GCDN Annual Convening – Los Angeles 2025

Successful placemaking involves many factors – community involvement, access, design and safety, to name just a few – but perhaps the most critical element lies in the stories we tell about places, their authenticity, their appeal, and their congruence with physical reality. Humans search for meaning, and we experience cities through the lens of the narratives attached to them.

Nowhere is this more evident – or more complex – than in Los Angeles. LA exists in the interstices of overlapping and competing narratives. The city of noir and Hollywood mythmaking, of extremes in wealth and poverty, multiple cultures and diasporas, perpetual motion and reinvention… it resists easy definition. For many – whether American or from overseas – it remains the most elusive U.S. city to understand. Unlike the structured grids of New York and Chicago, or the civic core of San Francisco, Los Angeles is a place of dispersion, layering, and constant reimagination.

What, then, is ‘place’ in LA, let alone placemaking? What role do cultural anchors like The Music Center play in grounding this city’s identity? How can the arts help define and strengthen cohesion in a city that is, by its very nature, decentered? And, in this era of polarization, how does cultural policy reflect this? This session explores placemaking in a city that defies the concept – and in a moment when the very idea of shared narratives is unraveling.

As cities worldwide confront the accelerating challenges of climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation, resilience has become a defining priority in urban development. While much of the focus is on infrastructure and policy, cultural and creative interventions offer powerful tools for shaping how communities adapt, persist, and reimagine their futures in the face of ecological uncertainty. This session explores the intersection of culture, sustainability, and urban resilience, examining how cultural districts, artists, and civic initiatives worldwide are integrating ecological consciousness into the narratives of place. How can creative strategies help cities respond to climate pressures while strengthening social cohesion and local identity? What role can public art, conservation efforts, and cultural programming play in fostering sustainable urban ecosystems? And how can cultural leaders move beyond symbolic gestures to embed meaningful, action-driven climate commitments into the fabric of their work?

Cities often turn to large-scale cultural infrastructure to drive urban renewal, but can festivals—ephemeral by nature—serve as equally powerful anchors? Unlike permanent institutions, festivals offer a flexible, participatory approach to shaping narratives of place, fostering local engagement, and catalyzing cultural and economic revitalization. Yet, their impermanence raises a key question: can they leave a lasting imprint that aligns with long-term cultural and urban development goals?

This session examines the role of festivals in urban redevelopment, weighing their potential to embed cultural identity against their transient nature. How are cities leveraging festivals to reimagine their cultural landscapes? When does cultural programming prove to be the most effective tool for transformation, and when does it give rise to lasting institutions or infrastructure? And how can cities best calibrate these approaches to align with their broader vision for urban and cultural life?

How can community-driven urban design practices reshape our cities to be more just, inclusive, and reflective of diverse lived experiences? This panel brings together three visionary women whose work lies at the intersection of design, spatial justice, feminist urban practice, and community engagement. Through architecture, participatory design, and cultural interventions that center community voice, these facilitators and urbanists challenge power structures, reclaim marginalized histories, and co-create environments that prioritize equity and belonging.

Speakers will discuss how spatial justice and feminist perspectives can disrupt traditional urban planning, center historically marginalized voices, and embed the narratives, histories, and lived experience of underrepresented communities into the built environment. This conversation will explore how thoughtful human-centered urban design imbued with a sense of place, and community-led design can make cities not only more inclusive but also more deeply connected to the people who inhabit them—ensuring that those historically left out of decision-making processes are seen, heard, and represented in urban space.

What do you make of the moment? Can you see yourself fully reflected in the story of your beloved place on the map? How has that place been renamed, reimagined, or erased over its history? And how will the next generation tell the story of our time – and are you okay with what they’ll say… or won’t?

We are living in an era when extreme nationalist agendas are aggressively working to erase the full spectrum of human history. In the face of this removal, remembering forgotten narratives becomes an act of resistance, and surfacing new stories allows communities to reclaim place and shape legacy with dignity and purpose.

For cultural districts, the collective meaning-making that goes into the story of place is not just a reflection of the past – it’s a tool to future-proof identity. This session explores how cultural leaders can move from being custodians of inherited stories to becoming agents of change through the strategic, community-driven use of narrative – drawing on the Los Angeles context to examine how stories rooted in place can ignite action and shape a more just and inclusive future.

Focus Tracks are 90-minute sessions. Five presenters each give an 8-minute presentation from their specific context, tailored to fit the session topic. This is followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A. Three Focus Tracks run concurrently, repeated on 19 and 20 May. This Focus Track focuses on how design choices serve as vessels for past, present, and future narratives of places, and considers how architects and designers engage with communities to ensure the authenticity of the stories being told through their work.

Public Spaces are both physical and metaphysical landscapes; layered with memory, ritual, and meanings that span generations. Richly infused with queer histories, the landscape of downtown Los Angeles is a cultural district in more than one sense. Amongst the monuments of civic architecture are stories of survival, resilience, subversion and triumph. When this landscape is viewed through an anthropological lense, the study of queer people and their ancestors through time and space can reveal a deeper understanding of the origin, nature, and destiny of this remarkable group of human beings.

How are queer histories embodied, imaged, narrated, and honored? What modes of storytelling connect us most immediately to cultural legacies, both recent and ancient? This session will feature exceptional multidisciplinary LGBTQIA+ performance artists in a guided progression through Gloria Molina Grand Park as part of the official programming for the GCDN annual convening in Los Angeles, California.

This workshop addresses the critical intersection of creative districts and sustainability, recognizing the vital role the cultural and creative sectors play in achieving global sustainability goals. It acknowledges the urgency imposed by the climate emergency, and the necessity of mitigation and adaptation to its consequences. It is also grounded in the understanding that cultural districts, with their diverse operations and community interactions, are key actors in promoting sustainable practices based on a four-legged model: ecology, economy, social and culture.

Digital and experiential art can significantly enhance placemaking, transforming cultural districts into dynamic, memorable destinations. However, not all digital interventions deliver the same impact or return on investment. This practical workshop provides
public spaces and cultural leaders a clear, strategic framework to assess emerging trends, their applicability, benefits, and potential drawbacks in various placemaking contexts.

Guided by industry insights from Moment Factory, Daily tous les jours, Meow Wolf, Superblue, Jason Bruges Studio, Heatherwick Studio, Gensler, and other world-leading studios, participants will explore concrete examples and tools to evaluate when digital
creativity is worth investing in, and when caution might be advisable.

Cultural institutions are increasingly being asked to demonstrate not just artistic excellence, but public value. As audiences shift, diversify, or disappear altogether, the question of relevance is no longer rhetorical—it is existential.

This closing session returns to some of the questions raised at the start of the convening—about leadership, values, and responsibility—but asks them with a longer view. How do we define relevance in a moment where institutional trust is faltering, cultural debates are increasingly politicized, and traditional metrics of success no longer hold? And how can leaders respond—not just to the pressures of the present, but with a sense of care and commitment toward those who will come next?

Drawing on insights from across the programme, this conversation explores what it takes to build institutions that are not only relevant today, but capable of evolving tomorrow. What does it mean to lead with relevance as a civic practice, not just a strategic imperative? And how do we cultivate the courage, imagination, and humility to make space for new voices—ensuring that relevance is not something we defend, but something we continually co-create?