Claire Nelson is co-founder of Urban Consulate, a cross-city network that brings people together to share ideas for building more just and equitable communities. We believe that sharing space for honest dialogue and the exchange of knowledge is necessary to transform ourselves, our communities, and our world. Since 2016, the Consulate has hosted hundreds of conversations in Detroit, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Austin, Cincinnati & Chicagoland. Claire is fortunate to work with an incredible cross-city family of hosts & contributors.

S E L E C T E D M E D I A

TEDxDetroit (2014)

Change & The City (2016)

Michigan Municipal League (2015)

Seeking Discomfort

(July 2020)

BEST ADVICE SHOW

White People Find It Hard to Talk About Race

(July 2016)

MICHIGAN RADIO

Claire is a forever learner, curator and convener of conversations at the intersection of place, space & race. Her work continues to be a wild & unpredictable journey where through each project & collaboration, new needs & questions emerge, pointing to the next. (Trusting & surrendering to this process has been a journey in & of itself!) Through the twists & turns, she has been indelibly shaped by the places she has lived — from Fort Greene to Harlem, Gramercy Park to Dupont Circle, the French Quarter, the Latin Quarter, and the Cass Corridor. She loves them all. She is especially grateful to the people of Detroit.

A Chicagoland native, Claire studied architecture & urbanism at Smith College and Columbia University, with The Shape of Two Cities: New York/Paris Program. These studies, combined with her involvement in Amnesty International as an intern in the Chicago office and co-leader of her college chapter, sparked her interest in human rights and the built environment.

After college, Claire started working in cultural institutions dedicated to the design of the public realm. At Van Alen Institute in New York City, she served as Director of Development & Special Projects, where she contributed to public design competitions, exhibitions, publications and forums, including the Creative Cities: Renewing New York convening just weeks after 9/11. She interned at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and worked closely with the founder of The Skyscraper Museum to grow her temporary exhibitions into a permanent home.

In 2002, Claire moved to Detroit, where she joined groups working to build a more sustainable & equitable future. In 2007, she opened a small neighborhood storefront called Bureau of Urban Living to sell home goods and share ideas for the city. She co-founded Open City to connect local indies and foster a stronger local economy, and co-drafted the Detroit Declaration for civic engagement & political action. She served as publisher of Model D and Urban Innovation Exchange to tell the stories of people leading change in their neighborhoods, first in Detroit & then in other great American cities.

In 2014, Claire was a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, where the idea for Urban Consulate came into focus. In 2015, the concept was selected for a Knight Cities Challenge grant to pilot, and in 2016 the Consulate launched in Detroit & Philadelphia. Since then, new conversation series & cross-city exchanges have unfolded organically in Cincinnati, Chicagoland, Austin & New Orleans.

Over the years, Claire has co-curated community gatherings of all sizes, from intimate dialogues to large auditoriums; sometimes recurrent programs like On the Ground and IdeaLab, to singular experiences like The Next Big Thing, always in collaboration with community partners; sometimes with national partners, including Aspen Institute, The Better Arguments Project, SXSW, PlaceLab, StoryCorps, Urban Land Institute, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit & more.

As an amateur designer, Claire has also designed local community campaigns & initiatives, including Canfield Street Market, Park(ing) Day, Mind the Gap for Detroit Design Festival, Declare Detroit, Preservation Detroit and more. In a particularly proud moment, Mayor Kilpatrick bought her “Escape from the Suburbs” poster for his office and taunt the late L. Brooks Patterson. ;-)

Claire’s work has been featured in the book For the Love of Cities, The New York Times, USA Today, CityLab, Next City & more. She has presented at TEDxDetroit, Meeting of the Minds, Creative Cities Summit, Knight Cities Summit, Mackinac Policy Conference, Detroit Policy Conference, and the Municipal Michigan League. She has served on advisory boards for Hatch Detroit, Invest Detroit Urban Retail Loan Fund, Build Institute, and partnered with the Detroit Innovation Fellowship.

R A N D O M N O T E S

Working on:

Challenging segregation & sprawl. Figuring out this multi-racial democracy thing. Resisting hierarchies of human value. Dismantling barriers that exclude. Bringing greater humanity to urbanity. Understanding (& practicing) healing & repair. Reconciling the “urgency of now” and the patience of planting seeds of long-term, enduring change.

Admiring:

Truth-tellers. Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, Nikole Hannah Jones, Jane Jacobs, Mother Jones, Molly Ivins & more.

Thinking at the scale of:

Rooms of people, parlors, lobbies, storefronts, courtyards, alleys, parks, squares, sidewalks.

Thinking at the speed of:

Conversations, relationships, questioning, learning & unlearning, practicing & embodying.

Researching:

Ancestors, abolitionists and enslavers both

Mantras:

Never stop learning. Allow events to change you.

Favorite Live Talks:

(in no particular order)

Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jane Jacobs, Nikki Giovanni, Heather McGhee, Clint Smith, Hanif Abdurraqib, Angel Kyodo Williams, Resmaa Menakem, Isabel Wilkerson, Samuel Mockbee, Bill Strickland, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barack Obama, Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Trevor Noah, Thelma Golden, Cornel West, Dr. Mindy Fullilove, Theaster Gates, Candy Chang, Anand Giridharadas, Tunde Wey, Mia Birdsong, Eric Liu, Krista Tippett, Abby Wambach, Adam Gopnik, Rev. Jennifer Bailey

How to Enter Black Space (Yodit Mesfin Johnson)

Putting Equity into Practice (Maya Wiley)

Just Say Hi: The Gentrification Blues (Marsha Music)

James Baldwin Hour (Devita Davison)

& so many more..

Reading & Re-Reading:

The Sum of Us (Heather McGhee)

The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones)

Emergent Strategy (adrienne maree brown)

Holding Change (adrienne maree brown)

How The Word is Passed (Clint Smith)

The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin)