Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses arts,  agriculture, food and story to support rural community, cultural, social and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where he lives with his wife Brandi and three children and where his family has been for eight generations. Sipp Culture began working with Utica residents in 2017, connecting them with architects and designers to devise solutions to local challenges. Since then, Utica has created a community farm, a commercial greenhouse, and an artists’ residency.  Turner is also co-founder and co-artistic director, with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), a Mississippi-based performing arts group that blends of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling. 

While based out of Utica, Mississippi, Carlton is known for being an expert in Placemaking nationwide through his work with Sipp Culture and in his former position as Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS. Turner is a former Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow and former Cultural Policy Fellow at the Creative Placemaking Institute at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design in the Arts. He serves as a member of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Committee at the Highlander Center for Research and Education and is a founding partner of the Intercultural Leadership Institute. He is also a member of the Rural Wealth Lab at RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) and an advisor to the Kresge Foundation’s FreshLo Initiative. Turner also serves on the board of First People’s Fund, Imagining America, Project South and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance.  Learn more about his work by visiting sippculture.org.