OSU OFFICE OF ENGAGEMENT & FIT ASSOCIATES
OSU OFFICE OF ENGAGEMENT & FIT ASSOCIATES
Community Engagement
Facilitating connection and resource-sharing among community-based arts organizations
ROLE
Engagement & Facilitation Apprentice under Marc Rettig and
Maurice Stevens
CLIENT
Fit Associates &
Ohio State University Office of Engagement
TOOLS
Liberating Structures
Theory U
Art of Hosting
Overview
As an apprentice to Marc Rettig of Fit Associates and Maurice Stevens of the OSU Office of Engagement, I helped design and facilitate a community gathering for the Columbus Arts Ecosystem — OSU's initiative connecting the people, organizations, and institutions that support creative youth across Columbus.
The February 2026 gathering brought together 20 representatives from local arts organizations for a day of structured connection, storytelling, and resource-sharing.
Overview
As an apprentice to Marc Rettig of Fit Associates and Maurice Stevens of the OSU Office of Engagement, I helped design and facilitate a community gathering for the Columbus Arts Ecosystem — OSU's initiative connecting the people, organizations, and institutions that support creative youth across Columbus.
The February 2026 gathering brought together 20 representatives from local arts organizations for a day of structured connection, storytelling, and resource-sharing.
Challenge
Columbus has a rich but fragmented arts landscape. Organizations working toward similar goals — arts education, community activation, artist support — often operate in silos, unaware of what others are doing or what they might offer each other.
The goal of this gathering was to strengthen the connective tissue of the ecosystem itself: helping people see one another, surface shared needs, and discover where resources could flow.
Challenge
Columbus has a rich but fragmented arts landscape. Organizations working toward similar goals — arts education, community activation, artist support — often operate in silos, unaware of what others are doing or what they might offer each other.
The goal of this gathering was to strengthen the connective tissue of the ecosystem itself: helping people see one another, surface shared needs, and discover where resources could flow.
My Role
My Role
Working directly with Marc Rettig, I contributed to the design of the gathering's arc and activities, with input from Maurice Stevens and the OSU team.
Concretely, I:
Collaborated on the session structure, sequencing activities to move participants from connection → reflection → action
Helped design the "Graph Ourselves" activity, in which participants physically positioned themselves along spectrums representing their organization's size, focus, and current sense of stability — a low-stakes, embodied way to make the diversity of the room visible
Co-developed the Story Circle format, a structured small-group exercise where participants shared a story about their organization doing meaningful work, supported by listener guidelines and timed rounds
Contributed to the topic wall and open-space breakout design, which allowed participants to self-organize around conversations that mattered to them
Helped prepare facilitation guides and printed materials, including cards for participants to share contact information, an offering, or an invitation
Discovery
Define
Ideate
Prototype & Test
Design
Implement
Outcomes
The gathering drew 20 participants from across the Columbus arts community. Outcomes were primarily relational, but several concrete things also emerged:
Participants named new connections and potential collaborations they wanted to pursue
The topic wall and afternoon breakouts surfaced shared concerns (accessibility, board management, community ownership) and shared assets (skills, networks, spaces) that participants hadn't previously known they held in common
Exit feedback reflected participants planting seeds for new collaboration and support, as well as more aware of the ecosystem around them
This gathering was part of a series that has grown the Columbus Arts Ecosystem mailing list to hundreds of people, with biannual larger gatherings and smaller focused conversations in between.
From 40% of benchmark tree test participants failing common navigation tasks
to
87.7% of AP and college instructors rated overall experience excellent or good
90% rated experience of moving around the site as very easy or easy
87% rated finding what they were looking for as very easy or easy
Staff have also shared feedback on the ease and intuitiveness of the admin interface now that fields and posts are consolidated and organized.
What I learned
The quality of people's experience with one another can't be prototyped in the usual sense, but can be carefully structured and held. Working alongside Marc gave me a close-up view of how experienced facilitators make choices: what to leave open, what to script, and how to read a room and adapt in real time.
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