Kansas City Art Institute Professor and artist Karen McCoy converses with City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Manager and creative placemaking thought leader Roberto Bedoya about how imagination and policy influence each other. Q&A immediately follows the presentation.
Space is limited and registration is required; please register on Eventbrite. Tickets are $5 which includes lunch. Free parking is available.
About Roberto Bedoya:
Roberto Bedoya has consistently supported art-based civic engagement projects and advocated for expanded definitions of inclusion and belonging throughout his career. As executive director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC), he established the innovative P.L.A.C.E (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) Initiative to support artist initiatives in Tucson, Arizona. Bedoya’s tenure as executive director of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO) from 1996 to 2001 included serving as co-plaintiff in the lawsuit Finley vs. NEA. His essays “U.S. Cultural Policy: Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential” and “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging” reframed the discussion on cultural policy to shed light on exclusionary practices in cultural policy decision making. Bedoya is also a poet, whose work has appeared in numerous publications, and an art consultant, with projects for Creative Capital Foundation, the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Urban Institute. Roberto Bedoya currently works for the City of Oakland, where he was hired as the City’s first Cultural Affairs Manager in 2016.
About Karen McCoy:
Karen McCoy’s primary work has been large-scale, sited environmental sculpture based on extensive research into the geological, cultural and social histories of each site. She also works in video and photography and makes drawings and prints. She was awarded the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship for a distinguished residency. In 2003, she was selected as lead artist for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial ArtCorps project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited around the country. McCoy has taught at KCAI since 1994, serving as chair of the department from 1994 to 2003 and as acting chair in 2010-11. She earned an M.F.A. degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.
This presentation is part of Honoring History + Place, a public engagement series designed to engage the general public, arts and business communities, and civic agencies about creative placemaking in Kansas City. Honoring History + Place is an initiative of the West Bottoms Reborn project that's supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town grant, with special event funding support by the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund (NTDF) program. Project partners include the Kansas City Design Center; Kansas City, Missouri Office of Culture & Creative Services; Historic West Bottoms Association; Kansas City, Missouri Planning Department; KC Water; Unified Government of Wyandotte County, Kansas; Artists Miranda Clark, Carmen Moreno, and James Woodfill.
For more information, please visit www.kcdesigncenter.org or contact info@kcdesigncenter.org.