with Civic Architect Chris Loos
Want to be a part of a stronger community?
Start with inviting your neighbors to the park, cleaning up your block, or making time to listen to the young people in your life.
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa Kay Solomon talks with Chris Loos about what it looks like to make civic engagement more accessible and rooted in everyday life.
Chris is a community builder and founder of Community Reimagined who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. He uses his platform, relationships, and creative instincts to bring people together and create opportunities for young people.
Through Community Reimagined, Chris is leading initiatives like City Council Recap, which makes local government meetings more accessible. His other programs include Hometown Cleanup, Civics Class with Cookies, and House Party at the Park, demonstrating that civic life can be joyful, hands-on, and built around the things people already love.
In this episode, you'll hear about:
Turning a passion for radio into opportunities for young people to explore their creativity and leadership.
How small, everyday actions can make a difference.
Creating meaningful intergenerational connections by making space for young people and elders to learn from one another.
The Creative Compound and the power of creating spaces for artists, mentorship, and creative collaboration.
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Chris Loos: We all want a nice neighborhood. We all want a spot where our kids can go and have fun and good schools and nice parks and the ability to walk down the street and feel safe. There's just so much common ground to where communicating with neighbors that I never thought I would have talked to got really easy, and it started to get easier as you talk.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow, starting today.
Welcome back to our season on Civic Futures. Today's episode is continuing on a recent theme of making civics more creative, joyful, and accessible.
My guest is Chris Loos, a radio personality, community builder, and founder of Community Reimagined. When you hear his voice, you'll understand how all of these are connected. Chris's work includes the City Council Recap, which makes local government meetings easier to understand, hosting neighborhood cleanups, bringing people together for parties in the park, and creating spaces where young people and older generations can learn from one another. Here's my conversation with Chris Loos.
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Chris Loos, I am so happy to be in conversation with you because when I thought about this Civic Futures series, I felt like, "We got to get Chris." We have to because the work you're doing embodies everything we're trying to put out in the world. First of all, focus on action, doing. Second of all, lifting others up, so bringing others together in a very generative way. Third of all, having a long-term perspective on what you can do, even when it feels like all of this stuff is overwhelming. Then for you, my friend, it's like repeat, repeat again, grow bigger, grow bigger. We're going to unpack all of that. Well, let me first welcome you to How We Future. Thank you for being here.
Chris: I am so excited to be here. Lisa, whenever you hit me like, "Hey, Chris, I got--" I'm there. Just know you made the call, I'm pulling up.
Lisa: Oh, that makes me so happy. I know. We should talk even about our origin story, which was a couple of years ago at Stanford, I had this vision of hosting a Futures Happening gathering for democracy makers, movers, and multipliers. One of the core themes of that was the role of imagination and how imagination could really help us get beyond the moment we were in, which just felt so reactive, so negative, so defeated.
One of my students suggested it, who was very involved in the Democracy Day at Stanford, suggested that I reach out to you because I was looking for a host for the evening event that was really focused on civic imagination. Centering on an earlier guest we had on How We Future, Eric Liu, and his civic sermons, which just have inspired me. You were so incredible. You were so receptive to this idea that a stranger [chuckles] was calling you up to invite you to participate in this wild dream. I'm just so grateful that you said yes. I wonder what it was like for you to just be on the receiving end of that crazy request.
Chris: I understood what you were trying to do. I understood it completely, not completely, but I am all the way in for the ride of imagining what that future could look like and how does that happen if we never talk about it, let alone gather?
Lisa: That makes me so, so happy. We could talk at length at your long history as a music executive and host, but I want to maybe focus on that as an entry point. For how you got involved in your local civic community with the iDream Foundation Society and the work you were doing there.
Chris: Yes. It's interesting because radio and music was indirectly my teacher in this cool way for the work of community. In radio as a host, I've gotten to see different regions here in Southern California, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, and all of these communities are different. How can you impact a community through this FM airwave? It was like, "Oh, this is cool." Then it was like, "You know what? Now I can go and talk to young people at schools because now I'm the cool guy that's on the radio." It's like, "Awesome. This is great."
