Founder | Owner
Metris Arts Consulting
A choreographer/arts administrator turned urban planner, Anne Gadwa Nicodemus founded Metris and leads its work. She oversees Metris’ strategic direction and daily operations and frequently serves as lead technical contributor for projects. Metris’ projects range from a Zimbabwean-focused case study of how creative spaces foster activism in repressive regimes to an arts and culture plan for the small city of Grand Rapids, MN.
A leading voice in the intersection of arts and community development, Anne brings 15 years of experience as a researcher, writer, speaker, and advocate. She recently led the development of WE-Making: How arts & culture unite people to work towards community well-being (2021) for a consortium of major funders. It offers an opportunity for practitioners to intentionally and strategically align their efforts to address today’s most imperative crises: struggles for racial justice and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-authored Creative Placemaking, the report for the Mayors’ Institute of City Design (2010) that defined the field. Her book chapters and journal articles “Creative placemaking: Reflections on a 21st-century American arts policy initiative” (Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice, 2019), “Fuzzy Vibrancy” (Cultural Trends, 2013) and “Creative Placemaking: How to Do it Well” (Community Development Investment Review, 2014) look more deeply at creative placemaking as cultural policy and its ethics and practical challenges. Anne gives frequent talks at universities and professional conferences nationwide, and as far-flung as Macau, the Czech Republic, and Ontario. Anne holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a B.A. in dance and biology from Oberlin College.
Anne is fascinated by all kinds of places—their form, their people, their change. She grew up in suburban Connecticut; went to college surrounded by the cornfields of Ohio; and lived, danced, and worked in New York City and Minneapolis for years. Her family hails from central Long Island’s north shore, where she grew up spending summers on one of its last remaining farms. In 2012, she laid down roots in Easton, PA where she lives with her wife Julia and two sons.