About

The 2021 Lecture Series will feature six lecture webinars (January through June) with follow-up Community Conversations one week after each.

Registration required.

For more information send an e-mail here or call 585.271.0520

CDCR is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Click here to listen to past lectures.

presented by:

Every year, the CDCR brings experts from around the country to share their knowledge with the local community regarding issues that are presenting challenges for our community through our lecture series. This year, we plan to bring you SIX virtual lectures between January and June which together will unpack the 2021 theme: Building a Just Community.

2021 Reshaping Rochester Kick-Off Lecture:

Join us for an afternoon webinar on building just communities with De Nichols via Zoom!

We begin the 2021 series by examining our several Rochesters. The first is the city of privilege, white flight, sprawl, and suburbs. The other Rochesters are cities of color, segregated from the rest of the city and physically and socially circumscribed. The purpose of the first lecture will be to set the stage for the examination of aspects of our urbanism that can – and should – provide for a Just Community.

De Nichols | St. Louis, MO

Principal of Design & Social Practice at Civic Creatives, Loeb Fellow in residence at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design

Wed, January 27, 2021, 12:00 PM

De Nichols is a design activist, social worker, and global lecturer who mobilizes creative changemakers to address issues within the built environment through the production of interactive experiences, digital media, and social initiatives. She serves as the Principal of Design and Social Impact at the Civic Creatives consultancy in St. Louis, MO, and she is a co-organizer of the national Design As Protest initiative.

De is a 2020 Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and Transnational Fellow with Monument Lab. Through multimedia works and lectures, she has championed the power of design and storytelling to inspire and equip change makers to protest social injustices and design civic solutions for progressive change across American communities. Her efforts as an arts organizer in the 2014 Ferguson Uprising catapulted her to international spotlight as artworks such as the Mirror Casket (2014) were collected by the Smithsonian Institute. De has been deemed as a national Ideas that Matter recipient, a two-time Clinton Global Initiative innovator, and a St. Louis Visionary recipient for her community impact in the arts.

De holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in communications design from Washington University in St. Louis and earned her Master of Social Work specialization in social entrepreneurship from its Brown School of Social Work. She additionally is a Citizen Artist Fellow of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and Artist Fellow with the Regional Arts Commission in St. Louis, MO.