Just sharing with them became like a, "Hmm, I'd like to do more of this. What do we do?" Then it was a conversation with a couple of friends who come from music and video. It was like, "All right. None of us really have formal education, but we've had careers. What if we just pour into our people?" if you would. That was the iDream Society. It was like, "Okay, Dreamers, let's create this society of Dreamers."
Understanding how to communicate, I guess, through getting real radio experience of that, and seeing how you can really connect people when you're intentional with what you're doing and your reason for getting together. iDream Society, let's say eight, nine years, has now become the teen division of our larger org, which has evolved into Community Reimagined.
Lisa: Yes. No, I want to talk about that. That's so cool, too, just even to make the connection that you started from a passion that you had. It's maybe even worth even talking about how you got into music to begin with.
Chris: Music fan. Period. I was just a music geek, nerd, Walkman all the time, but ultimate shy kid. Never talked. My mom, still to this day, in 2026, questions how on earth I've been to broadcast and radio. "How do you host events? You never said two words to me, and I could never get you to talk." You know what I mean? It was all of that. I realized it was basketball gave me confidence. Then music was something I was so passionate about, it was easy to talk about it.
That's when it clicked for me of like, "Okay, let me just really share about things I'm passionate about." Then I talked the clearest, probably make halfway decent sense at that point. Yes, it was just being a fan of music. I'll tell you, honestly, it was like hearing the 92.3 The Beat here in Los Angeles. I was like, "Wow, these radio personalities get to talk to the artist that I'm listening to? Oh, that would be a cool gig." [chuckles]
Lisa: I love that. I love that the future's right out there. I'm so glad that your mother had the same question that I did. It makes me feel very validated. How does this quiet kid that you talk about in your bio, shy observer, turn music host? That feels like so surprising. Just connecting another couple dots, I feel like my mother has always taught me that everybody has their lane of genius. You leaned into yours, which is like, "Wait. I love this. This is what I gravitate to." You didn't stop there. You then said, "How do I bring it to more people?"
I think iDream Society of building a network of people that are passionate about their craft the way you are, and saying like, "How do we help more young people that may also feel like they don't know what their place is, they don't know what they're good at, they don't know what their future has in store?" Here they have these talented, committed adults coming in to say, "We're going to create space for you. We see you."
Chris: Yes, 100%. It's so important. Those spaces where you're safe. Creatives can be-- our minds are going all over the place, and it's thoughts, and it's things, and there's no words for the thoughts and things. You're trying to figure out words, and then someone else is like, "I don't know what you're talking about." So many times I've heard that, I'm like, "Okay, that's fine." [chuckles] Like, "I get it."
Lisa: I'll keep trying. I mean, before we get into the Community Reimagined, which I spent a lot of time talking about, you continue to find other ways to use your talent in certain unexpected ways. Your talent as a host, as a synthesizer, as someone that understands the medium of broadcasting, you spend time in town halls to try to sort of help more people understand what was going on in these opaque meetings or those people doing civics, but actually had huge implications for the whole community. Tell me a little bit about that.
Chris: I will tell you, Lisa, it was so uncomfortable for me to step into those places because, first, I had never seen it, and I guess I'm used to being in warmer environments, if I could describe it. There's almost a vacuum to the air in the room of these certain city halls and places and meetings that you're like, "Oh, gosh. This is so interesting, but okay, can we talk? Can we have some sort of dialogue where you're going to listen?"
I'm going to listen. I think that was it, too, again, to go back to radio and learning how to listen better. So key. Listening, for me, changed everything, and it allowed me to, I think, go into these places that were far more uncomfortable for me because now, I'm able to listen and hear. If I can't contribute, I will say nothing. I will go back to being 12-year-old Chris that nodded my head and didn't say any words.
There was something, too, like family. I grew up with my grandparents and parents in the home, and since that, and that generation passed on, everybody went their own way. I remember this golden era of my family where we were all together and communicating and in community this way as a family all the way across. Little did I know that there was beef and all the family madness that goes on in the things. It was also like, well, it's different for me in the generation that I sit between of the elders and the next ones coming, knowing my voice in space.
