Drawn Together: Radical Creativity for Civic Spaces

Shepherding in a new world requires a deep understanding of community needs and motivations through leadership and design models that center care, co-creation, and joy. Amidst the context of an ever-changing civic landscape, we have the opportunity to reimagine governance. While we ask ourselves, “How did we get here?” there’s also an opportunity to ask ourselves, “Did we listen enough?” This panel — featuring Deanna Van Buren, co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture firm committed to ending mass incarceration; and Brittni Chicuata, director of economic rights at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission — addresses the reimagination of civic design across scales, in the hopes of imagining new models of governance where everyone belongs.

Prior to the 7 p.m. panel, from 6–6:45 p.m., join an intimate workshop exploring the themes of the conversation.

About the Panelists

Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds infrastructure that address its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Van Buren has been profiled by The New York Times and has written op-eds on the intersection of design and mass incarceration in outlets such as Politico, Architectural Record, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her TEDWomen talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times. She is the only architect to have been awarded the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship, and she is also the recipient of UC Berkeley’s Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize and Professorship. Van Buren received her BS in architecture from the University of Virginia and her MArch from Columbia University, and she is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Brittni Chicuata is the director of economic rights at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Her work focuses on policies and programs to eliminate wealth disparities, build economic equity, and uplift economic opportunities that improve quality of life for the most marginalized in San Francisco. Her policies have provided guaranteed income payments for Black mothers in San Francisco, improved housing protections, developed standards for citywide racial equity and cannabis, and supported the local, state, and national reparations movements. Her past experience includes working as a legislative aide for Supervisor Malia Cohen, serving as campaign manager for Malia Cohen’s historic campaign for California Controller, and as government relations director at the American Heart Association, where she successfully led first-in-the-nation campaigns. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Macalester College and a Master of Arts in Public Policy from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance.

Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
 

Programming for Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is made possible with support from Google.org.