Each year we invite activists, organizers, designers, artists and others whose work we admire to join us as our UofO urbanists in residence. We are excited to introduce to you this year’s urbanists in residence who will join us at Placemaking 10: Homeboy Came to Orange. Pedja Stiojic, Dominic Moulden and Havanna Fisher have all shaped our work over the years and they will share lessons from their own organizing work and artistic practices.
Havanna Fisher
is a an interdisciplinary artist and designer from Harlem who works across the fields of design, performing arts and film. She has a profound interest in using her skills and gifts to combine the arts with education to bring about political awareness and thus probable change within the American landscape of ideological identity as well as creating a holistic approach to living life together. She was the 2016 Harlem artist in residence at the Landormant Project where her project “Harlem Motion” used a series of exploratory stop animation workshops as a vehicle to reshape the conversation around gentrification. Havanna’s most recent current project is called “The Cotton Series” which debuted at Movement Research at Judson Church this fall. The Cotton Series is a collection of dance works that explores Black women’s lives in America and how their sisterhood supports their survival. Read more about Havanna’s work…
Dominic T. Moulden
a native of East Baltimore, has extensive experience in community organizing and affordable housing development. He has been the Resource Organizer for Organizing Neighborhood Equity – ONE DC (and its predecessor Manna Community Development Corporation) since 1997. Throughout his career, Moulden has led programs designed to encourage democratic social and economic development in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest, DC. Moulden has strengthened relationships with other non-profits; brought neighborhood people into dialogue with one another and with those who represent diverse interests in the community, including developers, unions, employers, and politicians; and engaged for-profit developers to ensure their projects contain adequate community benefits. He has spoken in higher education institutions and at conferences on a variety of economic and social justice topics, including housing, workplace democracy, community development and revitalization, faith and justice, and leading change. Moulden participated in executive education through the Washington Urban League, Tufts University, Leadership Washington, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. As a photographer, his portraits are intended to remind Black people of their beauty, against the forces of forgetfulness–ie, colonialism and racism. Moulden’s work has also been exhibited at Artspace (Washington, DC), Studio 21 Gallery (Washington, DC), MICA Place (Baltimore, MD) and was shortlisted for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s new Interactive Exhibition Gallery. He was a collaborator in Spotless, an exhibition on whitewashing and gentrification, at Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC).
Pedja Stojicic
is Project Director for Resident Engagement with ReThink Health. Pedja is passionate about enabling health leaders to be change agents and apply community organizing practices in overcoming the most challenging issues within the health system. A graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health, he is currently a trainer and coach with ReThink Health. There he has had a transformative impact in working with the Center for Public Health Leadership, Alabama Quality Assurance Foundation, HICCUP Wellville, Telligen, CMS, Colorado Foundation for Medical Care, Creating Healthier Niagara Falls and many others. In the past, Pedja has served as president and executive director of Youth of JAZAS, a Serbian NGO fighting HIV/AIDS and the leader of progressive movement Serbia on the move. He currently serves as Secretary and a Board Member of the Leading Change Network, the largest global network of community organizing practitioners, teachers and researchers.