Now being in my community, in my neighborhood, and saying, "You know what? Here we're all really in the same space. We're all in different ages and spots on our journey, but we all want a nice neighborhood. We all want a spot where our kids can go and have fun and good schools and nice parks and the ability to walk down the street and feel safe." There's just so much common ground to where communicating with neighbors that I never thought I would have talked to got really easy. It started to get easier as you talk.
I was blown by that, and I'm like, "Okay, well, if this could happen this way--" and thank you to my mentor, Mr. Ralph Walker, for bringing me in and really pulling me. Lisa, when I tell you, he was like, "Chris, come on, young man. Let's go." I was like, "I can't get involved." He was like, "You care about the community, right?" "Yes, for sure." "Then you're ready."
Lisa: "Yes, let's go. Let's go."
Chris: That was like an a-ha moment of like, "Now what would we like to see?" I think that's where you and I align so easily of just, like, "What would we like to see? Can we try to create it?" Let's try. We can try. Will it happen? I don't know. We're about to find out. [chuckles]
Lisa: It turns out what I've learned in doing this work now for multiple years is that even the trying feels better than not trying, that at the end of the day, it feels better to do something. Just the stuff that I do feels a little bit more intuitive to me than some of the things that are already out there or extending it or trying new things. This whole season is dedicated to showcasing people like you that are really pushing the envelope of what we thought civic engagement was, but what it really is.
As you said, it's like talking to your neighbors, noticing an opportunity to be better, to ask, "Why is it like this? Could it be different?" I just want to call out. I think it is so cool that you can make the connection between growing up in a home with multiple generations and having a lot of exposure to what it means to be a strategic-- I would call that a strategic translator, [chuckles] to--
Chris: [laughs] Yes.
Lisa: That's like what you're doing, and beef and all. That makes us resilient. I think it's when we take out the beef and we try to create frictionless lives, we don't get the practice that we need to go through the obstacles that exist. Anything worth doing that is new is going to be hard, and you're going to face challenges. The question is, "What's your response to it?" You're like, "Okay, I may not get it right the first time," or "How do I learn to take in different perspectives to turn a no into a yes? What can I do to put points on the board?"
I just love that you were taking this opportunity of this cold room that you were in, listening skills, and saying, "How do I bring that to more people who are actually going to be affected by what goes on in those doors?" I'm always amazed. I do a lot of work with sports and athletes, as you know, but I'm amazed at the endless chatter around the games. Whatever game it is. There's the game that happens, and then there's the post-game, and then the post-post-game.
If you're a sports broadcaster, you could talk for hours about the thing that happened. Meeting you and learning what you do and are able to do, I was like, "Wait. Why is that just sport? What if we just turn the stuff that either we don't understand or we think doesn't apply to us and make it cool, make it interesting?"
Chris: Make it connect in a different way. City Council Recap, for example, was just like this. Our city here in Monrovia, California, approximately, I think it's up to 40,000 now. I think it was, at the time, 36,000 to 39,000 people. This was one, two, maybe three voting cycles back. They said it was about 3,000, 3,600 people that showed up to vote. I wasn't the greatest student, but the math on that, 3,600, 39,000 people.
Something's not right. My mentor was like, "Have you watched the City Council meeting?" Whew. I did. I understood instantly why a lot of people don't. Now, is there a way to make this two, three, four, five, depending on the Tuesday evening, our meeting, something digestible in 20 to 30 minutes? It was like, "Okay." I call a couple neighbors, reached out to the local public access network.
They needed programming and things to do. It was like, "Can y'all commit to watch a meeting? Then we'll get together, and we'll just run through it. I'll shout out timestamps. We could put the link to the full meeting in the bottom." It's just, "Hey, scroll in an hour and a half to find out more about the lighting initiative that they showed with the 20 slides and find out more. Here's what they talked about."
