Reframing Art | Reclaiming Place: Transforming A Liquor Store into an Artspace

Recorded On: 09/17/2020

About this Webinar

September 17, 2020 at 3:00 PM EST

How can communities activate vacant storefronts using arts and culture? What barriers might they encounter and how can they overcome them? How can arts and culture projects in vacant storefronts fit into wider community economic development strategies? In this engaging workshop, Linda Steele will share her experience bringing a vacant storefront and other spaces to life using arts and culture. She will share challenges, how they came to solutions, and how these efforts contributed to a larger community economic development goals.

Participants will learn:

Learn 3 ways communities can activate vacant storefronts using arts and culture
Learn how community members have successfully navigated challenges to activate vacant storefronts and spaces using arts and culture.
How communities activate vacant storefronts with arts and culture as part of a wider neighborhood revitalization effort to achieve multiple community economic development goals.

Linda Steele

Founder + CEO, ArtUp

Linda Steele is the Founder and CEO of ArtUp, an idea incubator and business accelerator that breaks down barriers to the creative economy; nurtures ideas that drive social change; and launches artists into creative entrepreneurship.

ArtUp initially began as an idea during Steele’s leadership as Chief Engagement Officer at ArtsMemphis. Accomplishments during her tenure include creating an arts-based community development grant portfolio, the Engagement Transforms Communities (ETC ) grants, and launching a Community Engagement Fellowship to build the capacity of Memphis artists and neighborhood leaders in the field. She is the visionary and driving force behind the transformation of an abandoned storefront and former liquor store into an art gallery and community flex space called OMG in Orange Mound, Memphis, Tennessee.

This work has allowed her opportunities to present on creative placemaking and the power of arts, creativity, and innovation to revitalize disinvested communities at conferences and workshops across the country and around the world.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Linda has used her entrepreneurial expertise in the past to help open the first arts-based private pre-school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She has served in leadership positions at Urban Gateways: Center for Arts Education, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Cool Culture, Inc., and has an extensive background in youth development and education. She is a graduate of both Amherst College and Harvard University. Her work at ArtUp and ArtsMemphis has received numerous honors and
awards including: the inaugural Robert E. Gard Award from Americans for the Arts; a 2016 and 2017 Artworks grant from The National Endowment for the Arts; membership in the 2016-17 PlaceLab Salon Sessions in Chicago, Illinois; and selection as a 2017-18 member of NEW INC in New York City, the first museum-led incubator dedicated to supporting innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship across art, design, and technology. Steele is the host of The Artivism Podcast on The OAM Network where she interviews artists, musicians, activists, and creatives who work at the intersection of art and social activism.

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/lindapsteele

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