My approach to the Creativities Project includes both my research and my public art programming practices. In my research on legal graffiti scenes, I explore how the graffiti festival offers a framework for collective improvisation and citation, heightened moments of creative exchange and reflection. During these moments walls are covered with fragments from popular culture, fine art, and political moments, but conversations are also held about what that, and other spaces, used to be, and crucially, what they might become. More broadly, creativity as praxis and horizon within public art worlds can magnetize diverse publics creating vibrant moments of encounter. In my capacity as lead organizer for the Hemispheric Conversations Urban Arts Project with co-organizers Oreen Cohen and Shane Pilster I have worked with a number of partners (Pitt, Rivers of Steel, Assemble, Hazelwood Public Library, Brashear High School, South Side Mural Project) to bring graffiti artists from Chicago and León Guanajuato Mexico, and scholars of graffiti art to Pittsburgh to foment platforms for cross-border conversation and collaboration around shared industrial histories, youth expressive practices, and the potential for public art to activate urban spaces. In AY 2016-2017 we hosted a public debate, symposia, seven youth workshops throughout the city, and developed two murals as an initial phase for the project. AY 2017-2018 included research on urban art programming in Mexico to support future collaborations. AY 2018-2019 will include public programming and a lecture series.