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John Street Square Design Competition Super Party!

OK OK OK! So that might have been THE longest title for an event….but it was still super fun! We came up with 3 extremely unique designs out of dozens of ideas.

The Toronto Entertainment District BIA hosted an open call for design for the John  Street Square, I saw the Design Competition as a way to bring people together to talk about what we envision for a piece of downtown Toronto. What do we see and feel are the true assets of Toronto and what do we want to see more of? What is missing and what is an opportunity waiting for action?

Exhibit Change hosted the John Street Square Design Competition Super Party on October 21, 2010. We brainstormed and put all our ideas on post-it notes as individual concepts. After 10 minutes we had well over 100 ideas that each could have flourished into an amazing downtown experience. We collected and sorted our ideas and come up with several innovative designs. And of course we played with markers, pipe cleaners, play-doh, pom poms and glitter paper because connecting to our playful side is so important and really changes perspectives.

I worked on a design, that we didn’t name. It had a fashion runway, a giant gumball machine and several photobooths scattered throughout the site. I like to think of this as a downtown carnival and amusement destination, it is purely about having fun and really incorporating the energy of the King and John intersection. The marvelous thing about this design and this event is that we are beginning to talk about how citizens can animate the city.

Here are a few quotes from the event:

“For the John Street Square Design Competition, with the help of the group we brainstormed what we’d like to see in the space and then we combined the ideas into different “types” of parks. The park that I got to create was a space that uses digital technologies to bring people together and share. The park contained an interactive labyrinth that would capture on video and project (as well as allow people to tune in online) what’s going on in the maze. There was an interactive jukebox cafe, where you could text in your request and sit with friends sharing music and community. There was a wishing well where patrons could text in their wishes and a donation would be made to charity. We also had a wonderful connection tree that could digitally connect people in the space, and maybe could end up being a meet up place for those who know each other digitally but want to meet in real life.” ~ Jenna Cloughley
 

“Imagine a square that represents the arts and culture found inside the surrounding buildings made public for all to see.  The idea behind my ideal square is to create a public space that functions as an outdoor theatre and meeting area.  Ideally, during the evening and weekends, community theatre companies can present in the space and during off hours, people in the surrounding area can enjoy a quiet area to sit, eat and relax. To create an oasis in Toronto, the square would be full of trees and the seating area would be limestone boulders arranged like theatre benches. ” ~ Melissa Loomans

I absolutely love when events are inspired by the energy in the room and the ideas people bring.

Greening Ward 27

Greening Ward 27 was simply amazing. I was so happy with the turnout of participants, even though it was rainy afternoon and I would understand if everyone had wanted to stay in bed.

As participants arrived they were asked to pick up a name tag with a combination of live, work, play, eat or learn. The name tag code was revealed later. The goal of the day was to not think too hard and to have fun, this was the best way to come up with innovative ideas. A hands-on community design charrette works best when all the participants are open to new processes, mindful of other people’s ideas and positive about making changes.

To start the day, we had design thinking oreos. Oreos are the perfect way to explain the process of design thinking. Design thinking is something we all do; it is a process of intending, discovering, collaborating, creating and communicating – this is something we do when we eat oreos. Oreos are great icebreakers, idea generators and free thinking catalysts.

Everyone literally put their ideas on the table,  based on themes of “Live”, “Work”, “Play”, “Eat” & “Learn”. We got lots of amazing ideas and lots of great energy.

Lastly, the best part is the post-it note action mapping activity that helps to have participants take action in the projects moving forward.

This event was made possible by my awesome sponsors and volunteers. I could never have done it without you all! Thank you forever to Emily, Matt, Mojan, Johnny, Vince, Hitoshi and of course Ed!

All photography credits go to Hello-Foto

So much learning…

In the past two weeks, I have been growing my brain over and over by going to amazing events, each one so different but each one with great new information and the ideas are already brewing.

  • Common Ground – Social Planning Toronto symposium on schools as community hubs
  • Getting the Most out of Your Brain
  • The Power of Collective Wisdom – hosted by United Way, delivered by John Ott
  • TEDxToronto – watched it streamed live at the Centre for Social Innovation
  • The Art of Public Health conference – held at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana school
  • Treehouse Talks – hosted at MaRs Discovery District

Each one of these events, has made me reflect on all that is happening in Toronto and all that I want to do. I know that there are multiple axis and intersections here but to me they are all part of what makes Toronto healthy,vibrant and strong.

I am fortunate to be able to go to these events and to meet amazing people, hear truly inspiring talks and discuss in peer to peer breakout sessions.

It is overwhelming but at the same time I love the fuel to my brain.

Mayoral Debate

On September 17th, the Design Exchange hosted a Mayoral Debate on design and sustainable thinking.I was hoping for answers.

