UMA’s 2023 Gathering

At UMA, we believe that communities need to hold the power to support their own economic destiny. Across three sun-kissed days in October 2023, more than 150 practitioners from all over the country came together to ask questions and dream up answers to questions like: What do communities, businesses, residents, leaders, and other stakeholders need to understand in order to achieve true, deep impact? Where does the power for action live, how can it be accessed, and what must change to reach this new impact?

They shared conversations on school buses between tour stops of local manufacturing companies; during a dozen breakout sessions with topics ranging from how to support home-based businesses scale to designing successful succession strategies; at Coppin State University, an Historically Black College and University on Baltimore’s West Side; and on neighborhood walks we used to warm up and kick off each day.

Our convening - or as we call it, a Gathering - is an annual opportunity to learn, share, and connect with our attendees serving as our experts. Gatherings are designed to convoke an ecosystem of individuals and organizations who are committed to using manufacturing as a strategy to shift power – and therefore economic opportunity – towards communities. The conversations that took place at Baltimore Unity Hall (appropriately a former labor organizing hall) were critical at a time as our country confronts challenges that overlap with opportunity: longsimmering manufacturing job shortages, historic economic inequality across place, demands for higher job quality and benefits, the passage of historical federal legislation to support the sector, and ongoing racial justice reckonings within and around businesses and communities.

But we know that power and opportunity are not equally distributed across communities – and without intentional planning and action, the benefits of recent and ongoing investments are less likely to reach those who stand to gain the most.

These facts make it even more important for us to re-state that the Urban Manufacturing Alliance works to transform and reshape manufacturing ecosystems into drivers of just and equitable development that puts communities first. We partner with and convene a diverse network of partners to learn, share, co-design, and scale solutions in which people, places, businesses, and the planet can heal and thrive. And the most critical component of our work is you – the individuals and organizations doing the work on the ground each day.

Our Baltimore Gathering was as much as a time for learning, as it was a time for celebrating the work that you all do, the impacts you’re seeing in your communities, and the power we have when we come together.