A UC Regents Lecture by Mallory Rukhsana Nezam
This lecture is open to the public. Admission is free, but registration is required for each attendee. RSVP HERE
5:45 p.m. Check-in & Reception
6:30 p.m. Lecture
Arts and culture strategies in urban planning are evident around the country, with creative placemaking becoming a buzzed-about practice. Planning activities like cultural planning and cultural economic development similarly interact with art and culture, especially when produced in collaboration with creative people embedded in communities who help translate complex information in culturally relevant ways. Planners themselves bring so much creativity, and this talk will explore this context, focusing on how planners and planning departments may evolve their practices around creativity and imagination to deepen their work and foster equity.
About the Speaker
Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes they have the tools to become more just and joyful. Her practice, Justice + Joy, engages stakeholders across sectors to de-silo the way cities are run and build new models for creative, interdisciplinary collaboration. Rukhsana Nezam earned a master’s of design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she began research on artist residencies in government. She is co-founder of a lab focusing on embedding artists in government, CAIR Lab (Civic Artists in Residence), and is currently a senior cultural policy fellow with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, exploring a national platform for collaboration between the public sector and the arts. She has helped build arts and culture teams at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston, Transportation for America and PolicyLink. Raised in Missouri, she is the founding director of St. Louis Improv Anywhere, a performance art collective.
Part of the Transformative Action series:
Information is powerful only when it’s in a form that can guide achievable change. This year, the Luskin School is highlighting innovators — here and elsewhere — turning vision into reality and producing Transformative Action.
PARKING and TRANSIT
Public transportation: Big Blue Bus (Routes 2 and 17), Culver CityBus (Line 6), Metro
Ride hailing locations: Gateway Plaza, Luskin Conference Center
Lot 8 Parking: Self-parking is available in UCLA Parking Structure 8, Level 4, directly across the street from the center: 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
Parking Rates at Pay-By-Space stations – All day: $15, After 4pm: $3-5 (1-2 hours), $10 (all night)
Pay-By-Space only has a limited number of stalls available.
Land and Labor Acknowledgement
As a land grant institution, UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands) and are grateful to have the opportunity to work for the taraaxotam (Indigenous peoples) in this place. We pay our respects to Honuukvetam (Ancestors), elders, and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.
We hold sacred the labor of enslaved Africans and immigrants, often exploited, indentured and underpaid, that built and continue to serve our institutions of higher education. We honor the labor and resistance of these ancestors, acknowledge that we benefit from this land and labor, and strive to work towards liberation for all.