On September 29th, the AGO and ArtsVote hosted the Mayoral Arts Debate on arts and cultural planning. Again looking for answers.

As the candidates answered question after question, I could hear passion, anger, confidence and most certainly strong egos. As the candidates bantered and argued back and forth I tried hard to listen for key answers and platforms I can support.

Moving forward I am going to have to do some more research and gain a better understanding of what is being said and what is going to be done. I want to ensure Toronto gets the best leader possible. Toronto deserves a lot of things, but empty promises is not one of them.

National Curiosity Day

National Curiosity Day was on September 25, 2010. I don’t know what the history of National Curiosity Day is but I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

I learned that curiosity has its own definition to each person. To me curiosity meant discovering something new, trying something I have always wondered about and being a little more adventurous than usual. For others, it sometimes meant venturing into something you thought you might dislike but were willing to try and for another it was just fun to participate and to start thinking slightly differently. All great goals for the day.

For my National Curiosity Day, we ventured out to try geocaching. Geocaching is pretty much high tech treasure hunting. You go online and there is a wealth of geocaching communities.

We drove to the general area of our geocaching coordinates, we wandered around with our GPS trying to match the coordinates and discovered a giant tree was where our exact coordinates were located. We climbed under the tree and looked carefully, we discovered some shells that seemed a bit odd. Normally, in a geocaching adventure there is a small tupperware container to be found with a treasure, a log or some new information, but alas we didn’t find our tupperware…we had a lot of fun looking for the exact coordinates but sadly I felt a little bit of failure and will surely attempt this again.

Also tried new bubble tea and ordering Persian take-out for dinner. Food curiosity is always a treat 🙂

What a great first National Curiosity Day for me! Looking forward to next year!

I also encouraged others to go an try something new:

“On Sat., for curiousity, i went to the “Colours of the Spectrum” event at Art Metropole, there I made a rainbow of my colours. On to CAMH celebrating 9 plaques erected to honour inmates unpaid labour next – the secret handshake gallery…lastly 918 Bathurst Street Arts Centre… Curiousity got this cat and so i had to scat” ~ Honey Novick, Literary Director of St. Clair Artwalk

New Secret Find

I really like going to museums and talking to the security guards. They have such unique experiences from watching and maintaining the museum floor or a specific exhibit. Often out of people watching or boredom, they have the funniest little tidbits of information.

Some good examples:

1. At the Canadian Centre  of Architecture, the security guard pointed out to me that a model that was illustrating light and circulation patterns was made up of 96 layers of plexi-glass, something you would certainly need time to notice.

2. At the New Museum, the security guard who seemed intent on staying very serious let down his tough exterior when I asked him which “I Wish” ribbon he liked best. Each “I Wish” ribbon had a unique statement that represented wishes that people had contributed to a participatory exhibit. He had to think hard about it, but he said that his favourite was “I wish to be a famous baseball player” which he took for his son, one of 5 children. He also took several for his other children and his wife. I told him about a few new ones and said he would have to check them out.

3. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, a security guard told me about how the artist had very specific requirements about keep the piece intact and maintaining the integrity of the piece. The security guard took it upon himself to protect the installation process. The artist arrives after the piece is installed perfectly and takes a walk around the installation, picks up a hammer and smashes a mirror. The security guard was not impressed.

I look forward to more discoveries.

Riverdale Park Charrette

On Tuesday August 24th, I went to a Riverdale Park Charrette at the Toronto Design Exchange. The DX is a nonprofit organizations supporting and promoting Canadian design and is housed in the old Toronto Stock Exchange building. The DX always gives me a sense of historical design and accomplishment – things have happened here to shape Toronto and Canada.

The Riverdale Park Charrette was a treat to attend and participate in. I was surrounded by architects, landscape architects, community stakeholders from the library, Chinese Business Chambers of Commerce, residents, City Councillor Paula Fletcher, City of Toronto Parks and Recreation employees and Bridgepoint Health representatives. The setting was very professional and directed towards results.

The morning began on a lighter note, each team created a playdoh ideal Mayoral candidate. There were a many overlapping qualities. An open heart, hands reaching out to the community, grounded, big brain, visionary, voice of the people, sense of humour, listening skills and arts and environmental interested.

Then we had a long and in-depth description of the site, site restrictions, and current site activities.

As a group we addressed goals and concepts for the design of the park site. Through dotmetrics we determined the top 5 concepts for the design portion of the day. I was surprised that the whole process was very orderly and VERY quiet, something I am not accustomed to when I do Action Mapping with coloured post-it notes and encouraged collaboration.

By the end of the day, I am happy to say that our Team had the most colourful solution of pathways, community based projects, and something that pleased every team member – who were representing a full spread of interests. Our team offered a full accessible walkway that doubled as a sitting area and amphitheatre, a picnic area near Bridgepoint Health, a market place for kiosk vendors, a legalized graffiti wall to promote public art and expression, a tinker town area for hands-on intergenerational learning, a pathway to healthy living with exercise stations and a grand idea to have a hot air balloon viewing station.

