✤ Columbus, Indiana
Prove It
A National Summit on Design Excellence as Civic Practice
Civic and design leaders gather in Columbus October 8–10, as Indiana makes unprecedented investments in quality of place—and asks harder questions about what creates lasting civic value.
✦ Dates
October 8–10, 2026
✴ Venue
The Commons
Columbus, Indiana
✽ In partnership with
Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Indiana Arts Commission
❖ Launching
The Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership
✱ Why now
Indiana is investing at a scale it has never seen before.
Civic Design Institute is bringing civic leaders, designers, researchers, funders, and policymakers together in Columbus to ask a single question: how can Indiana ensure these investments create lasting value for communities?
Prove It uses this moment of statewide momentum to examine what makes thoughtful, enduring places possible, and how their civic and economic value can be better understood and measured.
Prove It Keynote
Thursday, October 8
The Commons
300 Washington Street
5:30 pm Reception
6–7:30 pm Keynote presentations
Free and open to the public
Advanced registration encouraged
What does design excellence look like in cities and in rural towns?
Join Civic Design Institute for a free public conversation with Maurice Cox and Courtney Spearman, two national design leaders whose work spans major cities and rural towns. Together, they will explore how the places we build serve the people who live there and what makes those investments endure.
The evening opens the first Prove It: A National Summit on Design Excellence as Civic Practice in Columbus, Indiana. Residents, students, designers, community leaders, and anyone curious about the future of their community are welcome.
✴ Keynote Speaker
Courtney Spearman
Design, Arts, Cultural Advocate
Washington, D.C.
Courtney Spearman serves as Fieldwork Program Manager for Building Common Ground, a collective supporting rural and Tribal communities. She leads Fieldwork, a national program offering free design and project-development support to rural and Tribal cultural organizations, engaging a cohort of 20 communities in planning civic and cultural spaces rooted in local context. Her work brings a multidisciplinary approach to rural revitalization, collaborating across arts and design nonprofits, landscape architecture firms, and community organizations, and draws on more than a decade overseeing the design field nationwide at the National Endowment for the Arts. Spearman earned her Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Arts in Historic Preservation from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History from Rice University.
✽ Keynote Speaker
Maurice Cox
Urban Planner
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Maurice D. Cox is the Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where his work merges architecture, design, and politics in pursuit of equitable urban development. He served as Director of Planning and Development for the City of Detroit, where he co-authored neighborhood framework plans credited with helping reverse a 70-year population decline, and later as Commissioner of Planning and Development for the City of Chicago, where he led the INVEST South/West initiative to revitalize ten neighborhoods. His earlier public service includes terms as Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Design Director at the National Endowment for the Arts under two presidents. He has taught at Syracuse, the University of Virginia, Tulane, and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
❃ Keynote Speaker
Todd Young
U.S. Senator
Indianapolis, Indiana
Todd Young is the senior United States Senator from Indiana, serving since 2017. Before the Senate, he represented Indiana's 9th congressional district in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2017, and he has since built a reputation as a bipartisan problem-solver, playing a key role in passing the CHIPS and Science Act to expand domestic semiconductor production, alongside work on veterans' affairs and affordable housing. Earlier in his career, he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, discharged as a captain. Young graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Political Science from the United States Naval Academy, and also holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from the School of Advanced Study in London, and a law degree from Indiana University.
✸ Keynote Moderator
Daniel Luis Martinez
Educator and Architectural Designer
Indianapolis, Indiana
Daniel Luis Martinez is Program Director, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Professor with tenure at Indiana University’s J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Rural Engagement. Daniel is an architectural designer, educator, and co-founder of LAA Office: a multi-disciplinary design studio that explores the intersection of landscape, art, and architecture. His research and creative work investigate the transformation of undervalued sites through a synthesis of public art and public space design. He has been included in Art Omi's Architecture Residency in New York for 2022, was named an Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellow in 2019 and received an AIA Henry Adams Medal in 2012. Daniel has worked at leading architectural firms, including Allied Works and Weiss/Manfredi, and his writing has been published in notable architectural journals, including Mas Context, San Rocco, Clog, and Drawing Matter.
Prove It Schedule
Thursday, October 8
Public Keynote Presentation
Maurice Cox and Courtney Spearman in conversation, moderated by Daniel Luis Martinez. Remarks by Senator Todd Young; welcome by Mayor Mary Ferdon.
Friday, October 9
Delegation Working Session
The four founding-cohort delegations work their live design challenges with one another, with Columbus, and with national faculty in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and economic development.
Saturday, October 10
Framework and Indicators
Delegations, READI representatives, and invited professionals test the six Civic Conditions against real projects and shape what the Partnership should measure.