That got going. We have about a team of about 9 or 10 different people now that are involved. Then it was talking to our youth that were starting to be a part of it, like, "Yo, would you like to host?" A couple of them were like, "Yes." The voter turnout was over 15,000 on the next go. From 3,600 to 15-something. I'll take it. I was just so excited. That was like the "yes moment-"
Lisa: It's a big deal.
Chris: -of like, "Okay-
Lisa: That's a big deal.
Chris: -let's keep it up. Let's get closer to that number."
Lisa: No, it's a big deal. That's been a theme throughout. How do we meet people where they are? That's not expect-- You put something out there. It was a good first attempt. Then you're like, "Wait, we got to keep going." You turned it into an ensemble of lots of people. By the way, they're also learning new skills doing that, hosting, getting involved. You're having that ripple impact as well, which is just so cool. Again, I want to see sports center turn civics. It's awesome. Then the play, and then they did this.
Listen, I am humble enough. I'm not ready to tackle the conditions. Why is a town hall or city council meeting that way to begin with? They're just humans that are stepping up. There's a whole redesign of that. I know there's new attempts that we can link to in the show notes around participatory democracy and new ways of doing it. It's even worth questioning that, too. I'll just say a quick funny story because you'll appreciate this.
When I first moved to my town here in Menlo Park, my kids were little, and there was a whole bunch of possibilities of redistricting because for some reason, Chris, I don't quite get this, they would hire demographers who got it wrong every year. They were going to redistrict and move it from being a local and whatever. A bunch of families got together. I was like, "We're going to go and talk to city council." It seemed like so scary.
Chris, I came in there. I had visual aids. I went to Kinko's. I was like, "See? I live in a cul-de-sac of four other parents. What do you want us talking about? How are we going to support teachers?" As opposed to moaning that we have to get across town. Whatever. This was a long time ago now. What I can say is I remember being so nervous, like broadcast news nervous, where I was just sweating. Guess what? These are my neighbors, [chuckles] one to be public service--
Anyway, that was just such a memorable moment for me to remind myself, just humans, just humans. Some of this structure is putting distance between us. It doesn't have to be there. It doesn't have to be there. We can just have a conversation. I remember walking away and being like, "They're so nice." [chuckles] They're like, "Yes, because they're parents, too." [laughs] Like, "They also sent kids to that school. They're not trying to be evil." I was like, "Oh-
Chris: [laughs]
Lisa: -I've built up this whole story in my head." I love that you're doing that. Maybe we can build on that. We have iDream Society, helping kids learn craft. We've got City Council Recap, reimagining how more of us can get engaged in the stuff that matters. More recently, you have launched something that I literally am hanging on every word, Community Reimagined, where you say, "Reimagining communities, empowering futures." Oh, so good. Tell me about it.
Chris: This is easily like-- I was so excited to connect with you to share what a big piece you were from bringing in Evan Weissman with Warm Cookies of the Revolution and Evan's book. I'm holding it up for anyone listening.
Lisa: It's so good.
Chris: It's the Vote Every Day. This book taught me, as a grown man, more about civics than I had ever understood. I was like, "This is such a powerful tool. In conversations with community members, folks that are on the recap team, it was like, "Young people, how are they getting involved?" I got to say, I'm so inspired by our youth all the time, just constantly. I shared this book with a few of them. They were like, "Oh, my gosh. This is so great."
I'm like, "Hey, would you share what you learned through this book with your peers? I'll just ask you all the questions, and if you could give the answers, that would be amazing, and we can invite adults to learn from y'all." "Cool." These are freshmen, Lisa, in high school. These kids got to sharing about what it is to get involved in your community and how simple it is. The things that belong to us in community is like parks and our pathways. Just doing-
Lisa: That's cool.
Chris: -anything is huge. How can you get involved? What do you want to do? Go do it. That learning thing goes both ways. Community is all right. It can't be just the elders talking to the youth. It's like I've learned-- this was a quote from KRS-One, but he shared, he was like, "When elders listen to young people, they're instantly more powerful around their peers and more aware and more just knowledgeable of what's going on amongst theirs. They are better amongst their peers. Young people who get to talk to elders and learn from them are now instantly the same, more powerful and aware around their peers."