The Riverdale Park Charrette brought me back to my architecture roots and reminded me that my foundations are strong in design, but I am proud to say that I do keep community building and social return as my highest priority.

Youth Environment Camp

At the end of July, I had the privilege of spending 4 days with the Leaders in Training (LIT)  at the Albion Neighbourhood Services Boys and Girls Club Camp. I programmed a week of activities to discuss sustainable cities, environmental impacts and community engagement.

We covered the room in paper and drew sustainable cities. The blank canvas gave the youth an opportunity to create amazing landscapes  about recycling, transportation systems, free community centres to get fit at, buildings with green roofs and garbage free zones.

We worked on a Needs-Assets-Ideas map. We produced hundreds of ideas. And from that we pulled 10 ideas to turn into projects for the week.

Did you know that youth between 12 and 16 really like post-it notes? They hoard them by the bundles.

Teamwork was very important to getting the projects done, so we worked on collaboration, competitiveness and action.

The very popular marshmallow challenge inspired by Tom Wujec from Autodesk. This challenge promotes prototyping, idea generating and rapid building.

Working with 20 pieces of spaghetti, 4 marshmallows, masking tape and string.

This project had a slow start, there were lots of questions and doubt, but with a little encouragement and curiosity the teams started assembling tiny towers and through their competitive nature they continued building strong and taller towers. Eventually the winning tower was 15inches tall.

All teams were happy to eat marshmallows as prizes.

Outdoor scavenger hunt and marshmallow challenge both created an ambiance for teamwork and creative ideas flow.

The outdoor scavenger hunt was overwhelmingly successful.

Each team ran across the field collecting answers to clues and figuring out items that are recycled, well designed, playful, squeaky, bouncy to name a few.

We drew “I wish” statements in chalk outside. Each statement was made with the intention of coming true when the rain washed it away. This was a commitment to making action to making our dreams come true.

There was lots of learning and discovery between team mates and between all the LIT’s. They were growing more confident with their team work and collaboration skills. We began work on the ideas that had been chosen from the Needs-Assets-Ideas mapping exercise.

In teams, LIT’s worked on signage to help promote healthy living, recycling, and ultimately saving the earth. Additionally, two healthy living programs were implemented as well. Dancing and Basketball skills. We also spent a lot of time playing with clay and making recycled jewelery.

After all the LIT’s hard work, we talked about making commitments to making change in our communities. Respect goes a long way to keeping a community connected and maintained. Each person can make change in their community by simply making the decision to do so.

I had a great 4 days with the Albion Neighbourhood Services Boys and Girls Club LIT’s!!!!!

Thank you so much, I learned something from each and every one of you.

Puzzling Discovery

While putting together a 3D Empire State Building puzzle with 3 of my friends I learned some lessons of team bonding, using your strengths, recognizing your weaknesses and supporting your team mates. We pulled out all the pieces, put the hockey game on and set ourselves a goal to finish in 4 hours; we thought this was going to be a leisurely addition to our evening, it quickly turned in an educating experience. As we began sorting the pieces, it was evident that we each had very different strengths.

Ed and Troy were only interested in participating when the hockey game was boring or during a commercial, their attention level was waning. Wandee and I were much more dedicated to the process. Wandee has her puzzle strategy well honed, I followed suit as she started to sort the pieces by colour. After we sorted all the pieces into colour we started assembling the pieces. I found that I am a better support puzzle participant. I was very good at sorting pieces with fine detail, finding specific pieces to finish a section and supporting the Wandee as she speedily put section after section together, but alas I was not keen on how slow my sections were coming together, I felt ineffective on my own but much better as part of the puzzle team.

Eventually, we put the whole thing together and it was very satisfying, unfortunately we were far over schedule we actually had to take a break, go to sleep and finish the next morning. So even though it took 2 times longer than anticipated it was surprisingly fun! Wandee was truly the puzzle hero of the weekend, she was so focused, deliberate and would have stayed up all night to finish it if we had let her.

I am a Dimsum Timbit!

Throughout the past few months, I have been participating in the Ripple Effect program. Together, with Johnny Leon Tong, I interviewed members of the Chinese Canadian community who are involved in politics, community and leadership about their views of Chinese Canadian youth, civic participation, political currency and personal motivation. We were lucky enough to be able to hear from Cathy Winters (Maytree Foundation), Karen Sun (Ward 19 city council candidate), Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27 city council candidate), Godwin Chan (Ward 6 Richmond Hill city councillor), Tam Goosen (former school trustee), Ken Chan (Ward 27 city council candidate).

Here’s the video: