October 24, 2014–January 2, 2015 at the Arts Incubator gallery. PLAT | FORMS is a conversation-focused exhibition invested in new thinking around design, community development, and artistic agency in cities. The exhibition is an introduction to Place Lab, a strategy-based component of the Arts + Public Life Initiative that works with artists, designers, and organizations in the cities of Akron, Chicago, Detroit, and Gary. Place Lab structures innovative opportunities for cultural growth, economic vitality, and space reinterpretation for cities, organizations, and artists.
PLAT | FORMS: Conversations in Place, a fall 2014 exhibition at the Arts Incubator, introduced Place Lab to the neighborhood and community. The exhibition and forum openly grappled with the complicated politics of transformation in black space and neighborhoods. It created a space in which artists, residents, creative thinkers, and other stakeholders discussed, debated, defined, and debunked preconceptions of urban change while inventing new programmatic and institutional acts of platform-making and unmaking. With the language of placemaking and the future of Washington Park as its principal concerns, this exhibition acted as a laboratory for reimagining place.