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Presenting “We Stand: A Civic Engagement Laboratory” Monday, November 23, 2009
CreateHere is pleased to present We Stand, a pop-up civic engagement laboratory designed in partnership with Chattanooga Stand, opening today. This event, which runs through January 29, addresses local and global challenges, finding tools and citizen-owned solutions to even the most overwhelming problems. We Stand is about the harnessing the power of place.
On September 31, 2009, the survey phase of Chattanooga Stand officially came to a close. Building off a 25-year legacy of visioning, Stand became the world’s largest survey-based community visioning effort, collecting over 26,000 responses to a four-question survey. It has been a monumental summer for Chattanooga. Now, however, is the time to make history with Stand.
In preparation for the release of Stand survey data in early 2010, We Stand aims to inspire citizens and provide them with ideas, outlets, and case studies in visionary work. Drawing off of the pre-existing fervor around Stand’s planning meetings, We Stand includes a speaker series geared at idea generation called City Share; locally-grown data visualizations on key issues facing our community; and collective action events across town.
City Share continues the dialogue that began with Stand’s four simple questions, expanding it into a much broader community conversation. In preparation for the release of survey data in early 2010, Stand is keeping residents engaged and informed through the City Share series. Each session will feature a guest speaker—someone who has been instrumental in enacting creative solutions to issues in their own community—who’ll be visiting via video chat.
In any laboratory setting, there is experimentation and learning. A civic engagement laboratory is no exception, and as part of We Stand, the CreateHere gallery space features data visualizations on a variety of issues, including the state of water quality in Hamilton County; the attendance rate in local schools; and voter turn-out in the most recent elections. What do they mean together? That’s what We Stand asks to Chattanoogans to discover.
By pairing insights and advice from nationally-recognized “community visioneers” with local issues, We Stand will ask residents to consider an important question: what can individuals do to make this place better?
Stop by our studio on 55 E Main to check out We Stand, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm.Posted by
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Story and Craft Thursday, November 19, 2009
Bill Mallonee, a folk artist from Athens GA, will be featured in the next installment of the Story and Craft series. Paste Music Magazine, in a poll conducted by both writers and artists, listed Bill Mallonee as 65 in their “100 Greatest Living Songwriters” poll.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the story living under your own skin,” says Mallonee. “In my work, I’ve just tried to chase that story down and put something of a frame around it for a spell.” The New York Press calls him the “best folk-rock act nobody’s heard of.”
Bill will come sing his songs and then talk about, faith, art, and cultural relevance.
The Story and Craft lecture series is devoted to bringing experienced artists into the Chattanooga community to share their experiences and knowledge with young artists, musicians, and especially filmmakers.Mallonee’s experiences are relevant to filmmakers for a number of reasons, especially because of the interactive nature of filmmaking, and in order to fully understand the requirements of the profession you have to be in touch with the trends and parlance of related fields, music and art included.
Come check out Bill Mallonee at CreateHere Friday, November 20th from 7:30-10:30 PM!
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Chattanooga Farmer’s Market: A Celebration of the Growing Season Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The first annual Main Street Farmers Market Fall Harvest Festival is currently underway. The festival began on the 13th and will continue on to the 21st of November, and during these eight wonderful days there will be event upon event to raise awareness of the local food production of healthy fruits, vegetables, and meats. Below is a schedule of the week’s events, and tips on how to get involved!
Friday, November 20
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Chattanooga Local Food Summit, How to build a Local Food SystemThe Main Street Farmers Market will host a panel discussion at green|spaces, facilitated by Trae Moore. The purpose of the event is to have a relevant discussion on each aspect of a local food system and how Chattanooga can continue to move toward its goal of building a stronger farming community while supplying healthy sustainable food to all segments of its community.
The panel will be made up of Jess Wilson from Cumberland Online Market, Paul Smith from the Chattanooga Market, Kenny Pendergrass from Dixie Produce, Lori Bell from Greenlife Grocery, Padget Arnold from Sequatchie Cove Farm, and local chefs. The event is open to everyone.
For more information, please contact Trae Moore at 423.322.5525.
Saturday, November 219:00 am to 1:00 pm
Local Food Cooking Workshops at Crabtree FarmsClasses offered on preserving, canning, kimchie making, drying, soup making, pie making, and lard rendering and then donut and pie frying in the lard (bring something to fry in the lard, please no fish or meat). This will all be followed by a potluck lunch starting at 12:30; please bring a locally prepared dish and your own eating utensils and dishes. (This is also Crabtree last CSA pickup)
5:00pm
William’s Island Fall Tractor Dinner at the Pot Point House, Tennessee River GorgeAll proceeds will go toward helping Williams Island Farm purchase a tractor for their organic vegetable farm on William’s Island. Enjoy a wonderful meal from the farm, artisan silent auction, stories by Jim Pfitzer, music by Matt Evans and Gerle Haggard, and much more. Tickets are $50.00 and you must RSVP; for tickets, information, and directions please contact Williams Island Farm at 423.802.0516 or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
By Michael Kendall, Editorial Fellow
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48Hour Launch Wrap-Up: Meet the Results
This weekend, CreateHere and SpringBoard had the great pleasure to host 48Hour Launch, an event aimed at sparking entrepreneurship regionally and launching at least one start-up over the course of two days. We’re pleased to announce that the weekend was a huge success, with over 100 participants building out seven unique projects. Here, we give you a brief write-up on each of those projects.
John Prevost started Sunday night’s presentations with a brief demonstration of Flobuckle, a task-management system designed to serve small to medium sized creative agencies. Their goal? Make sure basic tasks aren’t “adding density to your day.” Flobuckle was launched through the teamwork of Steven Hill, Michael Snyder, Angel Brown, and Kyle Posey.
Alex Lavidge of Knoxville Overground presented on behalf of his group, which worked in partnership with Knoxville-based jewelry designer Jennifer Ellison. Ellison’s handmade accessories evoke rock ‘n’ roll, and the team launched mStrandz, a visual identity and website for Ellison’s business. The site gives Ellison an opportunity to reach out to a broader audience, and within the next 5 years, she’d like to see her products compete in Atlanta’s difficult market. Additionally, mStrandz includes a community service component: a portion of all proceeds go to k-12 music appreciation programs in the Knoxville area.
Jason Luna presented on behalf of his group, which included Daniel Santa Cruz and Eric Polino. Working an abbreviated launch session of just under 15 hours, the team was able to start development on All My Stitches, a social network aggregator.
HyvMynd, an ambitious project with several components, was developed by a larger team, many of which collaborated with other fellow 48Hour Launchers. Building on their platform, Brix, the company provides custom solutions for small businesses to facilitate the growth of buying local. HyvMynd’s platform includes a free barcode generating website for people looking to sell their products on consignment, which allows for better inventory tracking. Throughout the weekend, they developed a backend database, a website, and an iPhone application, all intended to help manage supply chain and promote local sales. Hyvmynd was developed by Aaron Welch, Sydney Hale, Daniel Appleget, Benjamin Bane, Joshua Estes, Ed King, Bob Leffew, Travis Harvey, and James Long.
Lokewl was developed in collaboration with team members from HyvMynd, who used this project as an example of how they hope to operate. Lokewl, a website and iPhone application, collects deals, sales, and coupons from local businesses exclusively. During the demonstration, Shultz expressed that the original goal of the project was to highlight local restaurants, but quickly they realized that “mom and pop” shops could benefit from this type of technology.James Long and his team used the weekend to continue development of an iPhone game called Farm Wars. This was one of Long’s first game development projects, and Farm Wars came away with a solid marketing and PR strategy to push the game into the market. He hopes to have it in the iPhone app store within the next couple of months.
The final group to present was Chattanooga 3D, a non-profit project headed up by Stephen Culp and Karen Liwanpo of SmartFurniture. The team used the weekend to develop 3D renderings of downtown and Main Street, to be used by Google Maps. This open-source platform can be used by anyone, and added to by all: at the end of a demonstration, Culp announced that this will be a community-owned project. For more information, visit http://chattanooga3d.com.
48HL was organized by SpringBoard, Knoxville Overground, Will This Float?, and Launch Memphis, four organizations specializing in entrepreneurship. The first 48HL coincides with the beginning of Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 16-20 and is made possible through generous support from local and national organizations. Sponsors include EPB, Mircrosoft’s BizSpark, the Chattanooga Technology Council, Angel Capital Group, Airnet, Slamdot, Spruz, Harwood, Launch Financial, the Chattanooga Choo Choo, SmartFurniture, Ackermann PR, Entrepreneurs of Knoxville, Technology 2020, and Estate of Confusion.Posted by
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On Guilt, Responsibility, and the Power of Story: Notes from the Field
Josh McManus, CreateHere’s Co-founder and Creative Strategist, recently returned from a 25-day tour of seven European cities through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. With two feet on American soil, Josh sends us this dispatch about the importance of responsibility.
Guilty, guilty… that’s all I could think about on while I shuttled across the world on a series of trains and planes. I was working my way across the Netherlands, Germany and almost half of the Northern Hemisphere on my long trip home, and the guilt wasn’t a sharp, cutting type (the kind just above your stomach… you know the type), but the slow-rising full body tension that finds its way to the back of your throat and sits for days on end.
With a bit of distance between now, and some convergent reflections brought on by the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as Veteran’s Day, that wound of guilt is healing to a scar of responsibility, and I’m finding ways to express its source.
It started while riding in an overnight train from Amsterdam to Berlin, appropriately foreshadowed by the previous week’s activities. From Belgrade, Serbia, we flew to Munich and then Leipzig, Germany. Leipzig, a former East German city, offered our first real glimpse into what the life divided had been like. We toured the former Stassi (East German Special Police) headquarters and saw some of the tools of manipulation and fear mongering the Stassi implemented first-hand. Honestly, the relics of repression were somewhat surreal for someone that grew up in such a starkly contrasted free society.
After seeing the Stassi tools, we sat down with Reinhard Bohse, a leading figure in the peaceful revolution of 1989 and listened to his story of determination and commitment. As we left that discussion, the stairs we descended were the same that once sheltered thousands of candles during the revolution: the candles were a sign of peace from the people who were feeling unrest to those who were bound to perpetuate a failing system. Pictures of the burning candles are one of the most powerful metaphors for non-violent change that I’ve ever been witness to.
Leipzig led us to Berlin for the Marshall Forum on Transatlantic Affairs. Of course, the focus of the Forum was the Fall, twenty years later, and the ramifications thereof. The air in the conference rooms was rather heady and academic, though perhaps the lack of distance from the events makes formality a cloak of comfort for discussion.
In spite of the formality, we heard from amazing change-agents who had led dissenting movements from various platforms. The stories ranged from pragmatic and logistical to heartfelt and cathartic. A former physician, biologist, and activist, Jen Reich gave an opening address that closed more powerfully than most addresses I’ve ever heard. The call for eternal vigilance towards the pursuit of liberty from a survivor of oppression will forever haunt me.
Still, I was not truly moved, not reflecting, and not feeling guilty. Shortly, Berlin was over, and it was time to visit the Netherlands for rest and recovery. Contrary to the popular conception of Amsterdam, I found it culturally enlightened, architecturally fascinating, and distinctive for reasons far superior than the city’s famed “coffee” shops. A city that has 1.5 bicycles per person and the largest bike parking garage in all of Europe is near to my heart for that reason, and the canal system (rivaling that of Venice) is an engineering feat that our own Gulf Coast could learn from. Thanks to good food and some much needed sleep, Amsterdam too was over in a moment.
We boarded a train for Berlin at 7 am, and made it almost five hours before we were awoken by a young couple in their late 20s. They were distinctively German in their features and obviously a bit timid sitting across from an imposing American and my friend Scott, who hails from Alaska. We were a foreign sight.
After some uncomfortable silence, the Beck’s beer the man across from me was drinking finally kicked in. “You are from the States?” he asked. From there, we were off to the races.
He was a bit older than me and she a bit younger, and they were heading back home to Leipzig from Cologne where his pictures had been featured in an exhibition. For all superficial purposes, we were much alike. He loved skating, I love biking. They were both creatives, which is where I focus my work. The latter half of our conversation traversed foreign territory for me: they shared stories of growing up in Communist-controlled East Germany. had never considered what life could be like without popular media, without culture that wasn’t infused with propaganda, without color in both the literal and metaphorical ways. Their stories were matter of fact and they both shined when they spoke of the fall of the wall. This told me all that I needed to know of what the transition meant to them: there lives had been half lost in to the repression of others and that’s an extremely foreign notion to Americans, and myself in particular. As our conversations wound down and we shook hands and parted, the first pang of guilt hit.
That sense of guilt grew as I bounced from place to place, slowly approaching home. The closer I got to home, the more I knew that I would never be the same again. As introspective as I’d tried to be in the past, as worldly as I’d been in my views, I realized: it had all been a failure. I had never truly understood how incredible my life circumstances have been. I’ve always known freedom, I’ve never seen war, and I’ve always been able to question, speak and move freely. As I said in opening, that guilt came from the shared stories of my new friends, a guilt now scarred into responsibility. I send this final Marshall Fellowships dispatch to anyone who’s out there reading as a call to action. Think now about what you take for granted, and make it so no longer. I know I will.
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