It was just that moment of like, yes, we do need each other to grow it. There's things that elders did that are so powerful because they didn't have the tools and resources that we do now. I love getting to talk to young people. I'm like, "Hey, man, just relax on the old head and the unc talk. Go talk to unc a little bit." You know what I mean? Like, "Unc knows a few things. Game him and listen to him. Let him know."
You can't ask grandpa how your cell phone works. You can teach grandpa how the cell phone works, but he can teach you a lot as well. [chuckles] Just creating spaces too for intergenerational dialogue is something that we've been talking about as an org, like, "How can we really cultivate that as well?"
Lisa: Oh, it's so powerful, those relationships. In an earlier season, we had Jennifer Brandel on, who's a civic innovator, who talks about the civic Interstitium, the people that are making those connections. It turns out that researchers have recently found out that all of our organs are connected by this one big body that holds it all together. Of course, Eastern medicine doctors have known that for a long time, but now we have the tools to actually name this thing.
Jen basically says, "We need that in our communities." I feel like that's exactly what you're doing. I love this idea that you took this board book, this Vote Every Day board book, that basically says when you think about acting civically, getting engaged, doing something, like talking to an elder. You don't have to do something big, like cleaning up the streets, which I know you've done block by block.
When you do that and you bring that into your mindset and the way that you show up and the contributions you can make, that's a way more powerful way, an enduring way of supporting your community than the one time that you vote. He's not saying don't vote. He's just saying let's not be transactional about it. I have to just say on the homepage, and we're going to put this URL everywhere.
You say, "We build ecosystems where youth, entrepreneurs, neighbors, and leaders come together to transform cities block by block and conversation by conversation. The city is the product. Not the slogan, not the rendering, the actual experience of living in your neighborhood. That is what we're building towards."
I mean, can we just have that be a blueprint for every town? It's so powerful. Like we. We, the people. We can do this, but then, you do cool stuff. You don't just be like, "Now we're going to get out our finger-wagging homeroom murmur and tell you to do things." You have hometown cleanup, which is like so simple. Talk about that because you did that way before. I saw a video of you in 2020 doing hometown cleanup.
Chris: Yes, hometown cleanup was just like, "Okay, look at your neighborhood. Is it a parking lot? Is it a street? Is it the end of your cul-de-sac? Is it wherever you see a mess, trash, whatever?" Call up some friends. Super easy. "Hey, meet me on Saturday, one o'clock over here." Give them the address. Beat them there. Get there a little bit before them. Have some bags, have some gloves. If you want to be fly, grab a Bluetooth speaker and turn the music on and start strolling, talking. You're hanging with your folks for-- Give it an hour. It was very intentional, too. Just an hour. Just an hour.
Lisa: Yes, just an hour. [crosstalk]
Chris: It can feel, "Oh, I don't have time." You got an hour. We got an hour. Let's hang for an hour. It was really also important for us to be able to let young people feel the power of like, "Yo, you're a leader. You're a leader. You can lead." That was one of those things that I had shared and I'm like-- just as a young person who really didn't have my confidence before basketball. I didn't have-- if you were to call me a leader, I'd be like, break. I'd have probably ran right out the room like, "Ah, this is crazy. I don't want to hear any of this."
Letting them know. Lead amongst your peers. Call them. Just reach out to them. Get your text thread going, IG thread, whatever it is, however you communicate with your friends. Cool. Meet. Grab it. Lead. Now you're taking the lead. Then the coolest part, afterwards, when you go by. I loved just passing that same street, and you're like, "Yo, this looks good."
I remember one of the young people was just like, "Chris, I was by the spot on Highland, and we drove by it. Man, it still looks so good. We did that like a week ago, but there's like no trash, and it looks so good. I didn't even know it looked that good because it always looked so crazy." I was like, "Yes, that's it."
Lisa: So good.
