Community Projects

Project Manager - 48 hour creative placemaking initiative - design thinking strategies

I served as project manager for Hack-A-Town in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a 48-hour creative placemaking and community design initiative focused on making the city’s 9th District safer, more connected, and more vibrant. Working with local artists, designers, community members, and creative practitioners, I coordinated the project’s planning, logistics, communications, and collaborative process. The intensive format brought diverse perspectives together to identify challenges within the district and develop creative, community-driven ideas for improving public space and neighborhood safety. The project demonstrated how arts, design, and collective problem-solving can be used as practical tools for strengthening communities and creating more welcoming public environments. Brought together thought leaders from Pittsburgh to share and collaborate.

Community Screen Printing

Implemented a series of community screen-printing sessions in collaboration with libraries, community festivals, and schools alongside Felix Pyron of Artists Image Resource. These workshops introduced participants to the hands-on process of screen printing while creating opportunities for people of different ages and backgrounds to work together. Screen printing is inherently a communal activity because the process encourages sharing materials, techniques, ideas, and responsibilities. Participants learn from one another as they prepare screens, apply ink, print designs, and experiment with different approaches, turning the act of making into a shared social experience. Through these sessions, screen printing became not only an accessible art-making practice but also a way to build connection, collaboration, and community.

Enviromental Justice Screen Printing Workshop

Led in an Environmental Justice workshop with New Sun Rising, where I facilitated community screen-printing as part of the program. The workshop used screen printing as a hands-on and collaborative activity, giving participants an opportunity to engage with environmental justice themes through art. Working together to create prints encouraged conversation, shared learning, and collective expression, demonstrating how screen printing can bring people together while connecting creative practice to community and environmental issues.

Students and Printmaking

worked with students from area schools as part of Artists Image Resource, facilitating community-based screen-printing sessions that introduced students to the hands-on process of printmaking. Through the workshops, students explored design, color, and image-making while learning how to prepare screens and produce their own prints. Screen printing provided a communal and collaborative experience, encouraging students to share ideas, work together, and learn from one another while using art as a way to build connection and creative confidence.

Arts Management and Project Development

Led the arts management of Imprint: Holding Space Through Clay in collaboration with the International Sculpture Center, overseeing the project’s development, community engagement, GIS map building project, and coordination across participating artists and communities. This project was created by Laura Jean McLaughlin, International Sculpture Center’s first Member Artist-in-Residence Helped translate the project’s conceptual focus on touch, presence, and collective belonging into an accessible participatory experience, while coordinating the collection and integration of individual clay forms into a unified installation. Through careful project management, communication, and community-centered facilitation, supported a process that prioritized participation and shared authorship, allowing individual gestures to become part of a larger material expression of collective presence and care.

Poetry project into printmaking

As part of Health, Wellness and the Arts: Voices from the Margins, I worked with LGBTQ+ youth at Arthouse6 in Johnstown, PA, combining poetry and screen printing as forms of self-expression, connection, and community building. In collaboration with Poet Laureate Joyce Robley, students explored mindfulness, mental health, and their personal experiences through poetry, creating a supportive space where they could write, share, and listen to one another. The project culminated in an interactive community screen-printing session, where lines and phrases from the students’ poems were transformed into printed works on apparel, totes, and posters. By bringing the students’ own words into a public and participatory art-making experience, the project gave their voices a visible presence in the community while demonstrating the communal power of printmaking to connect people, share stories, and create a culture of inclusion and understanding.

Project Support, Installation and Community Programming

Project support, deployed and designed community programming and installed The Welcome Blanket, the first city-wide community art initiative of this project by Jayna Zweiman presented through the International Sculpture Center. As a first-of-its-kind city-wide effort for the International Sculpture Center, the project brought together participants across the community through the making and sharing of handmade blankets, transforming individual acts of care into a collective public artwork. I coordinated the project’s logistics, community participation, communications, and installation, while working closely with contributors and organizational partners to ensure that the project’s many individual elements came together as a cohesive installation. Through hands-on arts management and installation, I helped create a welcoming, accessible platform for community engagement that demonstrated how participatory art can connect people across neighborhoods and create a shared sense of belonging.

Project Management, Advocacy

I implemented Busker Street Union, a creative placemaking project that brought live entertainment into public spaces and activated the streets through music and performance. Inspired by the urban planning philosophy of Jane Jacobs, particularly the idea that active, people-filled streets can create a stronger sense of safety and community, the project used busking as a way to encourage positive activity and connection in public spaces. I also drafted legislation to legalize and support busking in Millvale, Pennsylvania, and worked with City of Pittsburgh officials to help make street performance more accessible and accepted as part of the city’s cultural landscape. Through this work, I advocated for creative placemaking as a tool for community building, economic vitality, and more vibrant public spaces.

Artistic Curation and Strategy

Developed and executed an innovative community outreach campaign that used a traditional second line parade as a grassroots activation to increase children's healthcare enrollment. The campaign was designed to meet families where they lived by transforming the enrollment message into a highly visible, celebratory community event. Led the strategy, planning, and execution of the activation, including recruiting local musicians and partnering with the River City Brass Band to create a lively parade that traveled through neighborhood streets. Coordinated event logistics, community partnerships, promotional efforts, and on-site enrollment opportunities to maximize engagement with families. The activation successfully increased awareness of available healthcare resources while creating meaningful community connections, resulting in a 30% increase in children's healthcare enrollment during the campaign period.

Creative Director, Project Manager, Host

Beyond The Menu was series of accessible gatherings, talks, and events to celebrate Pittsburgh’s food and beverage culture. The events created an inclusive environment for all residents of our region to share in the discussion of what food means to our City. Beyond the Menu was presented by Flaherty & O’Hara, providing liquor licensing transactional, litigation counseling and related services to clients in the beverage alcohol industry. Supporting sponsors include Smallman Galley, the Nation’s first restaurant incubator, New Sun Rising, a social venture start-up program, MIT Enterprise Forum, Thrill Mill, First Course, an online education platform to teach food entrepreneurs business skills, and Shift Collaborative.