partners at Public Engagement Associates (PEA); we have worked together for over 20 years and we bring a lot of experience and capacity to the communities we work with.  Together we’ve worked with mayors and agencies within the District of Columbia to engage citizens and stakeholders in…

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What Makes Raymore Home? A Community Conversation

By Todd / February 23, 2021 /
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This is the 4th Community Conversation that we’ve collaborated on in Raymore, MO (population 20,000) since 2016.  The leadership of Raymore truly recognizes that involving its citizens in their planning processes is an on-going effort.  It’s great to work with Raymore city manager, Mike Ekey, and our collaborators at Kansas University Public Management Center again.…

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