For twenty years, James Rojas and John Kamp have been using art, creative expression, and storytelling to re-envision the outdated community meeting structure.
James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, educator, and artist who runs the planning, model-building, and community-outreach practice Place It!. Through Place It!, he has developed an interdisciplinary, community-healing, visioning, and outreach process that uses storytelling, objects, art-production, and play to help improve the urban-planning outreach process. He is now an international expert in public engagement and has traveled around the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe, and South America, facilitating over 500 workshops, and building over 100interactive models. His research has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Dwell, Places, and in numerous books. Relevant areas of expertise include using model-building as a means of community and planning outreach; working with underserved, disadvantaged communities and bringing overlooked voices to the planning discussion; making the physical form of cities relevant to broad audiences; and understanding how immigrants—especially Latino immigrants—see and understand urban and suburban space in the US and why they oftentimes reshape those forms in the ways that they do.
John Kamp runs the landscape, design, and engagement practice Prairieform. He has developed innovative tools to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in urban and landscape design, transportation, walkability, climate change, and water conservation. Frequently collaborating with Rojas, and building off of his 15 years of experience in landscape and urban design/build, he is able to translate findings from Place It!'s community-engagement workshops and trainings into designs for inclusive and livable streets and neighborhoods that leave room for all residents to improvise and help create amore welcoming public realm.
