SURVEY: MOOS Rapid Response Team

Making Our Own Space is a program of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative that engages and empowers middle school and high school students with skills to transform public spaces in their neighborhoods. With generous support from the Cleveland Foundation, the CUDC is launching a new MOOS Rapid Response Team and we’d like your input as this program takes shape.

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After six years of designing and building public space improvements with young people and the completion of a strategic planning process for the program last year, we are excited to begin expanding and evolving the work of MOOS. The MOOS Rapid Response Team will build on existing partnerships in many of the neighborhoods we’ve been working in. We are also seeking a new community partner for MOOS.

The MOOS Rapid Response Team will be small but mighty, working closely with CUDC staff as urban researchers tackling questions relevant to their community. While we will still pull out the drills and chop saws for construction projects on occasion, we will also expand the design tools students use to think spatially and respond to the challenges and opportunities of their neighborhoods. This first MOOS-RRT program will run for 18 months starting in August 2021 with a group of eight students ages 13-18. Students will be paid a stipend for their leadership and creative work in the program. 

In May 2021, we will issue a Request for Proposals and invite community organizations to apply to bring the MOOS-RRT program to their neighborhood. Please help us shape this RFP by completing a short survey to share your thoughts on what issues are most important in Cleveland neighborhoods right now.

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If you or someone you know is affiliated with a youth-serving organization in the City of Cleveland and would be interested in collaborating on this project, please include contact info in your survey response so we can follow up. 

Beyond the Frame: Reconstructing Police Violence from User Generated Content

Beyond the Frame: Reconstructing Police Violence from User Generated Content
Presentation by Brad Samuels

Friday, February 5, 2021 from noon-1pm
RSVP for ZOOM link

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Since the late spring, SITU Research has been conducting visual investigations of protests from across the United States. This growing library of examples documents the breadth and depth of police violence and excessive use of force against protestors in its systemic context. The work leverages the extensive, publicly available, citizen documentation of each event and merges it with digital reconstruction techniques to isolate and analyze key interactions between law enforcement and civilians from multiple perspectives and crucial spatial contexts. This presentation will feature how these reconstructions serve as vehicles for accountability in the presentation of two cases: evidentiary material in a lawsuit against the Portland Police Bureau, and as an advocacy tool in a report against the New York Police Department.

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Brad Samuels is a founding partner at SITU and the Director of SITU Research—an organization that merges data and design to create new pathways for justice. Outside the multidisciplinary practice, Brad sits on the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court and the Board of The Architectural League of New York, is a Fellow with the Urban Design Forum and teaches in Barnard College and Columbia University’s undergraduate architecture program

Accessibility Scavenger Hunts

Please join Barrier-free Cleveland and Maximum Accessible Housing Ohio for two Accessibility Scavenger Hunts in November, 2020. Explore the Hough/Midtown and Clark-Fulton neighborhoodsto identify barriers and obstacles that keep people with disabilities from getting where they need to go.

The Scavenger Hunts are outdoor events, so please dress for the weather and wear comfortable shoes. Participants will look for high curbs, wide intersections, and other conditions that create barriers to personal mobility.

All participants will be entered into a drawing for a $100 Visa Gift Card. The drawings will be held at the end of November, 2020.

The first Accessibility Scavenger Hunt is in Clark-Fulton on Saturday, Novermber 14 from noon-2pm. This event is being held in conjunction with the Clark-Fulton Together Ideas + Action Week. Meet at The Yard by Funkenship, 3332 32nd Street in Cleveland, Ohio. For safety reasons the event is limited to 10 people every 30 minutes. Registration is recommended, but not required. REGISTER HERE

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The second Accessibility Scavenger Hunt is in Hough/Midtown on Saturday, November 21 from 1-3pm. Meet at DigitalC, 6815 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. For safety reasons the event is limited to 10 people every 30 minutes. Registration is recommended, but not required. REGISTER HERE

For more information, please email barrierfreecle@kent.edu or call 216.357.3434.

Graduate Open House

LAND AS RESOURCE: New Models for Thriving with the Land

LAND AS RESOURCE: New Models for Thriving with the Land
Conversation with American Roundtable editorial teams, moderated by Nicholas Anderson, Project Manager of the American Roundtable for the Architectural League of New York.

Friday, October 30, 2020 from noon-1pm
RSVP for ZOOM info

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Across much of the United States, particularly outside of the booming metropolises of the “knowledge economy,” land is frequently a community’s most valuable asset. Historically, this has been thought of in terms of extraction: minerals to take; oil to pump; water to harness; soil to exploit. As economic forces reduce the viability of such models, and consciousness grows around the ecological fragility of our environments, how can communities reimagine land as a resource?

The editorial teams that will present will share case studies that propose new ways of thinking about land as a resource. This discussion grows from reports, commissioned by The Architectural League’s American Roundtable initiative, which seek to bring together on-the-ground perspectives on the condition of small to mid-size American communities and what they need to thrive going forward. Commissioned reports on these three locales, along with six others, will be published by The Architectural League in the coming weeks and months. Look for more information on the initiative, the reports, and additional programming here.

This session will look the Appalachia region of West Virginia, the Southeast Good Food Corridor in North Carolina, and the Mahoning Valley (Youngstown, Lordstown, and Warren) in Ohio. 

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Appalachia, West Virginia
Nina Chase, Editor, Merritt Chase

Appalachia Rising aims to build momentum toward an alternative land-based future for the state of West Virginia. West Virginia is defined by its land. The state’s hills, hollers, valleys, rivers, creeks, and forests have been deeply embedded in the culture of communities for generations. But the accumulated depletion of natural resources has perpetuated a cycle of boom and bust throughout the state’s history. This rhythm has left landscapes scarred, communities abandoned, and generations struggling to redefine the future. How can we build momentum for an alternative future that prioritizes the uniqueness and resilience of West Virginia’s people and places? What if the shared reverence for land is leveraged instead toward planning and designing new relationships with the state’s natural resources and natural beauty? West Virginia’s landscapes could again become the state’s greatest assets. Through the lens of the American Roundtable themes, five local contributors document the successes, failures, and opportunities of alternative West Virginia land-based ventures. These projects include new forms of infrastructure, recreational landscapes, reforestation initiatives, urban agriculture, and renovated public spaces. The landscapes imagined and the projects documented inspire a new narrative for West Virginia and a future that is even more wild and wonderful than it is today.
Nina Chase is a West Virginia native and Pittsburgh-based landscape architect. She is the co-founder of Merritt Chase.
Photo credit: Rebecca Kiger (Grow Ohio Valley, Wheeling, WV)

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Along the Lumbee River, North Carolina
Joey Swerdlin, Editor + Contributor Davon Goodwin

In his contribution, Davon discusses his journey to owning and running a farm in rural North Carolina after growing up in Pittsburgh with little farming background. During this discussion, Davon will speak about his organizing and advocacy for young, black farmers and the differences between land ownership and land stewardship.

Joey Swerdlin is one of the report editors of Along the Lumbee River. Joey is an architectural designer. Currently he is a member of Group Project and the Community Director at Morpholio.
Davon Goodwin’s contribution to Along the Lumbee River is entitled “Can Two Black Millennials Come Out of College, Farm, and Get it Right?” Davon is the manager of the Sandhills Ag Innovation Center. Davon works to reinvigorate the local sustainable farm economy and support the next generation of farmers. He also owns and operates OTL Farms, a 42-acre sustainable farm located in Laurinburg, NC.

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Mahoning Valley, Ohio (Youngstown-Warren-Lordstown)
Quilian Riano, Lead Editor + Matt Martin, TNP.

The physical and social landscapes of Youngstown, Warren, and Lordstown, Ohio are characterized both by the manufacturing and industrial prowess of the Mahoning Valley during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the steady population and job loss the region has endured since the 1970s. The report addresses the region’s changing industry, economy, and labor markets – documenting what has been lost and identifying new economic and social models that have arisen, and how these opportunities are changing the spatial and social infrastructure of the community.

Quilian Riano is Associate Director of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative.
Matt Martin is the Executive Director of the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership.

This program is free and open to the public, with support from Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design. Certification Maintenance credits for this lecture are available, thanks to our partners at APA Ohio, Cleveland Section.

Youth Design Center: Designing for Equity

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Youth Design Center: Designing for Equity
Presentation by Quardean Lewis-Allen

Friday, October 16, 2020 from noon-1pm
RSVP for ZOOM info

In the face of changing communities, the challenge becomes how urban inhabitants can ground their narrative in and advocate for the places they are connected to. Quardean Lewis-Allen will explore what this looks like for his community design center practice, both spatially and as a dialogue with stakeholders, to design for an inclusive future.

