Welcome Kandice Clark, Creative Placemaking Specialist!
Riverside Avondale Preservation is proud to announce our newest staff position expanding our capacity in community engagement and public art. Kandice Clark joins our team as Creative Placemaking Specialist. This position seeks to preserve, maintain, and enhance public places in the historic district through collaboratively working with the community. This role will improve public areas through community-supported initiatives, events, and project implementation.
Kandice Clark, a Jacksonville native born in the heart of Riverside, is a devoted placemaker celebrated for her community activation, artists’ advocacy, and work in revitalizing spaces. Her most recent project, The Petite, was a pop-up artspace series in downtown Jacksonville that featured a different artist and baker every last Friday of the month from July to September 2023. The event celebrated Jacksonville’s diverse and expanding art community through vision, sound, and taste. Throughout the event, from concept to completion, Kandice was praised for her ability to work with all stakeholders as well as the artist community. As Founder of the Black Mural Map, Kandice worked to manage project installations, connect businesses with artists, and provide narrative insight and meaning behind the impactful murals that shape our community through storytelling. As a detail-oriented leader and supportive manager, Kandice will be able to help RAP direct this brand-new position through a micro-strategic planning process as step number one.
On staff, Kandice will have the support of our Creative Placemaking Steering Committee and expertise from Placemaking Jax and Downtown Vision Inc. Further, Kandice will join national placemaking leaders in Baltimore this Summer to connect with other cities, large and small, on how placemaking can enhance and improve public spaces to further enrich our cultural tapestry, preserve history, and tell the stories of Riverside-Avondale.
As a mom of three young future artists and wife of a talented local artist, Chris Clark, Kandice’s involvement in arts & culture doesn’t end after a day in the office. She is excited to bring her passion for this work to a neighborhood she truly loves.