Nance Klehm
Nance Klehm’s work and being lies at the complex intersections of the theory and practice of land politics and soil health. Her work as a communicator, translator, curator, translator, provocateur, and medium is internationally recognized in communities of practice ranging from publishing to fine art, environmental justice activism to philosophy, growing to radio. She lives her work—she writes, facilitates, lectures, teaches, consults, makes, and does.
Jim Walker
Jim Walker is an artist, poet, and teacher. He works as executive director of Big Car Collaborative, a nonprofit arts organization based in Indianapolis, Indiana. At Big Car, which he helped found, Walker leads the nonprofit’s place- and community-based socially engaged art approach to supporting inclusive, creative, and welcoming public spaces. Jim and Big Car lead a utopian project on one city block that includes the contemporary art museum and gathering place, a space for sound art and Big Car’s community FM radio station, and 16 long-term affordable homes for artists. This is all in the neighborhood where he and his family have lived for more than 20 years.
Curt Meine
Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer based in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature, Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over the last three decades, he has worked with a wide array of organizations at the intersection of biodiversity conservation, agriculture, water, climate change, environmental justice, and community resilience. Meine has authored and edited several books, including the award-winning biography Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (1988, 2010) and The Driftless Reader (2017). He served as on-screen guide in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time (2011). In his home landscape, he is a founding member of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance.
Confluence Studio
An artist, writer, and educator, Sam Gould co-founded the artist collaborative Red76 (2000 - 2015). Following Red76, he established the neighborhood-based platform Beyond Repair, a collaborative that looks past the rhetoric of “people and places that need fixing.” As a platform for Beyond Repair, Gould co-founded Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design. Gould was a founding faculty member within the graduate department for Social Practice at the California College of the Arts, the first such department to be established in the United States, as well as a full-time visiting professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has lectured extensively within the United States and abroad at institutions such as Harvard University, the New Museum, and SF MoMA; held residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Luminary, Villa Montalvo, and elsewhere; and has had projects commissioned by institutions such as Creative Time, the Walker Arts Center, Printed Matter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and many others.
John Kim is an artist, activist, writer and educator. He creates work about the environmental and social history of the Mississippi River Valley, the river as an interconnected ecological and cultural corridor (a “Fourth Coast”), and ways to digitally represent the environment for public education. John has published widely, including a book, Rupture of the Virtual (2016); journal articles; and other print publications. He has also exhibited interactive art, sculpture, video games, and software in galleries and festivals around the world. With his art design group, Futures North, John creates work at the intersection of environmental representation and data spatialization.
Duaba Unenra is a cultural worker and community organizer based in Minneapolis. His work draws upon critical theories of identity and African Diasporic and Indigenous ways of knowing to repurpose the culture of the academy into engaging learning experiences which aim to advance collective liberation and deepen the radical imagination. He has also produced and hosted cultural events for people in Black, Indigenous, and Anti-Marginalization movements focused on healing and reconnecting to legacies of resistance. He is a co-founder of Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design.
Public Space 1 (PS1)
Jeremy Chen is a former board member of Public Space One and currently on the PS1 gallery team. He is an artist and educator who teaches at Grinnell College, where he is an Assistant Professor of Art and chair of American Studies.
John Engelbrecht is an artist, arts organizer, educator, and Executive Director of Public Space One (PS1).
Kalmia Strong is an arts organizer, artist, bookmaker, and educator, and has worked collaboratively for almost a decade to instigate and sustain experimental, community-driven, and cooperative art practices and resources as Program Director at Iowa City's Public Space One.
Kimi Kitada
Kimi Kitada is a curator based in Kansas City, MO. Currently, she is the Jedel Family Foundation Curatorial Fellow at Charlotte Street Foundation, where she organizes exhibitions and public programs. Previously, she was Curatorial Assistant at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019-2020). From 2014 to 2018, she served as Public Programs & Research Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York. Her recent exhibitions include: Moving in Place at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City (2022); With Liberty and Justice at Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City (2021); where we came from & where we are going at Transformer, Washington DC (2019); and reset at Garis & Hahn, New York (2016). She co-curated Postscript: Correspondent Works at artQ13, Rome (2015); 7×8 Curatorial Conversations at Budapest Art Market, Hungary (2013); and (in)complete at TEMP Art Space, New York (2013). Kitada received a BA in Art History and Classics from Bucknell University and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU.
Talking Dolls
The mission of Talking Dolls is to empower our northeast Detroit neighborhood through justice-focused initiatives. We create a nexus of progressive art and community-led activism through access to our shop, artist studios, and gallery space for workshops, performances and celebration. It is led by co-directors Wes Taylor, Ron Watters, and Andrea Cardinal.