design-driven community engagement
Being able to share our process, work and ideas inspires us to get feedback constantly.
To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward. -Margaret Fairless Barber
The day three theme for our Through My Lens photography adventure is:
Where do you see change taking place?
Send in your photos to our Flickr page, Facebook page or email us.
Exhibit Change is leading Through My Lens as a project to get to know what people are paying attention to in the city. We created Through My Lens as a way to get people to take a second look at what is around them. We often get settled into a routine and lose track of what else is going on around us, the 10 themes for Through My Lens are curated to encourage you to look again. There are over 100 photographers participating in Through My Lens, so we are expecting to see a lot of amazing pictures and capture a lot of stories. The images from Through My Lens will be available to visitors at our Nuit Blanche exhibit to curate onto our rental truck. It is going to be a spectacular visual statement as to what the city is focusing on and what the community is saying. Inside the rental truck, there will be a cardboard cityscape as a backdrop to more conversation and an interactive photo-shoot. Through My Lens is a photography project on the outside, but for us it is a way to use a creative tool to get people into discussion about the city.
Through My Lens is a 10 day, city focused, themed photography adventure with 4 neighbourhood walking tours. Each neighbourhood walking tour is intended to inspire our photographers to explore, capture and share what our city has to offer. On September 7, we kicked off Through My Lens with a walking tour in the Junction. We walked for 2 hours and took many pictures. On September 10, we will be heading to Jane and Finch and discovering the environmental side of the neighbourhood. On September 11, we will be walking through the history of the design and people of social housing on the East End of Toronto. And our last walking tour will be on September 14, from Grange Park to Jane Jacob’s house in the Annex.
Exhibit Change is a design driven community engagement organization. All of our projects use design and play to engage citizens into community conversations. We visual our projects lending itself to be a platform for people to be creative, design and make positive action. Sometimes our materials are play-doh, lego and pipe cleaners, this time it is photography, but every time we do a project we do it to build community ownership.
Through My Lens is a collaboration project with Exhibit Change, Toronto Urban Exchange and Hello-Foto.
Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us.
-Henrik Tikkanen
The day one theme for our Through My Lens photography adventure is:
What is green?
Send in your photos to our Flickr page, Facebook page or email us.
Don’t Forget – TONIGHT
We have a neighborhood walk of the Junction tonight. Meet at 7pm at Keele and Dundas St W to discover Toronto and inspire your photography. Check out the Facebook event for all the details.
Through My Lens is on from September 7 -16, for 10 days over 100 photographers will be sharing in a city focused themed photography adventure. We are so excited to see the pictures rolling in.
To submit your photos for each theme you can upload your photos three ways:
Upload to our Flickr Groups page, Through My Lens – Exhibit Change (if you haven’t created a Flickr account yet you will have to do so first, follow the prompts)
Upload to our Facebook Page, Exhibit Change, by sharing your photo on our wall (you have to “like” us on Facebook to share a photo on our wall)
Email us directly.
For each photo please specify the day’s theme and send along a 100 word description for why you feel this photo relates to that theme.
*Please be aware once you submit your photos via Flickr, Facebook or email they are now the property of Exhibit Change and can be used both in the Nuit Blanche exhibit and as promotional material for Exhibit Change.*
We are one week from launching Through My Lens, so I thought now would be a good time for a little history. In March, I met with Cat who came to be with an idea to get people to take pictures in their cities in order to start getting stories and ideas about the city. This idea blossomed and now we are running Through My Lens in Toronto and in Kingston.
Over 100 photographers will be taking city inspired images for 10 days in Toronto. For added inspiration, we are leading 4 neighbourhood walking tours around Toronto. Their images and stories will be collected for our Nuit Blanche exhibit in Parkdale. We are 1 of 18 rental truck installations in Leitmotif and 1 of 5 community based installations. Our truck installation is an interactive city building themed truck.
When you come to visit us on October 1, you are the curator of our exhibit. You will help us design our exhibit with hundreds of city images, then we will layer your stories and build dialogue. Inside the truck you can participate in storytelling and a photo shoot with a cardboard city scape backdrop. We are looking to gain insight into what the community focuses on in the city and how we can inspire positive change.
Inspire Yourself!
Jenn
Every community is made up of diverse individuals, each of whom has a unique experience of the city in which we live. These experiences often stay close to us, only loosely making connections with the stories of others who call the same city home. The mission of Through My Lens is not only to document life in the city just as it is, but also to bring all these unique stories together in one place, to ignite connections to our spaces and each other and to inspire positive action within our communities.
Starting on September 10th, people of all ages from all parts of the city will be embarking on a photo-taking adventure. We hope to give a voice to those who normally do not speak up for change, and through this project foster a stronger sense of community within our cities.
Each day during the project, participants will be given a different theme as the subject of their inspiration, ranging from people to potential to food. They will then submit one photo for each day, totaling 10 photos at the end of the project. We encourage participants to walk new paths, look in different directions, to promote creativity and to inspire themselves and others along the way. Our goal is to reach over 1000 people throughout the project, at least 50 of whom participate fully in the photo-voices collection.
These photos will be collected for online exposure, and a selection of them will be displayed together on October 1 as a photography exhibit. The images in this exhibit will serve as the centerpiece of dynamic community conversation. Together, we will discover new connections to our stories and develop new perspectives. Following the project, our goal is to use these stories to spearhead five city-building proposals that will positively impact community members.
We are passionate about our cities. We get energy from people. We are curious about the millions of stories that live where we live. We are looking to encapsulate the essence of city life from the people who live here and to share all our stories to promote creativity, civic engagement and a collective voice for change. We interact with others every day, and together we continue to weave the narrative that makes our community what it is today. We all have a story to tell – and Through My Lens is our chance to tell it.
On March 11, fellow design thinkers gathered for a weekend adventure into the Global Service Jam. People came with multiple interests, experiences and curiosities. We hosted an evening of icebreakers and conversation about “Superheroes”.
There were 50 cities across the world, 1263 jammers, 203 projects and over 50,000 hours spent in one weekend!
I was impressed with the passion and enthusiasm people brought to the table. The idea brainstorming really got ideas flowing and the theme was easy to discuss and great fun. It is pretty hard not to have fun talking about Superheroes and to come up with hundreds of stories, situations, businesses, projects and ideas framed around superheroes and villains. Villains are proactive, they are always one step ahead and they always want to be on top; whereas Superheroes are reactive, well intentioned, but often conflicted in their ethical dilemmas. Save the one you love, or the bus of children…one of the best lines of the night, “Act like a Villain, Think like a Superhero”. The evening was full of wonderful discussion as people suggested tons of projects and narrowed them down and then broke into smaller groups to further discuss the details and to decide on a team for the weekend. By the end of Friday evening, we were excited to see what was going to unfold for the rest of the weekend.
We learned:
So, where does all this madness and creativity lead us? Well that is up to you, you are the Superheroes here….we merely brought you together! See all the fun we had and what we created.