Designing for Dignity 3: A Convening of Possibilities

Katherine Darnstadt is the founder of Latent, an architecture and urbanism firm exploring the influence of design as small or as large as the context allows, in the search of social and spatial justice. Since founding Latent in 2010, Darnstadt and her firm have pursued projects at the bench, building, and block scale across Chicago and the Midwest. They have prototyped new urban design systems to advance urban food access with Forty Acres Fresh Market, supported over 200 small businesses through Boombox micro retail popup program, designed new community centers with Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago, designed new affordable housing as part of two Invest South/West teams, and created community design frameworks through cofounding the nonprofit Design Trust Chicago. Darnstadt creates spaces for people to tell their story and thrive. She and the firm have been published, exhibited, and featured widely, most recently as part of the Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices, RIBA’s 100 Women: Architects in Practice, and The Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice for Small Firms in the Midwest. Darnstadt previously taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Nadia Elokdah is an urbanist and design strategist with more than a decade working at the intersection of public systems and cultural practice. She currently serves as Vice President & Director of Programs at Grantmakers in the Arts. Most recently, she served as special projects manager with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, coordinating the city’s monuments commission. Prior, she served as coordinator in the development of the city’s first cultural plan, CreateNYC, in which she coordinated and led hundreds of engagements with a broad cross-section of the public, as well collaborating in the writing and production of the plan. She is devoted to civic engagement through culturally responsible, inclusive, and equitable design practice, exemplified in collaborations with the International Design Clinic, in.site collaborative, and Monuments Lab. Elokdah is a trained architect and designer, researcher, professor, and published author, including of Identity Crisis, a cultural exploration of urban planning through the hammam. She currently serves as steering committee member of the Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA) Non-Black POC Solidarity! into Action Committee, the National Coalition for Arts Preparedness & Emergency Response (NCAPER) Programming Working Group, and is an advisory board member for Unsettled.

Ghian Foreman is the President and CEO of the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, which generates community wealth and amplifies local culture through shared pride, power, and investment for Chicago’s mid-South Side. Emerald South attracts and coordinates investment through community convening and collaborative partnerships that increase local ownership and prosperity. Foreman is also the Managing Partner of the Washington Park Development Group, a real estate development firm focused on traditionally underserved urban markets. In this capacity, he has been responsible for over $50 million in investments and development. Foreman sits on several boards, including the Chicago Rehab Network, Hyde Park Art Center, and previously served as President of Chicago Police Board. Most recently, Foreman joined Chicago Booth as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Strategy.

Cate Fox is the Director of AmbitioUS. AmbitioUS is the Center for Cultural Innovation’s national pooled fund program that invests in alternative economic paradigms and fresh social contracts in ways that artists and cultural communities can achieve financial freedom. Prior to joining CCI, she spent nine years at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation leading and co-leading arts and institutional grantmaking; participating in and advising interdisciplinary initiatives that center artists and creatives as change-makers; and supporting the Foundation’s racial and economic justice work. Additionally, she brings more than a decade of experience in nonprofit consulting, strategic planning, and fundraising. She is a board member of Mudlark Theater Company, where her children perform. Fox is a creative writer, trained mediator, and nonprofit nerd.

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates’s artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism and Animism, most notably honoring the “spirit within things.” Foundational to Gates’s practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones. Gates has exhibited and performed at the Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra, Portugal (2024); The LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2023, 2024); The New Museum, New York, (2022); The Aichi Triennial, Tokoname (2022); The Serpentine Pavilion, London (2022); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013 and 2021); Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Palais de Tokyo Paris, France (2019); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012). Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including a Doctorate of Arts from Knox College (2025); the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025); Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Buildings Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

Nu Goteh is a designer, strategist, and educator who envisions and designs conditions for people to lead affirming, beautiful lives. As Founder and Principal of Room for Magic and Co-Founder, Managing Partner, and Creative Director of Deem Journal, he is at the forefront of an emerging generation of designers that integrate design, culture, art, community, and social practice. Goteh has partnered with influential clients, including non-profits like Art For Justice Fund, Ford Foundation, and the World Peace Foundation, cultural institutions like The National Memorial for the Underground Railroad and Urban Civil Rights Museum, and brands like Jordan and Headspace. He is a board member of AIANY and SEGD, and his work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Wallpaper, Design Miami, Monocle, and The Architect’s Newspaper. Influenced by his Liberian heritage and passion for counter-culture, he also presents keynotes globally on design as an invitation for communities to reclaim their futures.

