Dr Cara Courage

About

Cara helps places and cultural organisations turn evidence and participation into real decisions, structures and action.

She’s a cultural strategist, evaluator and internationally published placemaking specialist, working across local government, heritage, museums, universities and community-led regeneration. She runs her own consultancy, Courage Works.

On our projects she leads cultural strategy, governance and place work. She audits and maps cultural assets, develops governance options and comparative analysis, builds evaluation frameworks and Theories of Change, and designs engagement where residents have real influence, from large public surveys to resident commissioning panels. Her work covers public art and the public realm, heritage capital projects, creative health, civic universities, and organisations going through structural change.

Cara was Head of Tate Exchange, Tate’s platform for socially engaged practice, and Interim Co-Director of Learning and Research at Tate, and was later appointed Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. She’s the author of Arts in Place and lead editor of The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking. She chairs the board of Phoenix Art Space in Brighton and is a URBACT Expert.

She’s as comfortable in a resident workshop as a boardroom, and believes participation should change decisions, not just inform them.

EXPERTISE: Cultural strategy and placemaking · Governance and organisational change · Evaluation and Theory of Change · Participatory engagement and co-design · Cultural asset mapping

QUALIFICATIONS: PhD, University of Brighton · MSc Psychosocial Studies, University of Brighton · BSc (Hons) Social Anthropology, University of Sussex

PUBLICATIONS: Arts in Place (2017) · Creative Placemaking and Beyond (2018) · The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (2021) · Trauma Informed Placemaking (2024)