Chris: The neighborhood you go by, just that little bit, that little stretch.
Lisa: There's so many side benefits. I mean, as you were saying, like there's pride in the street. Then they're bringing their friends. "Look what we did." By the way, they're probably not looking at their phones for an hour. They're actually having conversations, but you're leading with the pride and a sense of purpose and worth as opposed to, "You know, put your phone away for now." You're just like, "Look. Look what we can do together." So cool. All right. We also have to talk about-- you alluded to it earlier, but we got to talk about civics class with Cookies.
Chris: It was just a really amazing day. We did it at the local public access television network, too. We did it right there in the studio. They loved it because a lot of these spaces, libraries, public access networks, if you're fortunate enough for your neighborhood to have one of those, they're also trying to find a way to connect with community and to get community involved. It was like, "Well, let's go and do this there."
Civics class with Cookies was them leading a conversation, and I asked them, like, "What does it mean to be democratically involved? What is it like--?" I went to Google and was grabbing words and asking them, like, "Can you explain this to me?" They're like, "Oh, it's just getting involved." The way that they beautifully simplified these adult words was so beautiful, powerful, pure.
Also, just one of the things that I learned and walked away from was us smart adults and our big words sure get in the way of what can simply get done. It was incredible. It's also cool because it's now going to start working its way into the humanities academy at the local high school as well. I mean, their students over there are-- they're the leaders. It's awesome to be able to pour into them, but them being a part of it, they were like, "We want to keep doing this. We have ideas, too." I'm like, "Come on. I want to hear your ideas."
Lisa: I love it. I love it. I mean, again, starting with an entry point of cookies, which when done well, hard to beat, still stiff, and also meeting people where they are in the spaces that they already connect in. An earlier conversation, you're giving me an idea, Chris, more to do together. We talked to Shamichael Hallman, who's the director of Civic Health, who you've met at the Urban Libraries Council. You should be offering civics class with Cookies as a program across libraries. How cool is that?
Chris: Yes.
Lisa: It's just amazing to break down some of these things that feel so abstract into a board book that says, "How does this show up? Where are you seeing this?" Your respect and honoring of the young people as part of that, it's something we can all take as opposed to, again, wagging our finger, being like, "Why? Why don't you care?"
You're making me think another guest we had is Rachel Janfaza, who is a Gen Z expert, who's really trying to help educate all of us, like, "No, they're not apathetic." "No, they're not checked out." They're really looking for hope. You're playing that back with evidence, really at the base level of our neighborhoods. Okay, a few more I just want to talk about. I could talk to you all day. House Party at The Park. I mean, you had me at "house party."
[laughter]
Chris: Yes, that was the goal, right?
Lisa: Yes.
Chris: Who doesn't love a great house party? First of all--
Lisa: Am I too old for a house party? Maybe not? Maybe not?
Chris: No. No. No one is ever too old for a house party. That was also the catalyst of Community Reimagined because it was iDream Society until the house party at the park. It was friends of mine from high school, and we were seeing each other at funerals, Lisa, a lot. It was like by the third funeral, it was just like, "Now I'm seeing you all a lot here-
Lisa: Here? Yes.
Chris: -in these spaces," where, when you're around old friends, there's such a warm feeling. Here we are mourning friends. We can't really interact the way we would like to. We can't hang out in this moment the way that we would love to because every time, at the end of it, "Hey, we got to get together. We got to get together." "Yes. Yes. Yes, for sure. Let's get together. Let's make it happen."
Then the next funeral happen. I literally drove to the community center and was like, "Hey, there's this band shell behind the park. Can I just rent it for a day?" They're like, "Yes, sure." I rented it for a day, text a couple of friends that are DJs. I'm like, "Hey, can y'all just come, pull up, man, and play some music?" This was actually a thought of my friend Stephanie, who was like, "What about the people that meant things to us growing up?" It was like, "Yes." "Well, what if we just honor people that really made a significant impact here in our hometown to us?"
