New projects for 2026
2026 has been off to a busy start! Since launching Stone Strategies LLC at the end of 2025, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with a wide range of fantastic clients. We’re now hard at work on the projects listed below.
Interested in working with us? We’re booking projects for the second half of 2026 and we’d love to hear from you!
Downtown Development District, New Orleans, Louisiana
With downtown New Orleans now full of publicly viewable art including the Helis Foundation’s Unframed murals, the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition, historic monuments, percent for art installations, private commissions, and more, New Orleans’ Downtown Development District (DDD) has engaged Stone Strategies to map and assess downtown’s public art collection to ensure that it is adequately preserved, that new work complements and expands the scope of the existing collection, and that the collection is properly marketed and explained to visitors and locals.
US Conference of Mayors, Washington, DC
The Mayors Institute on City Design’s Just City Mayoral Fellowship is a unique, highly interactive program that brings together a small group of mayors and their staff for a semester-long course and extended advising, helping them to directly tackle injustices in each of their cities through planning and design interventions. With support from the Kresge Foundation, the US Conference of Mayors has engaged Stone Strategies to interview alumni mayors in order to share stories of their post-fellowship successes, glean lessons from their participation, and advise on the future of the program.
William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, Baltimore, MD
While numerous organizations in the greater Baltimore area function as arts service organizations (ASOs), providing various services to artists and arts organizations, there currently is no formal list of these ASOs or the services they provide. Without this comprehensive list, arts leaders and funders are not able to definitively determine which services are currently duplicative, which are lacking, and which may benefit from new partnerships. Additionally, fundraising challenges, instability within the federal government, and new pressures and opportunities for organizations to partner or even combine has made a complete understanding of the Baltimore ASO ecosystem even more crucial as important decisions about the future of funding decisions and organization structures are determined in 2026.
To meet this need, Stone Strategies is leading a study of the approximately three dozen ASOs in the greater Baltimore area. This work is intended to provide Baltimore arts leaders and funders with the information they need to create an ecosystem in which artists and arts organizations are as supported as possible during this season of change. The study intends to provide baseline information on existing and missing services, and help identify possible areas of collaboration, and a proposed convening is designed to provide a forum for ASO leaders to connect with one another to share information on plans for the future, and/or develop new plans to partner and collaborate.
Making Space Bmore, Baltimore, Maryland
Making Space Bmore is an art gallery, print studio, and collaborative hub located in Baltimore’s Bromo Arts & Entertainment District. Renovation of the building began in 2019, and the building now provides free and heavily subsidized studio space to selected long-term artists-in-residence, impactful exhibitions, and a variety of public programs and events.
The building’s owner engaged Stone Strategies to provide space planning strategy, to work with the City to acquire the necessary permits to expand the usable space of the building, to benchmark MSB against similar arts spaces, and to develop a financial plan.
Filbert Street Garden, Baltimore, Maryland
Stone Strategies is developing a fundraising playbook and board development strategy for Filbert Street Garden, a community farm in Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood focused on recreation, education, and environmental justice.
Downtown Partnership of Baltimore
Stone Strategies is advising the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and the Bromo Arts & Entertainment district on governance scenarios, staffing, and resource sharing and fundraising strategy, while also sharing best practices for managing arts districts and other place-based community development efforts.
