Verde Smoke

Come see a bunch of planner and community organizers share how we’re using civic media tools in communities, at our barcamp session at the Knight Foundation and the Center for Future Civic Media’s The Future of News and Civic Media Conference @ MIT today (11am Stata rm 32-155)

Check out this video of the final presentation to the Lawrence Community Works Union Crossing Committee, describing programs devised by the graduate and undergraduate students in the Spring 2009 Lawrence practicum course in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning (11.423 LAWRENCE PRACTICUM: Info, Assets, and the Immigrant City) where I’m the teaching assistant.

How can participatory media tools be adapted for grassroots strategies to seed more forward-focused institutional memory practices? Can we use these tools, supported by strategies such as reflective practice, participatory action research, and participatory development communication, work in real-time in both the university and community?

I finally posted some photos from my recent excursion to San Miguel and Perquin, El Salvador, as part of an MIT joint architecture and planning Design and Build trip.

I called my self a photographer recently in a meeting for my research work for MIT@Lawrence the other day, and honestly, I felt a little like a liar.

[I’m taking a great class this semester called Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry, taught by Anne Spirn. I’m supposed to keep a journal every week as I start doing explorations of photography, architecture and urban planning. The first couple weeks are focused on noting light.