Now we've added the M-Town Awards, where we recognize people that have contributed significantly. Now we have citywide voting, so they nominate their people, vote for our people. We've got the Ralph Walker Community Leader Award. We've got Ms. Ty, who was just this amazing-- she's an amazing teacher, woman, mother-to-all teacher. You know what I mean? That was like, if you had her in class or not, she was kind of like auntie, mom, teacher, all-in-one all the time. It was like Educator Award, Ms. Ty's Educator Award.
We've named awards after different people. We recognize them. We want to give people who have contributed so cool their flowers. Food, music, get together at the park, games for the kids, classic cars we added to it last year. We're just trying to make it a funner and funner time. The goal for us now is the org has been like, "Okay, now that we've been doing it for three years, let's create this to where we can share this with our neighboring cities, for people that want to get together."
It's tricky. You're like, "How?" Okay, rent the park, do the things. There's like a couple of steps. It doesn't require much money. It doesn't require a lot of anything. You're going to need a few people to help, but I think we all have a few people that care enough. We had over 300, I think, or 400 last year that came to the park.
Lisa: It's incredible. It's incredible. Yes, that's how we used to play, play at the park. There's so many things to love about that, including, yes, Cookies, and yes, awards. Who doesn't love awards? Makeup awards that honor your town, build new institutions. I just love it.
Chris: Also to bring in the other cool stuff that nobody knows about. There's a library of things at the library where you could rent a leaf blower or a solar panel or whatever. Have them pull up. Have all the orgs here in town be there as well, so folks in the community can be like, "Oh, my gosh. I never knew about this," or X, Y, Z.
Lisa: A reason to connect.
Chris: Yes.
Lisa: Before we recorded this, I shared there's this new report that came out, I think I want to say out of Berkeley, which was like, what we want the next governor of California to do to improve our civic health. There's lots of good stuff in there. Again, we'll post it in the show notes. I haven't read all of it, but the thing that I didn't see in it, that what you're doing that I'm going to highlight, too, is that they're all like, "Create this. Create this." I think you're basically saying, "Use what we have. Use what we have. Notice what we have and create spaces."
Shamichael, so much of what he talked about, was that libraries are books and more. They're places to go and get opportunities, learn about stuff. Find a leaf blower. I don't know if he has leaf blowers. Maybe, well, he'll say he needs to get to the leaf blower business. They're turning them into makerspaces and places where you can go sew. Anyway, it's so super cool to hear that you're doing this organically. All right, Chris, the last one I want to talk about, maybe this is like holding it all together, all these fantastic programs, is the Creative Compound.
Chris: Lisa, when I tell you I am geeked, all of this, everything we've been talking about is really super cool. There is something about this that being around, I think about the event that you curated in Futures Happening. It was this group of future-thinking folks all together, creative. We're visionaries. It's like you're all together. Those nights wrapped up too fast. I was like, "Ah, it's over?" Then it was done. The weekend was done. It's like, "Oh, I guess we got to go home now, right? Okay. All right."
Lisa: Yes. "Boo." [laughs]
Chris: "Fine. Boo." Yes, 100%. We all go. It was like, how do we create this space, this third space, if you would, this safe space for creatives and artists? Again, using what we have around now that the work we've been doing, we've been trying to integrate into libraries and public access television networks. They were like, "We'd love to do anything over here that you're excited about, Chris. This has been cool getting community in the door." I'm like, "Okay, well, let's do something where we can feature an artist." Lisa, when I tell you some of these artists that we're going to have, I'm so hyped. One, I'll say is a pinstripe low-rider painter, hand pinstripes.
Lisa: Oh, my gosh. That sounds amazing.
Chris: Right, but we have an incredible sports photographer. We've got music producer. We've got culinary artists. It's art, creativity that we want to feature somebody purely for inspiration. Like, "Yo, man. See what these people are doing." There's stuff that I'm like, "I can't do that, but gosh, that's fresh." You know what I mean? I leave, and I'm geeked. It's like, "Okay, let's do that."
