This weekend’s annual art-and-social justice-themed Creative Time Summit in New York City will be streamed live, free of charge, to some 60 locations around the world and viewed by thousands of people who’ve gathered in their own communities to watch and discuss the proceedings in real time. One of those satellite screening sites will be in Minneapolis, all day Friday and Saturday, hosted by Intermedia Arts, Arts on Chicago, and Knight Arts grantee Springboard for the Arts.

This year’s Summit will feature two days’ worth of presentations from globally recognized writers and artists, scholars, urban planners,  city officials and social justice activists on “Art, Place and Dislocation in the 21st Century City.” The summit invites participants around the world to take stock of “the fact that culture, for good or bad, is an active ingredient in the construction and shaping of the contemporary city.” The Creative Time online description of the convocation goes on: “As the active role of culture in the city gains traction not only with artists but also with architects, city planners, philanthropists, and developers—from eye-popping monumental sculpture, to arts districts, to battles over eviction and squatting—this year’s Summit provides a timely opportunity to debate and consider a variety of artistic approaches to this contemporary condition.”

Creative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson at the 2012 Creative Time Summit. Photo: Casey Kelbaugh

At the Intermedia Arts screening site in the Twin Cities, all are welcome: local artists and interested members of the public, cultural advocates and representatives from area arts nonprofits will be on hand to discuss the ideas that emerge from the Creative Time Summit livestream conversations. There will also be presentations on locally relevant issues surrounding the impacts of art in the modern city – like creative placemaking, community art, and gentrification.

Some additional questions posed by the folks at Creative Time:

How can equity be achieved in an economic and political environment of vast inequity? What new forms of civic participation and engagement are artists integrating into the built environment? What instructive models are being deployed by today’s city planners and mayors? How can foundations and governments support a kind of cultural production that makes cities economically sustainable for all of their inhabitants? How can culture contribute to the city beyond the economic realm? How does culture contend with the impact of the environmental crisis on the city, as we recently experienced in New York following Superstorm Sandy?

Image courtesy of Bored/Aboard on Tumblr, dispatches from a Twin Cities cohort of artists currently en route by train to the 2013 Creative Time Summit in NYC.

An aside: A Twin Cities contingent (“seven artists, one geographer, an arts administrator and a one-year old”) are currently en route by train to New York City to attend the 2013 Creative Time Summit in person: Jeff Hnilicka (Husbands, Kulture Klub), Molly Balcom-Raleigh, Kirstin Wiegmann (Forecast Public Art), Ady Olson, Stephanie Rogers, Bill Lindeke (Twin Cities Sidewalks, streets.mn), Shanai Matteson (Works Progress, St. Paul’s City Art Collaboratory), Colin Kloecker (Works Progress), Janaki Ranpura. You can follow along on their journey by reading their charming dispatches from the train, collected on Tumblr in  Bored/Aboard.

Creative Time Summit Livestream will be Friday, October 25 (9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) and Saturday, October 26 (10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis. Lunch and snacks will be provided, and the event is free and open to the public. Find more about the Creative Time NYC Summit here: creativetime.org/summit. The Facebook event listing for the Twin Cities satellite screening is here: www.facebook.com/events/338377889640851/352514418227198.