NDC Summer Circuit— Sharing Knowledge Across the Region (and Country!)

It’s summertime in the placemaking community, and that means - conference season! This year, six NDC team members hit the road to lead workshops, present our work, and learn alongside placemakers from across the country. 

Three conferences, three very different focuses — leadership development, public space, and urban forestry but the same lesson kept resurfacing: growth, whether in a neighborhood, a garden, or a career, takes root when people commit to relationships, patience, and shared learning over time. Here’s what our team brought home from the summer circuit.

Maura and Kamaiya Go to the Design Futures Forum

The 2026 Design Futures Forum was an in-person five-day, interdisciplinary leadership development in Detroit, Michigan, from June 1 - 5. 

NDC staff members Maura Dwyer and Kamaiya Johnson attended. Hosted by the University of Detroit Mercy, the Forum brought together more than 70 student leaders representing design programs from leading academic institutions and over 25 academic and practitioner faculty from private and non-profit-based practices.

NDC had the privilege of attending and learning from the conversations, but also leading a workshop responding to the prompt: How do we leverage tools, techniques, and technologies to surface data-driven insights on community resources, disparities, and needs?

This workshop offered a deeper dive into NDC’s engagement methods by sharing our tools of practice from the Equitable Engagement Toolkit – developed over the past three years by current and former NDC staff in collaboration with local co-design professionals and community members. Students and practitioners left with hands-on skills for collecting data on local needs, assets, and visions for public space, the same skills our team uses every day in Baltimore neighborhoods. 

The Forum itself modeled the kind of intentionality NDC values in its own engagement work. Day one opened by asking participants, “What do you need to show up as your best self in this space, at this moment?” The prompt set the tone for a week of moving deliberately between comfort, growth, and panic. 

Keynote speaker Lauren Hood offered plenty to sit with: 

Opening speaker Jaike Spotted Wolf shared a powerful story demonstrating how design can support culture and community stewardship. He acquired a small plot of land in Detroit to have a “prayer lodge, pow wows, and sacred fires” for all native peoples in the area. This provides an open, protected space for spiritual practice in the city that is more accessible than those on reservations that require more than a one-hour drive to reach.  

The conference underscored the critical work of building relationships with volunteers, community partners, and colleagues in the field to help stay accountable to our shared values, and have the space to experiment, practice, grow, and fight for more equitable outcomes even when the process is messy or takes longer than a grant timeline.

Jen, Nicole, and Briony Go to International Placemaking Week

After bringing International Placemaking Week to Baltimore in 2024, NDC staff members Jen Goold, Nicole Ringel, and Briony Hinson reunited with Project for Public Spaces for the 2026 International Placemaking Week in Detroit, Michigan. Their generosity, creativity, and commitment to the field continue to set the standard. See photos from the conference here.

The city’s riverfront is setting a benchmark for public space, anchored by the new Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park, its $80 million playground, and the nearby Sport House. “Experiencing the result of such significant municipal investment in civic infrastructure that invites everyone to play absolutely filled my cup,” Briony said. The team also spent time with Wil Marquez, Director of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, comparing notes on community design center practice over cocktails at Father Forgive Me, proof that Detroit’s design community is thriving.

Some of the week’s richest conversations went beyond parks and buildings. The Community Mental Health and the Psychiatry of Place(making) session explored how displacement, trauma, and spatial injustice affect mental health and how placemaking can support healing, resilience, and collective repair. As our team put it, “It was one of the clearest articulations I’ve heard of the connection between public space and community wellbeing.”

This year, NDC’s Nicole and Jen took the stage to present!

Nicole Ringel spoke during Short Talks: Events & Activations in Action, alongside practitioners from AGAR, Downtown Cleveland, Community Busk, Live6 Alliance, Friends of Congress Square Park, and others.

Nicole’s presentation showcased NDC’s work using events and creative activation to strengthen public spaces and communities. It was exciting to see our organization contributing to the national conversation.  

Jen Goold presented in the Short Talks “From Vacancy to Vitality,” alongside speakers from the City of Hamtramck, Northcrest Developments, Brightside Collective, Green Building Alliance, Detroit Hives, and Mezuzah.

Both Nicole and Jen helped connect communities from across the country and learned from their peers in the process.

The Mobile Workshop at Fitzgerald’s Civic Commons tied it all together. To address vacancy in Detroit’s Fitzgerald neighborhood, city agencies, community organizations, and residents deliberately moved at the pace of relationships, investing in listening and shared ownership long before any physical work began. As the session made clear, repairing distrust and establishing authentic partnerships is foundational to long-term neighborhood change. It’s a philosophy NDC recognizes from our own work in Baltimore, and one worth carrying home.

Jenny Goes to the Woody Plant Conference

Jenny Smeltzer attended the 2026 Woody Plant Conference hosted by Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. 

The theme of the one-day workshop was Woody Plants for the Mid-Atlantic Region & How to Use Them in Landscapes, addressed by the many presenters, embraced by NDC, and sponsored by Longwood Gardens, Tyler Arboretum, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, The Scott Arboretum & Gardens, and Morris Arboretum and Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania.

Just like NDC’s own tree team, presenters Jenna Bachman (Awbury Arboretum) and Patrick McGinty (Stoneleigh: A Natural Garden) emphasized climate resilience through increased biodiversity, proactive problem-solving, and peer-to-peer practitioner learning. Oliver Lopez of ALAS Latinas brought an important complementary lens, presenting on Indigenous perspectives on regeneration, community practice, and collaborative problem-solving — a reminder of why NDC insists on involving community groups in public design work, not just design professionals.

Lessons Learned:

What a summer of learning!

Our team came home from all three conferences with the same core lesson: growth, whether it’s in a neighborhood, a tree canopy, or a career, takes root when people commit to relationships over time. 

The Mobile Workshop at Fitzgerald’s Civic Commons put it plainly: repairing distrust and establishing authentic partnerships is foundational to long-term neighborhood change. That same idea echoed through a Detroit prayer lodge, a persimmon tree, and a workshop on data-driven community engagement alike.

Want to bring some of this thinking back to your own work? Explore our Equitable Engagement Toolkit for the tools our team shared in Detroit, and stay tuned as we bring these lessons home to our Baltimore neighborhoods.