Then let's have breakouts where conversation can happen, connectivity can happen. We'll have a breakout where we're going to have a local bookstore have the writers group meet up in the front lobby area where they can sit and talk about writing. Then we're going to have the breakout where the team from KGM who has recorded something, they're editing something. If you want to learn about television or editing, go hang with them in the back. That conversation's going on.
Want to learn about photography? Go over there, connect with Jose. That's going to be going on over there. Monique is going to have this in the back with the music. If you're music-interested, get over there, and we'll have a conversation with our featured artists. Have that. Come back, "Yo, what were the takeaways? How are y'all feeling?" Boom. Boom. Boom. One hour, "Yo, catch you next month. We're going to have so-and-so in."
You always got to have the teammate who's like, "Okay, man. So what's--?" You got to have the one with that ask-the-hard-question. My guy Jay is like, "All right, Lo. This is great." He's not the creative. He always is like, "Dude, I'm not the creative. I just helped make it happen." Da, da, da, da. Great guy. He's like, "What would you hope would happen with this?" I'm like, "A couple of things, inspiration, mentorship." There is always somebody, no matter what the age is, that's better at drawing, better at taking the photo, better at whatever.
Now, no matter your age, you might find your mentor right here, and then I would love to see an urban artist group that just meets up weekly at the park or somewhere here in the city that connects, or a writer's group that they had such a great time, they want to do this every week now, so they do that as well. Spark those communities for creatives and artists would be the ultimate goal.
Lisa: Right? That's it. That's it. You're building civic infrastructure, connections. You're helping people live longer lives because you're helping them meet new folks in new ways, build relationships. You are living all of that research that Robert Putnam talks about around bonding capital and bridging capital. There it is, right? You have all the research, but you are doing it. It's just awesome. I'm so glad that we got to share what you're doing with more people. We'll put up your URL, but I imagine you want to get some supporters for this? Can people who are not there support your efforts?
Chris: Absolutely. communityreimagined.org. All of our dollars are going right back to it. That was the thing that always stopped me as well from a nonprofit organization and creating it. I'm like, "What do they do with their money? I don't know about this." Like, "Ah." It was like, "No, no, no, no. Okay. We're going to show the work. [laughs] Show the numbers. Show where it's all going. Let's be that so at any time--" That was so important for me. Obviously, having huge donors and foundations give is the goal, I'll say, for us at this moment, but there's something so cool about seeing the neighbor kid that donates $5 and $10. I'm like, "Come on. Let's go." Right?
Lisa: Yes. Behaviors for life. Commitment for life. Incredible.
Chris: Thank you for your words and for sharing that. Sometimes, the day runs out and there's not enough time in the day to get all the things done. There's probably a piece that always sits with me like, "Christian, I ain't doing enough."
Lisa: The whole theme also of this season, we had these incredible visuals being created by a crazy talented design firm called Public Official. They came up with this idea of scaffolding. Every episode has a visual of a different kind of scaffold. That just feels so right on, Chris, for what you're doing. By the way, the scaffold's often not that sexy. That's not the thing. You're like, "Dude, did you check out the scaffold? Did you see it? It's amazing." Nobody says that, right? Which is what I mean music and cookies.
It's really hard work. It often goes unnoticed. I wore the shirt for you, I said earlier, "Kindness is the new cool." I want to get it redone to say "Civic kindness is the new cool," because that's what you're doing. You're just investing every heart. You're integrating, you're connecting, and you're doing the thing that my old mentor taught me is the greatest superpower, which is to blend your power and your passion. That's what you're doing. It's infectious. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for taking time to be on How I Future. I cannot wait for others to hear about all the awesome things you're doing.
[music]
Lisa: Thanks for listening to this episode. Chris and his team at Community Reimagined are showing us what becomes possible when we work with the tools we already have. If you'd like to learn more about Chris's work or support Community Reimagined, you can find them at communityreimagined.org. We'll include that link along with some other resources we discussed in the show notes. Please leave a rating or review of How We Future wherever you're listening. It really helps get the show out there. Thanks for listening. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and I'll see you next time on How We Future.
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