Building Great Places: Activating Public Spaces for the Common Good
Wednesday, May 28 | 12-2pm | At Zeitgeist
Free! | Hors d’oeuvres provided
How might we create accessible, equitable, and welcoming open spaces in our neighborhoods? Spaces that help activate economic development, climate resiliency, social connectedness, and civic engagement? Strategic investments in public spaces can connect people of all backgrounds, cultivate trust, and create more resilient communities. In a time when loneliness, distrust, harmful climate impacts, and economic segregation are on the rise, transforming places of untapped potential into ones that bridge differences, reflect community values and history, share prosperity, and contribute solutions to national challenges is critical.
 
Zeitgeist’s annual Building Great Places event invites community organizers, city planners, developers, local leaders, and engaged citizens to learn about and discuss ways to embed community vision in equitable, resident-focused neighborhood redevelopment. This year’s event features keynote speakers R.T. Rybak, President & CEO of The Minneapolis Foundation and Evelyn Burnett, Co-Founder & CEO of ThirdSpace® Action Lab; Duluth & Superior Mayors Reinert & Paine; along with local representatives of the Clayton Jackson McGhee Memorial and Lincoln Park Craft District Pocket Park. Event participants will come away with an inspired framework for approaching public space activation for the common good and contribute to visioning public spaces that elevate our shared history, beautify our neighborhoods, increase our access to green space, and create opportunities for coming together.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE (Subject to change)
R.T. Rybak

R.T. Rybak

Minneapolis Foundation

Evelyn Burnett

Evelyn Burnett

ThirdSpace Action Lab

ZEITGEIST COMMUNITY

What’s in a street, a neighborhood, a transportation network? Who makes decisions and who lives the outcomes? Historically in our country, decisions about health, transportation, and street design have happened to communities rather than with them.

Zeitgeist’s Community Development team takes an equitable and inclusive approach to the work we do. Across the community, we are not just partnering with neighbors and organizations but intimately collaborating with them to envision and activate a healthy and thriving shared future.

WHAT WE DO

We focus on Transforming Transportation by uncovering cultural, structural, and infrastructural barriers in the Twin Ports to having a fully inclusive, safe, and connected transportation network that provides people of all ages and abilities with mobility choices and connects them to vital resources.

Healthy Hillside builds grassroots community leadership in the Hillside neighborhood, delivers health resources to enhance wellbeing, and is convening a community-led health vision to break down existing disparities.

Safer 6th Avenue East applies the transportation work and neighborhood vision to reimagine this harmful street as a great place of connection that prioritizes the people who live there; a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the place we call home.

OUR APPROACH

Because art and community are central to all that we do, we’re able to facilitate change from the ground up with neighbors creatively deciding what they’d like to see and leveraging their power to build great places where they can thrive. We center Seven Core Components to our Community Change:

CREATIVITY

Using the power of self-expression and the arts to reveal new possibilities.

CURIOSITY

Listening with open ears and hearts to people’s truths and lived expertise.

JOY

Creating space for celebration, humor, and social connection.

DIGNITY

Honoring people’s inherent worth and potential for greatness.

UNDERSTANDING

Arriving at a deeper knowing of challenges and opportunities.

COLLABORATION

Working hand-in-hand to design solutions with and for those most impacted.

INTENTION

Healing places of historic harm by building trust and working iteratively.

2025 DOC & TALK SERIES

DOC & TALK FILM SERIES 2025

When redlining is compounded over decades leading to inequality and disenfranchisement, how can community members come together to create change in their neighborhood? Come see inspiring documentaries about communities transforming their cities from the ground up, featuring post-show talks with Twin Ports community leaders.

  • Join or Die – March 22 | 11AM
  • Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street – April 17 | 6PM
  • Union – TBA
  • Let the Little Light Shine – September 18 | 6PM
  • We Are Not Ghosts – October 16 | 6PM
  • Gaining Ground: Building Community on Dudley Street – November 20 | 6PM
  • The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution – December 18 | 6PM

Complimentary equity tickets are available upon request at the box office for low- or no-income community members, or anyone facing a financial barrier to attending the Doc & Talk Series.

Zeitgeist is made possible with your help

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

CONTACT US

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ZEITGEIST

Q

R.T. Rybak is the President and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation. He has led the Foundation since July 2016, deepening its community impact and launching a strategic framework that more directly focuses on using multiple impact levers to dismantle inequities. R.T. spent 30 years in journalism, publishing, and marketing before serving as Mayor of Minneapolis from 2002 to 2013. His most significant career focus has been developing equitable career paths for youth of color. That work has included being a founding partner of: Step Up, which has provided summer jobs to 20,000 high school students; Urban Scholars, its companion program for college students; the Power of YOU, which provides free community college tuition; ConnextMSP, an alumni association helping participants of high-performing programs serving youth of color connect to careers; and Generation Next, a coalition of civic, business, and school leaders focused on racial equity, where R.T. served as Executive Director from 2014-2016.

Q

Evelyn Burnett is Co-founder + CEO ThirdSpace Action Lab (TSAL) and ThirdSpace Reading Room (TSRR) headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to TSAL, Evelyn served as Vice President of Economic Opportunity at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Associate Director for Program Strategies with Admiral Center at Living Cities, Project Director in the City of Cleveland’s Office of Sustainability, and as a 2007-2008 Cleveland Executive (Coro) Fellow. Evelyn is a 2022 Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow, Unreasonable Group Mentor, 2018 German Marshall Fellow and sits on the board of several organizations throughout Northeast Ohio and nationally including ioby (In Our Back Yards) + RidAll Green Partnership. Evelyn holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business and Organizational Communications with a double minor in Sales & Marketing and Dance from The University of Akron during which time she studied abroad in Ghana, Africa; and a master’s degree in Public Administration from The University of Akron.