ABSTRACT
Christina Bechstein shares how living and teaching in downtown Detroit as a young artist/educator radically informed a creative practice that centers on the values of co-creation, reciprocity, and civic engagement. She recalls the late Detroit visionary arts and educational leader Josephine Harreld Love, who had a huge impact on education in Detroit by believing that co-creating together is much richer than what we can make alone. The chapter then describes working in Detroit alongside gifted female architects at the University of Detroit Mercy with whom Bechstein learned to create powerful pedagogical experiments. She explains how the experiments of co-creation in Detroit were later translated to large-scale projects in Boston and community projects with immigrant women and children in Portland, Maine, where she directs the Love Lab Studio. Finally, this chapter shares some of the core questions, challenges, and gains of collaborative leadership and co-creation for future place-making and the important work of building community across boundaries.
