UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Theaster Gates on Thursday, April 29 at 5 p.m. Pacific. An artist, social innovator, musician and cultural planner, Theaster Gates creates works that engage with space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, he redeems spaces that have been left behind, upturning art values, land values and human values. Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago and founder and president of Rebuild Foundation, which restores the cultural foundations of underinvested neighborhoods and incites movements of community revitalization. The winner of Artes Mundi 6, Gates is also a recipient of the Nasher Prize for Sculpture, the Urban Land Institute Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development and France’s Légion d’Honneur, and was recently named co-chair of fashion label Prada’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.