The 8th annual CityWorks (X)po conference begins Thursday at the Patrick Henry Hotel on Roanoke’s Jefferson Street, focused around the theme of “Anticipating 2050, Acting Today.”
The conference continues through Saturday. Related events also include a pre-party Wednesday night at West Station (425 Campbell Ave.) and a Friday night party at the Taubman Art Museum — both of which are free and open to the public.
Conference leaders have secured a long list of speakers touching on every aspect of community development — from the economy (Steve Pedigo) to politics (Sen. Tim Kaine), from the importance of the arts (Jamie Bennett) to environmental solutions (Lynn Richards).
“I’m really excited about the whole speaker lineup this year,” says (X)po organizer Brad Stephens. “We raised the bar a little higher and I’m really proud of the class of speaker we’re putting on the stage.”
City Works (X)po takes as its tagline: Big Ideas for Better Places. This year’s big ideas are posed as questions: How are our communities changing? What can we do today to prepare for the future? How do we build the future we want to have?
The speakers are set to answer these questions through the lenses of their expertise — gerontology (Emi Kiyota), housing (Isabel Thornton), philanthropy (Eric Avner), social justice (Devon Turner) sustainability (Marc Stern), architecture (Germane Barnes) and others.
Conference headliner, Sunil Yapa, author of Roanoke Valley Reads 2018 pick, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, takes the (X)po stage on Friday at 4:30.
Following his talk, (X)po moves to the Taubman for a free, public happening that is a collaboration between (X)po, Art by Night and Roanoke Valley Reads. With the In Our Own Words exhibit as its background, the Taubman is hosting a Positive Action Poster Making Party. The event takes place from 5:30 to 9 p.m.
New this year: On Saturday, from 10 a.m. to noon, a free, open-to-the-public event will be held at the Grandin CoLab, during which conference leaders will hand out awards for Roanoke’s top placemakers in the fields of education, business, community, nonprofits, government and Placemaker of the Year.
“We don’t want people in Roanoke to be afraid of any of these ideas,” says Stephens about the concepts introduced at the conference. “In fact, a lot of them are already happening here.”
Stephens says the awards recognize the boundary-pushing work going on in Roanoke.
“We shouldn’t think of ourselves as not the place where this should be happening,” he says.
For more information or to purchase tickets for the conference, head to www.cityworksxpo.com
About the Writer:
Christina Nifong is a writer with a decades-long career profiling interesting people, places and ideas. She’s also a committed locavore and mother to three kids, four chickens and one very sweet kitty. Find more of her work at christinanifong.com.