Marz Lovejoy is an artist, community caretaker, and cultural strategist born in the Midwest and raised on both coasts. She is a queer mother of three and a multidisciplinary cultural worker whose identity was shaped by the dynamism of creative and civic scenes globally. Though not an academic, her work reflects a deep, embodied engagement with social theory, community care, and artistic innovation. Drawing from both nonprofit and creative sectors, she creates projects that are expressive and structurally transformative. Committed to reimagining systems of valuable human connection, she views alternative currencies—beyond monetary exchange—essential to sustainable models of thriving and collective well-being. Lovejoy is the Founder and Executive Director of And Still We Ride, an organization and annual bike ride centering Black women, femmes, and girls in public space. Most recently, she launched the And Still We Ride Afterschool Program at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, where teaching biking as a cultural, political, and narrative practice to young students of color is normalized. Aligned with her commitment to birth justice, Lovejoy is currently studying as a student-midwife under the guidance of Minnesota’s only two Black homebirth midwives. As the former Curator-at-Large for Alvaro Barrington Studios in London, she infused the commercial art world with relational ethics and authentic community engagement. Across mediums and geographies, Lovejoy creates spaces where Black life, joy, and wellness are not just acknowledged, but celebrated—where the bicycle, the body, and the birthing room become beautiful acts of resistance, cultural intervention, and communal healing with measurable impact.

Radha Mistry has a background in architecture, narrative environments, and strategic foresight. She leads the Americas Region foresight practice at global design and engineering firm, Arup, teaches futures studies and speculative design on the M.Arch I and II programs at Southern California Institute of Architecture, and spends most of her time exploring the impact of emerging trends and how they’ll change the way we design and make things in the future.  Her purpose is to collaboratively build more equitable and inclusive futures: to make space for communities who might not yet see themselves in our future visions. Most recently, Radha established and led the Foresight practice at Autodesk and taught speculative design on the Design MBA program at California College of the Arts and the Parsons (The New School) MFA Transdisciplinary Design program. She has also exhibited during the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and worked on design-led community engagement initiatives in cities across Europe.

Duane Powell is a DJ and fixture on the global house and soul music scene. His love for music began at an early age, when he was growing up in the 1970s and exposed to Chicago’s rich sonic landscape. His lifelong passion has made him a beloved figure in Chicago’s music community and beyond.  As a longtime house music partner with the Rebuild Foundation and a board member of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, Powell combines his love for house and its power to move people; he is the creator of Sunday Service, a celebrated house music activation where he blends gospel and house to inspirational and tribal sounds, all with an aim to connect soulfully and deeply with his “congregation.” His roots in Chicago’s house scene run deep. In the mid-1980s, he and his crew were the go-to marketers for some of the city’s most prominent DJs, helping shape Chicago’s burgeoning music and club culture. Over a 12-year span, his title of tastemaker took shape, as he introduced several artists to the local and national stage. During this time, he worked extensively with the legendary Chicago record store Dr. Wax Records. In 1999, Powell launched SOUNDROTATION, further cultivating Chicago’s underground soul scene and facilitating performance debuts. As an ethnomusicologist and historian, he also hosts interactive lecture series, sharing his vast musical knowledge at various institutions. Holding residencies at legendary venues and galleries spanning the city of Chicago and beyond, he has shared the bill with legendary DJs and Grammy-winning producers and continues to move rooms with every set he spins.

Edra Soto is a Puerto Rican–born artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico and now immersed in her Chicago community, the artist has evolved to raise questions through her work about constructed social orders, diasporic identity, and the legacy of colonialism. Soto has presented recent solo exhibitions at The Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Maine College of Art & Design; Hyde Park Art Center; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. Her work has been featured in notable group exhibitions, including the Carnegie Museum of Art; Driehaus Museum, IL; and MSU Broad Art Museum, among others. Soto has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; Joyce Award; 3Arts Next Level Award; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award; the US LatinX Art Forum Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund, among others. She has received numerous public commissions, including from Public Art Fund at Central Park, New York; Noor Riyadh; the Boston Public Art Triennial; the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Terminal 5 at O’Hare International Airport; Chicago Botanic Garden; and Millennium Park, Chicago. Her work is in the collection of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sruti Suryanarayanan is an Artist Organizer with Art.coop, a collective that exists to grow an arts/culture movement rooted in solidarity by centering artists and cultural workers making systems-change irresistible. Based in Brooklyn, NY, they build systems that help people channel their culture to resist the dominant systems of racial, economic, and migration inequity. They are a mentor at NEW INC, and previously organized with Cultural Solidarity Fund, Interference Archive, and South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT). Suryanarayanan is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Genocide Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY), and is also a weaver and pickler.

Mabel O. Wilson is the Nancy and George E Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a Professor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. With her practice Studio&, she was a member of the design team that recently completed the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. Exhibitions of her work have been featured at Venice Architecture Biennale, SFMoMA, Art Institute of Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennale, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Wilson has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016), Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012), and co-edited the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020). For the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, she was co-curator of the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021).