First hour: How art can revitalize neighborhoods
Second hour: An RIT professor's lessons from a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan
The Community Design Center is launching its 2017 Reshaping Rochester Series, with a call for more civic engagement. The new season of events is titled "Our City, Ourselves: Loving Where We Live." The first event focuses on how to bring the arts to where they're needed most, to revitalize neighborhoods. We'll talk about how the arts are impacting Rochester neighborhoods, and we'll look at a successful endeavor in another city. Our guests:
- Maria Furgiuele, interim executive director for the Community Design Center of Rochester
- Helen Hogan, marketing and communications specialist
- Gina Renzi, executive director of The Rotunda, and director of the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence Program
Last May, RIT journalism professor Andrea Hickerson spent two weeks in Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a human rights delegation. This week, she published an op-ed explaining how that trip enhanced her view of the role of oil. Specifically, Hickerson says the trip has offered perspective on Donald Trump's choice of Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department. Tillerson is the CEO of ExxonMobile, a company that Hickerson says "has abdicated and exploited villages in Iraqi Kurdistan." Trump himself said of Tillerson, at a D.C. dinner last night, "He's led this charmed life. He goes into a country, takes the oil." We'll talk to Hickerson about what she saw on the ground, and how she feels the news media can better cover this issue.
