cultural production

Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Centers, and Town of Utica, MS, 2024
Significant Developments built capacity between the three partnering institutions to work together in a sustainable way led by members of the Utica community. Addressing the community-defined challenge of “food access”, Significant Developments worked with a Community Advisory Group to develop a community-led movement to bring groceries to their rural town.

After a 18 months of organizing and enacting small projects, the formation of the Utica Food Club in August 2023 formed a resident-led container for:
- sharing community stories of food.
- collective purchase research to identify direct producer relationships.
- a workshop series focused on bargain shopping, food storage techniques, food as medicine, and homesteading.
- community collaboration in the creation in four food-themed public art works: a school residency, a new town mural on the library, a quilting project examining family recipes & remedies, and a resident portrait/interview project highlighting those working on the Utica Food Club.
- the formation of a leadership team to conduct monthly member ordering and produce deliveries to Utica while pursuing the formation of a consumer grocery cooperative.

A culminating celebration, Homegrown Utica Fest, was a broad effort to invite more community to step into this continued work together as a celebration of rural self-determination and artistic voice in the Utica community. Thirty months.

This project was a part of Arts for Everybody, a national campaign to prove how the arts can lead to healthier people and healthier communities.



City of Jackson Planning Department, 2020
The Fertile Ground project at Galloway Elementary included nature-based arts-integration curriculum development, classroom farmer visits, student & community design facilitation for the Mississippi State University School for Landscape Architecture in their design of a new learning garden, the design of a new school mural, and the development of a community steering committee for the entire slate of projects. Significant Developments coordinated all partners, ensured community collaboration in all aspects of the work, and worked individually and in groups with teachers to develop arts-integrated, nature-based curriculum for their classrooms. Thirteen months.

This project was a part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge seeking to showcase the potential of artists to act as civic leaders, drawing attention to and encouraging dialogue around pressing problems.



Mississippi Museum of Art Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE), 2019
Over the course of 2019, johnson wandered Lafayette County, MS, holding conversations curious about exchange, transaction, and equity. Guiding this progression was the passage of daniel from one person to the next, and also a search for clay. johnson created small clay tokens from five different sites of memory in Lafayette County, gifting a token to each person who listened and shared. A homestead for a young couple homeschooling their five children, land of a local civil rights pioneer now in limbo split among siblings, the woods where William Faulkner wandered, the backyard of the Black woman who raised Faulkner, the clay ridge at the end of the county road where the hideaway beach is - clay from each becoming shaped and fired tokens traded and traveling and holding a story.

The tokens and their stories became tentpoles for a range of community members to share their current work shaped by the concepts of land & power. Twenty-three community members came together to present Land & Power: The Summit featuring performances, panel-discussions, academic presentations, experiential learning experiences, art exhibitions, and a shared meal. Ten months.

This project was a part of the CAPE In-State Residency Program. CAPE’s purpose is to use original artworks, exhibitions, programs, and engagements with artists to increase understanding and inspire new narratives in contemporary Mississippi.



Jackson Medical Mall Foundation, 2018
Our team listened deeply throughout the nested social layers of the Jackson Medical Mall - internal staff, tenants, mall walkers, neighboring residents, visitors - to identify the intersections of assumptions, frustrations, and visions for the future where the Foundation could lean in over the next decade. Storytelling engagements over coffee with mall walkers, facilitating neighbors recognizing neighbors with hand-crafted awards at a Neighborhood Night Out, shadowing and interviewing the personnel who maintain the mall’s public spaces, and lunch engagements with tenants were some of the ways the Significant Developments team entered into community to discover the common visions circulating and conflicting narratives causing dissonance. 

Alongside this work, we crafted frameworks for bringing local artists to the table at every level of the Medical Mall’s work to further their goal of weaving arts and culture throughout their everyday operations and programs. Seven months.

This project was part of the ArtPlace Community Development Investments. ArtPlace worked to enlist artists as allies in equitable community planning and development.