Susan Dalton is a Memphis native who puts community first when she strives to make a positive social impact and has worked at Innovate Memphis for over six years. She has been and continues to be instrumental in successfully leading our work, designing and delivering projects, programs, partnerships, and collaborative initiatives that address long-standing civic challenges. Susan’s top priorities are focused on community development initiatives, reimagining parks and public space, and addressing the challenges of food waste and food insecurity.

Anyone who has visited the parks along Memphis’ riverfront or visited Cossitt Library should know that Susan played a role in the development, programming, and operations to bring these public spaces back to life along with a coalition of nonprofits and public agencies. She is most known for her central role in Memphis’ $4 million grant-funded Reimagining the Civic Commons – an initiative dedicated to advancing social cohesion and economic and environmental goals through revitalized parks, libraries, trails, and public spaces. She brought Innovate Memphis’s expertise in facilitating collaborative projects, designing prototypes, engaging in qualitative community research, and deploying regular measurement and data evaluation to learn from the pilot and inform permanent changes. In just three years, “The Fourth Bluff” demonstration project area adjacent to Downtown and the riverfront transformed a series of sleepy spaces into a vibrant Civic Commons. The River Garden, Fourth Bluff Park, the Cossitt Library and River Line Trail have become community anchors connecting downtown and the riverfront. This demonstration project brought bold design concepts to reality and helped spur a major downtown Memphis transformation.

Susan did not lead these projects alone, but without a doubt, the 10+ local organizations participating in Reimagining the Civic Commons would agree that she’s a major reason for success as a facilitator, coordinator, visionary thinker and advocate for this work. A few partners have this to say about her contributions:

“What I love about Susan is that she is truly a yes/how person who figures out how to make things happen. She’s inquisitive and inclusive by nature where others might need a lot of training to learn these practices. She builds bridges and creates a welcoming environment for everyone, which shows her level of commitment to our community. She’s incredible smart but also a good, hard-working person who doesn’t rest just on her brilliance.” – Penelope Huston, Chief of Communications for the City of Memphis and former VP of Marketing & Communications at Downtown Memphis Commission

“Susan Dalton has worked with Memphis Parks on several innovation projects, and with every project, her diverse knowledge base and compassion for fellow Memphians is evident. She does a remarkable job of combining analytics with attention to detail and the more cumbersome, underlying ‘why’ of human psychology that invariably ends up making the project stronger.” – Nick Walker, Parks Director for the City of Memphis

At Innovate Memphis, Susan also helped launch open civic data projects and efforts to measure and improve physical conditions in Memphis neighborhoods, serving a member of the Data Committee of the Blight Elimination Steering Team, the United Way Driving the Dream Data Interoperability Systems Advisory group, and Innovate Memphis’ Civic Data Forum.

Susan achieved an Executive Certificate in Social Impact Strategy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 and is a 2022 catalyst in the Women’s Impact Alliance. She currently serves on the board of Bloom, a local parks advocacy intermediary, is a convener for the Memphis Reimagining the Civic Commons collaborative and the Southern Cohort of Innovation Cities.

Article Link: How Memphis Created the Nation’s Most Innovative Public Library

A must read! Dig into this deep feature story to learn more about the innovative work of the Memphis Public Libraries.

Innovate Memphis is proud to support the Memphis Public Libraries, and the downtown Cossitt Library branch as part of a cornerstone of the Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative.

In a city with a very high poverty rate, their libraries are oases of care, civility, activity and opportunity.

A brief excerpt from the feature story:

With partial funding from a national nonprofit initiative, Reimagining the Civic Commons, the city was linking the Mississippi River promenade with a garden, park and relocated museum to form a new public space, with the Cossitt Library as its cornerstone. The goal was to bring together Memphians from different backgrounds. Hallman was hired to lead a $6 million renovation of the Cossitt branch.

Standing outside the steel-and-glass facade of the Cossitt—almost nothing remains of the original 1893 building—Hallman explains the challenge he faces. “We have a large, affluent community downtown, so we’re fighting for relevance,” he says. “We’ll have an outdoor yoga space with trees, and a café with artisanal food and drinks inside the library. We’ll have work stations, meeting rooms, sewing and knitting and embroidery equipment. We also have a lot of homeless people downtown, and we’ll be inviting them to dinners and other events with the more affluent folks.”

In recent years, there has been a migration of creative talent into the revitalizing downtown. “Filmmakers, artists, musicians, textile designers, podcasters,” says Hallman. “So we have an audio-video studio with $30,000 of equipment and laptops loaded with e-commerce software. We want to be an incubator for entrepreneurs, so we’ve got a workshop and co-working spaces with printers and whiteboards. Upstairs there’s a 2,500-square-foot performance space, which can be used for acting classes, conferences, dance classes and performances.” The Cossitt branch will function as a place to eat, learn, exercise, run a business, make art and meet people, driven entirely by altruism. 

A full list of the programs and initiatives underway in the Memphis Public Libraries system would fill this magazine. Most significant, perhaps, MPL is building teen centers modeled on Cloud901 at other branches, and there’s a major push for libraries to go mobile. Vans emblazoned with the “Start Here” logo, and loaded with books and technology, are showing up at festivals, food truck sites, rodeos and other gathering places. 

For the past four years, Memphis has been proud to participate in Reimagining the Civic Commons, the national initiative to advance ambitious social, economic and environmental goals through transformed public spaces. Participating in this network has helped our project team better engage with the community and create solutions for public spaces that are restoring how we connect to one another in the spaces we share—our parks, libraries, community centers and more. This new report from the Urban Institute examines Reimagining the Civic Commons as a model for the nation.

This report shows how thoughtful and intentional design and programming of our shared public spaces is fundamentally necessary for addressing the social, economic and environmental challenges we face today.

The initial demonstration of the Memphis Civic Commons was built around the Fourth Bluff, in partnership with Innovate Memphis, Memphis River Parks Partnership, City of Memphis, Downtown Memphis Commission, Hyde Family Foundations, Grizzlies Foundation, Library Foundation and the support of local community members and advocates for public space.  

Article Link: How Memphis Transformed its parks named for Confederate generals into inclusive spaces

After taking down Confederate statues, these public spaces and parks have been intentionally redesigned with and for a stronger community where people can enjoy quality public space. The parks were reimagined as part of the local collaboration with the City, Downtown Memphis Commission, Memphis River Parks Partnership and Innovate Memphis as the initial 3-year effort of the national the Reimagining the Civic Commons initative.