Connor Descheemaker

Background

About Connor Descheemaker

With more than seven years of project and program management experience, I have worked at the intersection of visual art, performance, architecture, urban planning, and community engagement to produce and facilitate meaningful events and initiatives for professionals and the broader public. With extensive knowledge of urban issues and arts-centric placemaking, I excel in creating systems in which community members can create the programs, engagements, exhibitions, and performances which give their neighborhood, city, profession, or mission meaning. I have programmed a community-based commercial art gallery, producing diverse monthly exhibitions with a myriad of curators and across media; served on municipal boards and commissions to facilitate quality, walkable urban development; curated and moderated panel discussions and presentations on critical development issues facing hyperlocal communities; trained and managed volunteers across arts and professional association settings; produced multidisciplinary performance art events with local, regional, and national performers, including navigating artist guarantees and contracts, patron services, and venue management; managed annual member campaigns for business and professional associations primarily focused on the AEC industry; created and managed discipline-specific, peer-based professional learning focused on equity, in accountability to peer BIPOC-led organizations; and created and adapted systems to facilitate and implement dozens of monthly meetings and programs for professionals in architecture and allied professions. Though diffuse in content, the core of my work is united in finding and building trust with extant and emergent individuals and community organizations, understanding their needs and priorities, and creating systems in which we can co-create meaningful policy, programming, and information to share. This means ceding power from established organizations, emphasizing lived experience, and connecting people to the tools and groups which will give their personal and professional lives meaning. Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, I am now located in Seattle, Washington.