Big City Forum #5

Big City Forum 5

Design as a catalyst for change...

Tuesday, June 30, 7 - 9 pm
(check-in and refreshments 6:30 pm)

Art Center College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena,CA 91103
Faculty Lounge

Featuring:

-Alissa Walker

-Designmatters at Art Center

Alissa Walker writes about design, architecture, travel and Los Angeles for publications like Fast Company, ReadyMade, Sunset, I.D., Print, Design Observer, Core77, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. She is the associate producer for the public radio show "DnA: Design and Architecture," hosted by Frances Anderton and a frequent collaborator with GOOD, most recently as co-curator, with Casey Caplowe, of a program called GOOD Design LA, where designers work with civic leaders to propose solutions to urban problems. With Haily Zaki and Marissa Gluck, she co-hosts the monthly party de LaB, which brings together designers and design fans living and working east of La Brea. Alissa lives in a royal blue house in Silver Lake where she throws ice cream socials, tends to a drought-tolerant garden, writes infrequently but obsessively on her blog, Gelatobaby, and relishes life in LA without a car. She can't wait to talk about gelato, design and change with all the new friends she's made at Big City Forum.
http://www.gelatobaby.com/

DESIGNMATTERS The world today faces challenges of unprecedented scale and complexity—including urban congestion, depleted natural resources, housing shortages and crises in education and healthcare. Solutions to these challenges increasingly require collaborations offering diverse approaches and perspectives. Because mankind lives in a designed world, designers are pivotal to the success of these collaborations. Public awareness of the importance of design beyond mere consumerism and style is rapidly growing, and design is now an equal partner with many enterprises, including business, medicine, science, technology and urban planning.

A college-wide initiative launched in 2001, Designmatters is a social impact program that embraces global engagement and projects of social relevance through design education. Through research, advocacy and action, Designmatters strives to engage students, faculty and staff in an ongoing exploration of the links between design and issues of social and humanitarian importance.

Presenting:
-Mariana Amatullo, Director Designmatters
-Sean Donohue, Director of Research, Humanities & Design Sciences
Full-Time Faculty Member, Media Design Graduate Program, Art Center
http://www.designmatters.artcenter.edu/index.php

Big City Forum is a project designed to push forth a creative cities agenda and help foster dialogue around sustainable creative communities. It seeks to link up the intersections, relationships, and shared interests between urban planning, economic development, education, architecture, art and design, cultural exchange, and community activism. Furthermore it hopes to help foster the idea of mapping creative spaces and places in which these conversations can take place. Potentially this web of dialogue can develop into an “idea lab” in which new collaborations, projects, actions can be shaped. Meetings are by invitation only and take place across Los Angeles, highlighting the efforts of cultural and community activism within the big city.

Big City Forum #4, May 19, 2009

A conversation about strategies for civic engagement

Big City Forum 4
Tuesday, May 19th from 7 - 9 pm (check-in and refreshments 6:30 pm).
g727Gallery
727 south spring street
downtown los angeles, ca 90014
213 627 9563
g727.org

Featuring:
Public Matters and James Rojas

Public Matters generates innovative, artistic, place-based projects that build creative, civic and social capital in communities. Our projects develop creative community leaders. We engage residents in the creation of media-based neighborhood narratives that illuminate its history, character and conditions and integrate the results with broader civic processes, advocacy efforts and community initiatives. Our work addresses social issues through long-term educational projects. Our interdisciplinary approach is creative and analytical, left-brained and right-brained. We establish long-term sustainable programs that evolve beyond our initial involvement and are ultimately shaped by the community and its needs.

Mike Blockstein, Pr incipal, is a visual artist and educator working in cross-disciplinary community-based public art projects that utilize a sense of place as a mechanism to address social, cultural and built environments. Connecting artistic processes, leadership development and civic engagement, he has created and led projects nationally with youth, community development and arts organizations. Among his projects is A Chinatown Banquet, a nationally recognized art, education, and leadership development project about Boston Chinatown in conjunction with the Asian Community Development Corporation. The former Executive Director of Southern Exposure, a San Francisco nonprofit artists organization, and a former Board President of the National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO), Mike holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Reanne Estrada is an internationally exhibiting visual artist whose diverse practice includes installation, performance, video and public art. She worked for nine years as an educator and in cause-related marketing, design, and curatorial programming at Creative Growth Art Center, an internationally recognized studio and gallery for artists with disabilities. Her public art projects emphasize a collaborative approach and focus on community narratives in Asian American communities. Reanne has an A.B. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University.

James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He is one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban planning/design. He holds a Master of City Planning and a Master of Science of Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His influential thesis on the Latino built environment has been widely cited. Growing out of his research, Mr. Rojas founded the Latino Urban Forum (LUF), a volunteer advocacy group, dedicated to understanding and improving the built environment of Los Angeles' Latino communities.
Design Based Urban Planning (DBUP) is a new initiative developed by James Rojas designed to engage underserved communities and children in the planning process. DBUP breaks down the planning process into simple terms and helps participants translate conceptual planning ideas into physical forms. DBUP serves as a valuable tool to inform and educate constituents about the value of planning through two primary methods.