The Bottom-Up Revolution

Greg Wright—Executive Director at CREATE Portage County—shares the story behind CREATE Portage County and how you can foster creative (and financially resilient) communities where you live, including how to inspire creative residents, how to demonstrate the economic impact of creativity, and why you should root all initiatives in a “small and smart” way.

Ben Harrison—Strong Towns member and citizen of Lloydminster in Alberta, Canada—shares his experience serving on Lloydminster's citizen advisory committee for the City's Downtown Area Redevelopment Plan and why you should run for something in your community, including how to pitch your vision to city staff, how to introduce Strong Towns principles, and, how serving on a citizen advisory committee can help you feel closer to your community. 

Regina Portillo—Executive Director at City Makery in Laredo, Texas—shares how you can partner with local government to create and foster ideas for your community, including how to encourage people to share their ideas, how to encourage people to act on those ideas, and how to get local government involved in the process.

Thor Erickson—longtime leader in the neighborhood and civic nonprofit sector—shares how you can use nonprofits to build strong neighborhoods in your own community, including how to find your unique perspective to neighborhood investment, how to partner with your local government, and how to get your community behind your mission.

Jordan Deffenbaugh and Jim Hodapp—primary organizers of Strong Towns' most impactful Local Conversations—share how you can use your observations and passions to build neighborhood-boosting community groups, including how to inspire advocates in your community, how to effectively gather people around your mission, and how to generate neighborhood investments that include everyone in the process.

Andy Diaz—founder at Urban Acres in Peoria, Illinois—shares how you can use local food to build community in your neighborhood, including how to find the right investment for your neighborhood, how to embrace incremental development as you grow your investment, and why cities like Peoria and beyond need more $1,000 heroes to create strong towns. 

Greta McLain—Artistic Director at GoodSpace Murals, a Minneapolis-based organization that promotes community development through public art—shares how you can use public art to build community in your own city or town, including how to create a tribe of public art advocates in your community, how to humble yourself as you share your partner with different neighborhoods, and how to turn stakeholders leery of public art into advocates.

Rafa Wright—Detroit native, community leader, and soon-to-be owner of a new, Detroit-based neighborhood grocery—shares how you can make neighborhood-led investments in your community, including how to observe where people struggle, how to find the right investments for your neighborhood, and how to get your neighbors involved in the process.

Ed Morrison—author of Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership—shares how city leaders can grow their economies by fostering collaboration on a local level, including how to find existing assets in your community, how to encourage existing organizations to focus on a shared goal, and how to incrementally pursue that goal.

Paul Fast—Principal Architect at HCMA, a Canadian architecture and design firm—discusses its More Awesome Now project and how listeners can revive neglected alleyways in their own neighborhoods, including how to assess the needs of the neighborhood, how to measure the success of the revitalization, and how to consider all members of the community in its design.