Spotlight #1

Jake Levitas is the Co-Founder of Our City, a new nonprofit organization that empowers residents to imagine and build the future of their communities. Our City helps governments, cultural institutions, and individuals make their cities better together, through imaginative public design festivals, workshops, and installations. Over the past eight years, Jake has worked across four sectors to develop new models for civic engagement. He has leveraged his experience as a community organizer, city employee, professional planner, and practicing designer and consultant to develop successful large-scale, cross-sector initiatives. His projects have generated over 40,000 hours of civic engagement, and have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Fast Company, CityLab, The Associated Press, and other domestic and international outlets.

Can Buyukberber is an independent visual artist & director specializing in digital visual arts, motion graphics design and audio/visual performances. Can studied Physics and Visual Communication Design in Istanbul, Turkey and is currently studying at San Francisco Art Institute's Art and Technology MFA program as a Fulbright Grantee and working on immersive experiences using sound, light and space. His works have been exhibited in Europe and Northern America including large scale a/v projects at Signal Light Festival (CZ), International Digital Arts Biennial (CAN), IX Immersion Experience Symposium (CAN), Currents New Media Festival (US). He is interested in translating observations and insights on the immanent intelligence of nature, self-organizing systems, formations in time and patterns of the invisible space between the objects into visible, audible, tangible expressions.