design-driven community engagement
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
Join us on a photography adventure, as we explore the city through our pictures, neighbourhood walking tours and conversation.
Bringing city building to the streets – everyone is invited to participate in capturing their perspective and stories about living in the city! An interactive, community based project which seeks to encourage action, inspiration and bring personal stories of the city to life. What is your favourite part of Toronto? What do you see in your day to day? How do you move through the city? What do you seek to change? If you were in charge of changing the city landscape, what would you do?
Through My Lens is a 10 day (September 7 – 16), multi-city, interactive photo-voices project to bring out stories to lead to community action. Through My Lens only happens when people become involved. Through volunteer led neighbourhood walks, self-guided photography adventures and pure curiosity, we imagine that Through My Lens will ignite a new way to look at our spaces and to re-imagine what the city could be.
Leitmotif Project – Parkdale’s Nuit Blanche project (October 1) will be taking the Through My Lens images to the streets, literally! The exhibit is an interactive community based dialogue of images, stories and people connecting with the city; in a rental truck, on pedestrians, on buildings, on sidewalks, on anything we can get our hands on. We will be collecting stories all night to showcase stories of city building and designing new ideas. Come visit us at our exhibit and make your mark on the city. The intersection of Queen Street West and Dowling Avenue will be animated throughout the night with images, scrawls, scribbles and laughter. Together, we can make an impact on the city.
What’s the purpose?
The EdCampTO organizing committee met to talk about purpose. How do 15ish people come up with one catch phrase, a hook, or even one notion of what is going to happen? I always look forward to the variety of perspectives and comments that arise in these meetings. There was certainly a range of expectations of what EdCamp was supposed to be talked about, supposed to be given and what you should get when you walk out the door.
I leaned toward the idea of going with a curiosity for meeting folks interested in testing and even disrupting the current education system and pushing for new technologies and techniques. I am happy to go into EdCamp with no real goals and to walk away with nothing tangible other than meeting new people and having my mindset shaken up and for me to do the same for others. I like the way Stephen said that he left Vancouver’s EdCamp “empty handed” but with his mind full of inspiration and new contacts. And how Sean said that it was like flipboard where he has curated who he follows but as he flips through the pages day by day, he doesn’t know what new information he will find.
I know that this is going to happen, as our organizing meeting already offers the opportunity to share different views towards purpose, passion and expectations and subsequently the spectrum is already being established. I think as much as we cannot all agree on one learning style, we cannot agree on one purpose either and will instead have to be content in knowing that we are coming together from a similar questioning mind. I want to encourage curiosity of learning.
Inspire Yourself!
Jenn
Last week, I was in Seattle exploring and tasting new sensations. I love travelling and getting to know new places, I try and bring that feeling back home in adventure walks and taking new paths and thinking in new ways. While in Seattle, I saw many things for the first time that were inspiring and community focused and it made me wonder how many things might I be missing at home, since I consider them part of the day to day.
Here are a few things that I found amazing during my trip:
I love this image, the idea that people are being asked “Do you want to see THIS on this street?”, with sketches that are visual and attention seeking. This message is invitational, it asks you to come to speak to this image and to know what the potential is. I would have liked to go to the community consultation to see what how the session was facilitated and how attended.
This advertisement was in the local newspaper calling the community to help clean up after the fourth of July celebrations. It really gives me a sense that there is community ownership and pride. There isn’t an expectation that someone else should do it, but that we are all responsible for the city.
During our trip, we went and did all the touristy things – aquarium, Space Needle, boat tour and the underground tour. The underground tour is a historic tour of Seattle. The part that really captured my heart is the fact that Bill Speidel started the tour after a building was torn down to make a parking garage and to save the other historic buildings in the area, he started the underground tour. While people were lured to the mysterious underground of Seattle, Bill Speidel would have people sign a petition to save the buildings, but then to his surprise once the buildings were safe, people kept coming for the tour. So, to this day the tour is still a family run business and a shining example of “How Do you Exhibit Change?”
Changing up my scenery always changes my perspectives.
Inspire Yourself!
Jenn
I saw a curious tweet about a month ago about an EdCamp happening in Toronto and I immediately sent Stephen Hurley and email and got an overwhelmingly excited email back and shortly after we connected on the phone and I was hooked into the idea. EdCamp is an unconference model, meaning as organizers you create the space and put out a call to interested participants, but you don’t put the content in and instead let the participants decide what is important and what should be discussed.
I attended the first planning meeting and was not surprised to find that I was one of a few who are not teachers, but was warmly welcomed into the group. We had a dynamic discussion and I learned of some amazing projects happening in and outside of the school. I am fully committed to continue my goal of growing school communities as a holistic learning place for students inside and outside school walls and beyond 3:30pm. I know there are many many many great programs out there and I am very excited to learn more about them.
Schools have built up walls. It is time to take a new look at the walls and ask: might there be another way? what do we want our schools to do? how can we help our students be who they want to be? who is responsible for how we learn? No matter how much we circled in conversation at the end of the day, we are all there for the same reasons. Kids and Learning!
Inspire Yourself!
Jenn
Whatever you call it, GovCamp, CitizenGov, OpenGov…it is about getting people involved in the government systems and opening the government systems to innovation. On June 8, I attend GovCamp to join the conversation between community and government in an unconference model to collaborate on multiple concepts. The morning opened with plenary from Microsoft, brief description of the day and lightning talks about government processes, did you know it takes 24 signatures to get a white board marker? There is a flow chart to prove it! This really set the mood for the day.
Through the sessions and the networking sessions, I discovered that there are a lot of people trying to work with systems, but also lots working against systems and then of course some working from within the system.
I attended a session on “Changing the Education System in Ontario” and learned that there are a lot of players in action, but that there are tons of ways to get in and it is going to be different depending on the project and to think about those players that aren’t always obvious. Media? Parents? Trustees? City Councilors?
In the afternoon, I attend a session on “Exploring Citizen-led participation in policy-making” and chose to be in the “Don’t stop believing” group. I chose to be in the group, because I am optimistic about what can be done and how the people can lead us. I was happy to see that we were by far the biggest group in the room and there are a lot of other fellow believers!
Lastly, the best find of the day… @OPS_innovates – Ontario Public Service innovation and ideas happening from within. They hosted an unofficial TEDx event with their staff. How cool is that??!!?!?!
For a little while now, we have been attending fabulous educational events at the Centre for City Ecology on Wednesday nights at 401 Richmond Street. On June 1, the session was “John Van Nostrand Planning — and Unplanning — for the Future of Toronto”. John spoke about the history of planning in Toronto and then his future plan for Toronto.
According to history and John, Toronto has gone through cycles of being planned and unplanned. We are in the unplanned stage now. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for planning. I think what it means is that it is time for the traditional forms of planning to let go a bit. And this means we can take planning to the people!
This lecture stuck with me and it made me really start thinking about what is going on and how are we asking people to participate in planning. I live in a condo building where there is a new condo being built around the corner. In our elevator was the vaguest poster that said you could attend the “development application process meeting”…this made me wonder, how many people in the building are going to:
In any case, I did not attend the meeting, I had no reason to, I know nothing about the building that is being proposed to be built, I don’t know how it will impact my property value, I don’t know what the land is currently zoned for and really, I don’t know that it would matter. We are under the impression that we don’t really have the power to ask for anything and even if we do ask, we don’t think we will get what we ask for. So who is planning the unplanned? Or what do we need to do to make sure the unplanners are planning? As an unplanner, I would like to know.