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Bustling Spaces supports artists, community groups, and creative businesses in historically disinvested communities to manifest their visions, access new resources, and tell their stories. Henry Wishcamper, founder of Bustling Spaces LLC, is a theater artist, cultural planner, community developer, storyteller, arts advocate and strategic consultant. He have over 20 years of experience as a theater director, producer, playwright and non-profit administrator. He was an Artistic Associate and member of the Artistic Collective at the Goodman Theatre, where he directed seven seasons of their beloved holiday production of A Christmas Carol as well as numerous other productions, readings and workshops. He recently graduated from the Masters in Urban Planning and Policy program at the University of Illinois Chicago with a custom specialization in cultural planning. His primary academic focus was on the role that arts infrastructure and cultural programming in public spaces can play in generating equitable hyperlocal economic development in historically disinvested communities.
Paige Brown, Program Associate for Bustling Spaces LLC, is a vocalist, pianist and composer. Paige occupies the dynamic space of helping to create opportunities, supports, and structures for Chicago artists and organizations while establishing herself as an artist in her own right. As an arts administrator and as a fan/friend of many in the robust Chicago arts ecosystem, she constantly finds herself in awe of the talent and adventurousness of the creatives she is privileged to witness and support. Her experiences in grant writing and development, proposal review, and performing arts residency coordination have inspired her to develop new ways to disseminate information and strategies for procuring funding, platform expansion and more to emerging and underrepresented artists and arts initiatives, while simultaneously working to co-create a more accessible, supportive, and equitable arts landscape in the city as a whole.
Hope Wang is the founder and co-director of LMRM. She wears many hats as an artist who unintentionally fell into creative entrepreneurship. Hope has been the recipient of over $80,000 in individual artist grants funding since 2018. As an individual artist, she sometimes feels like she spends more of her studio time as a grant writer. Her research interests include systems that foster fair working conditions for artists to flourish both creatively and financially. Hope often presents on her practice as both an artist and arts administrator, sharing what she’s learned and how it inspires the studio culture she’s cultivating through LMRM.
Louisa Zheng is often carrying too many things and loves containers of all sorts. She also designs and creates containers: books, events, and buildings all similarly containing meaning, connection, and stories in different ways. Outside of her role as an architectural designer, Zheng has participated in various Chicago-based artist-run initiatives since 2018. She has acted in an advisory role for LMRM since its preconception and is invested in more creative organizations participating in and advocating for a more equitable arts economy. Her present part-time role as Development Assistant with LMRM focuses on building and documenting their trajectory toward sustainability.