Voice of the City (VOTC) is dedicated to building community through making art and teaching art. As a multi-art arts alliance, it unites the finest Chicago artists with each other and with the residents of Logan Square - connecting quality arts experience to community.

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In 2014, VOTC had been in a long period of board dysfunction. Founder and Artistic Director Dawn Marie Galtieri had been diligent in setting up her board “the way you’re supposed to do it according to generally accepted best practices” - and over the years had “followed all the rules” in trying different approaches to board development and recruitment - but to no avail. VOTC’s board structure had never felt a good fit and there remained a persistent and burdensome gap between board reality and the level of meaningful engagement, leadership, and support VOTC needed from its board. Dawn Marie reached out to Kristin Patton to help her and Executive Producer Christopher Ellis to completely re-envision VOTC’s board going forward. A task force was created of Dawn Marie, Christopher and four highly trusted key stakeholders who, inspired and energized  out of their foundational and envisioning work together, agreed to become the starting core of VOTC’s new board. Through a second project phase in 2015-16, Kristin worked with leadership and the new board on further board development and a new distributed leadership structure through which to grow organizational capacity. In the third phase of the project in 2016-17, the board was expanded and successfully completed VOTC’s first Strategic Planning Process.