INCUBATION LAB
AMPLIFYING THE NEXT
GENERATION OF URBAN INNOVATORS
There are two Incubation Lab workshops during the event representing Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA. Incubation Lab Fellows will receive one year of mentorship with Creative Placemaking Communities, along with a grant to advance their project.
Attendees of Imagine, Create, Activate! are invited to participate in either or both workshops, pre-registration is recommended as space is limited.
Stephanie Fleming - SEESAW
Stephanie Fleming is an Experiential Producer and Interactive Installation Artist based in Atlanta. She is co-founder of The Comic Workshop, which empowers youth and adults to tell their stories through creative curriculums, comics and other artistic mediums.
Her Incubation Lab project is entitled SEESAW - a participatory installation where the physical laborious experience of self-identity construction is brought to life with an oversized manual scale that aesthetically looks like a seesaw found on a playground. SEESAW is an opportunity to literally feel and see the weight of your perceived identity in America as well as the impact of constructed racial terms and social economic biases that impact everyone’s access and perception of justice and equity.
Through a commission with The Science Gallery Atlanta, Stephanie created the first iteration of SEESAW, a 900 sq ft indoor installation that mimicked aspects of a real outdoor playground aesthetic. It used raspberry pi computers at its core to illustrate what gold bars are put on either side of the seesaw on a TV screen for observers to engage with. The gold bars represented 9 social economic categories which created 32 different gold bars that people use to identify with. The installation was accessible, technology driven, and layered featuring 3 additional activations for participants to reflect on their experiences.
The Incubation Lab will focus on a reimagined edition of SEESAW for a new city in an outdoor venue, with the goal of applying what Stephanie has already learned from the first iteration of SEESAW; and to explore how creative placemaking and interactive art installations can be a beneficial tool for building community, empathy, and empowering change toward inclusive, authentic lived experiences for all.
Neşe Altıntaş - City&U
Neşe Altıntaş is a designer, artist, and educator based in Chicago. Her work moves fluidly across architecture, storytelling, and social engagement. She is the founder of City&U, an interdisciplinary storytellers collective exploring the personal and collective layers of selfhood revealed in our relationships to place. With a background in architecture, psychology, and community-based arts, her work merges trauma-informed design, neuroarchitecture, and participatory storytelling to create spaces –physical, digital, and conversational– where people can author their own narratives and contribute to more human-centered cities.
Neşe will workshop her City&U Project at the Incubation Lab. City&U is a creative, community-cultivating initiative and interdisciplinary storytellers collective, grounded in the dynamic relationship between individuals and the cities they call "home." The name itself, City&U, is a layered phrase. It reads as “City and You,” but also suggests “The City in You.” It speaks to the deeply personal ways people carry their environments within them: how memories become mapped onto streets, how identity is shaped by neighborhoods, and how emotions intertwine with places both lived and imagined. The “U” is not fully spelled out –it is intentionally left as a single letter, graphically representing the individual. It centers the person as the sole author of their story, acknowledging that a city’s narrative is written one life at a time. Around that one “U,” people, places, and moments revolve and evolve –intersecting, transforming, and shaping a personal urban archive.
Founded in 2019, City&U made its first stride with a student-led short film contest. The event gathered interdisciplinary student participants and jurors, inviting videographic works (documentary, cinematic, animation, interviews, storytelling, testimonials, podcasts, and more) that reflected on how surroundings shape who we become. Through public screenings, artist panels, and open discussions, the contest became a powerful forum for civic reflection, emotional connection, and cultural expression, marking the beginning of the City&U Archives: an ever-growing pool of memories.