The Downtown Austin Alliance is thrilled to bring fresh ideas and new faces on staff. This particular new hire was one of the founding board members of the Downtown Austin Alliance Foundation. Find out a bit more about our new team member, Raasin McIntosh.
Name: Raasin McIntosh
Title: Parks & Placemaking Director
First Day at the Downtown Alliance: June 7th, 2021
Hometown: Houston, TX
Fun Story: How she was named (keep on reading!)
A Brief Background
When asked how she chose her name, Raasin’s mother says, “When she was born, her eyes were the color of Raisins with a hint of red in a sea of brown and so I changed the spelling to Raasin.”
Raasin became rooted in Austin a little over 20 years ago when she attended the University of Texas. She graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in Communications. A big believer in continuing education, Raasin is currently working on a master’s degree in communications through Texas Southern University. She was also selected for the Mural Arts Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is attending the national program to learn more about art and environmental building capacity.
In 2015, McIntosh founded Raasin in the Sun, a non-profit that serves Austin by cultivating resilience through the arts and environmental initiatives. The organization focuses on urban beautification and creative placemaking through murals, clean-ups, community gardens, storytelling, public art activations, vacant lot initiatives, and more. Through previous work and her ongoing with with her non-profit, Raasin has extensive experience in managing, producing, facilitating, and coordinating, mural arts, public arts, creative placemaking, restorations, and community engagement initiatives.
Plans for the Future
As Director of Parks and Placemaking, Raasin will lead the management of Republic Square. She will also manage productions, partnerships, and ideation for cultural-based placemaking and activations. Her goal is to make everyone feel welcome in downtown Austin. She has dreams of bringing more murals, public art, and artistic events downtown, and the Downtown Austin Alliance is excited to see Raasin apply the knowledge and ideas from her studies with the Mural Arts Institute Philadelphia.
Outside of Work
Raasin’s perfect day downtown would begin on Lady Bird Lake, cutting through the water on a stand-up paddleboard. When she’s ready to come ashore, she would get on her bike and visit various spots around downtown Austin. Raasin also loves spending her free time in downtown parks (very fitting for her new job) and checking out local restaurants. You can often find her in the 4th Street LGBTQ Warehouse District, her favorite spot. She also highly recommends checking out The Lamar Underpass Be Well Murals. Located on Lamar Blvd near 5th street, these captivating murals cover approximately 10,000 square feet of concrete. Raasin helped curate these impressive art expressions and has plans to create more murals like them in Austin.
Outside of work, she enjoys biking, DIY projects, coming up with ideas for Raasin in the Sun, and spending time with friends and her malti-poo, Sage. Her favorite DIY projects involve woodworking and building things. Raasin is also passionate about content creation, acting, and film production. A woman of many talents, she’s even produced a few documentaries and commercial ads, including a few for Favor.
Learn More
Head to raasininthesun.org to find out more about Raasin’s ongoing with with the non-profit she founded. You can follow Raasin on Instagram follow her organization’s projects @raasininthesun or her personal projects @loveraasin.
Welcome to the team, Raasin! We at the Downtown Alliance team cannot wait to get to know you better and see what new ideas you will bring to our organization. Learn more about everyone at the Downtown Alliance on our Staff&Board page.