This is from an email I had sent to Monica and Michelle.
I have done some research on TimeBanking and am still trying to get my hands/mind wrapped around it and it's concept and what we want to do (or can do).
"So getting into it, what exactly is Ferndale Change By Design? In respect to Ferndale and its project, what are we trying to achieve? Is it promoting TimeBank, or actually getting it started? (Or any other achievement we are trying to get at) Are the Change by Design and Time Bank projects different? Or do they work together?
What are the goals for the project? These can be many and can be social, physical, political, etc... (Are you thinking of an actual installment of some information station)
Any ideas on how to achieve these goals or accomplishments?
Who do you think will be using the "solution" or "design" that we may come up with? (If I am thinking correctly and on the same page, that could be all the residents of Ferndale, especially those on the East side and not as connected to technology.) could it be directed towards a specific group more? (Elderly, Middle Age, kids, students, retired, etc..) if you do have a group of people or who will use it, do you have a resource for some of their background information? This could be education level, skills, income, family size, etc... "
Thanks for posting this on the blog Emily. This is a better communications repository than email because it can inform everyone jumping aboard the project, so that intelligence may be shared as the projects progress. This will prevent all of us from having to bring each individual up to speed, when ideally we want to hit the ground running when we can. And the blog is the best tool for inspiring the collaborative approach that allows the most creative solutions, projects and explorations to emerge.
ReplyDeleteSo that said, these are excellent questions that we can all work together to understand deeply and then articulate in a clear statement, that will inform the first design charrette we will call with Ferndale partners. This will allow the meeting to flow similarly to the one we had at the Clay schoolhouse regarding the greenhouse, ARTS and LTU, and these projects will be growing together. So here you are a designer in the initial stages that will in turn set the stage for the execution of projects that can demonstrate community building, sustainability, the sharing of resources, information and skills and most importantly, educational practices that model all of the above while growing 21st Century learners and innovators.
I certainly don't have all of the answers to these, and I hope to be called out where I am wrong, but this is what I understand so far. Ferndale is going through the 21st Century "knothole," as Jim R calls it, and we are in a position to model some pilot projects and develop them so that they have scaleable solutions to a number of similar problems that cities will be facing, i.e. budget deficits, unemployment, shrinking industries mixed with the need cities have at the same time to go green, and fix the educational crisis with the budgets they have.
There are also new paradigms in business and social life that are merging technology and our ability to collaborate and our sense of community and sharing, all covered in the topics on this blog titled "Community Hyper-Social Organizations and the Human 1.0 Factor" and under "Collaborative Consumption" for starters.
Ferndale has kind of a sense of community to build on, though it is unfocused and made up of disparate parts and causes that do not quite speak holistically to the enormity of the challenges the city will be facing.
We do have a lot to work with here, a large proportion of the "creative class," close proximity to Detroit (think a Hub for Light-Rail) an established Timebank that can expand and adapt (thank you Michelle), buildings that can be retrofitted to green, industries that can be re-imagined, and most importantly an educational system in need of innovation, which is the common thread in all of 21st Century Digital Learning Environments projects.
Michelle has worked with the schools to promote the tutoring capacity of the timebank, as many members offer this service. And she has also done work with Paper Street, a business incubator and has support from many members that want to help the practice and concept to grow.
What we want to do is to bring all of the people Michelle has built relationships with through her work in Ferndale with the Timebank, to a meeting and use a process called "leveraged possibilities thinking," where we are able to gauge just what it is that everyone wants to work on and contribute to in expanding the timebank, and then see where additional resources may be brought into play to enhance the design, while connecting to other projects that have been in development. It is similar to what happened at Clay Schoolhouse if you recall our first meeting with all students from LTU, ARTS and 21st CDLE.
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The pilots we want to develop first I believe are the expansion and adaptation of the Timebank and the building of a Greenhouse and Alternative Energy Playground as both can demonstrate project-based, passion driven and digital learning executions through engaging young people in summer learning, while also modeling solutions to a number of problems. So with the growth of the timebank, we will be thinking along the lines of not just offering tutoring, but possible digital learning executions where kids could create materials and serve as digital foot soldiers, connecting to their community and possibly helping to educate those that could be using the timebank but are maybe not connected to technology.)
ReplyDeleteAnd with the Greenhouse, students can engage with digital media (through documentary and social media) and learn how to build, how to grow and care for food, how to cook, how to market, how to play etc. And it is pretty clear how an innovative Greenhouse and Playground could model solutions to a number of problems our world is faced with.
Hopefully Jim will respond and tell me where I am wrong and all of the things I'm missing, but this is what I understand so far and that where the magic will truly happen is when we engage with community partners, because if that is missing from the model then it will fail fast as this is all based on collaborative values.