Quardean Lewis-Allen is the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit youth creative agency and innovation hub, Youth Design Center, which provides a gateway for young people in his native Brownsville community to access education, technology, and mentorship to tackle underrepresentation in STEAM professions and cyclical poverty, as well as to address the need for place-based community revitalization. He has over a decade of interdisciplinary design experience working across public and private sectors at the intersection of tactical urbanism and social activism through community-led design. Youth Design Center has been featured in the NYTimes, Fast Company, Buzzfeed, and Forbes. Lewis-Allen was an Adjunct at City College of New York and NYU Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program where he was also a Human-In-Residence Fellow. He serves on the Board of Brownsville Community Development Corporation and the Ocean Hill Brownsville Coalition of Young Professionals. He is an Emerging Leaders Fund recipient of Claneil Foundation, Crain’s 40 Under 40, Forbes 30 Under 30, America’s Promise Alliance’s People of Promise Awardee and an Echoing Green Black Male Achievement Fellow, amongst other accolades. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from SUNY Buffalo and a Masters in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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This program is free and open to the public, with support from Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design. Continuing Education and Certification Maintenance credits for this lecture are available, thanks to our partners at AIA Cleveland and APA Ohio, Cleveland Section.

Activating Space, Activating People: Racial Equity by Design

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Presentation by Mordecai Cargill, ThirdSpace Action Lab

Friday, September 11th at noon

RSVP ON EVENTBRITE FOR ZOOM INFO

ThirdSpace Action Lab (Cleveland, Ohio) Co-Founder + Creative Director, Mordecai Cargill will describe how the legacy and intransigence of structural racism have indelibly shaped the context in which urban design practitioners pursue efforts to positively impact the built environment. This lecture will revisit the inextricable links between Race + Place + Historical Memory as the starting point for a more critical interrogation of how we understand the work of (re)building equitable + inclusive communities. This lecture will also introduce participants to ThirdSpace Action Lab’s work—both locally + nationally—and highlight some of the ways the firm, its clients + collaborators have begun to turn insights into action through Community Collaboration, Research + Strategy Design, and Space Activation. The lecture will be followed by an accelerated Soul Work Session, during which the TSAL Team will facilitate an Applied Racial Equity + Inclusion Controlled Experiment to demonstrate the firm’s Impact Continuum: Constant Awareness Building + More Thoughtful Action.

SPEAKER BIO

Mordecai Cargill is a co-founder + Creative Director of the ThirdSpace Action Lab, a grassroots research, strategy & design cooperative, dedicated to prototyping creative place-based solutions to complex socio-economic problems. Mordecai’s key roles & responsibilities include (but are not limited to): Research, Analysis & Evaluation; Storytelling, Insights & Content Creation; and Creative Direction & Brand Management. Prior to starting this exciting venture, Mordecai served as the Director of Strategy, Research & Impact at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress (CNP), a community development funding intermediary committed to fostering inclusive neighborhoods of choice and opportunity throughout the city of Cleveland. Mordecai provided oversight and analysis for the implementation of the Cleveland Neighborhood Progress 2017-2021 Strategic Plan, focused primarily on 3 key areas of activity: Program Design and Evaluation; Research and Thought Leadership; and Partnership and Resource Development. Since joining Team CNP in 2014 as Manager of Fund Development, Mordecai’s responsibilities have included project management for strategic initiatives such as an Organizational Assessment (2014), and the planning process for the 2017-2021 Cleveland Neighborhood Progress Strategic Plan (2016). He also contributed to CNP’s emerging Policy, Advocacy & Research body of work, and co-leads the organization’s efforts to elevate racial equity and inclusion as a citywide community development priority. Mordecai earned his BA in African American Studies from Yale University, with a concentration on Black Culture in the 20th Century. He was awarded the William Pickens Prize for his Senior Thesis entitled, “The Black Arts Iconography of John Coltrane.”

Social media: @MCargill28 (Twitter and Instagram)

ABOUT TSAL

ThirdSpace Action Lab was created to disrupt the vicious cycle of disinvestment and displacement that negatively impacts the vitality of low-income communities of color. We are a grassroots research, strategy & design cooperative, dedicated to prototyping creative place-based solutions to complex socio-economic problems. We are institutional and community organizers, turning multidisciplinary research into evidence-based strategies; and activating “third places” to co-creating more liberated spaces for people of color. We believe that the future of Cleveland’s neighborhoods depends on our collective efforts to transcend the limitations of the popular imagination and consider what will be possible if we insist on the beauty of forgotten places, the value of the people who live there, and seize the opportunity to realize our shared vision for an equitable and inclusive society. We are committed to making this vision a reality. We believe that racial equity and inclusion are central, non-negotiable components of a viable growth strategy. We believe that human-centered design framework applied in communities of color should be inspired by all residents—especially, those who called this place home before its revitalization. Above all, we believe in the sanctity of humanity—that all humans have intrinsic value, deserve beauty, and need more than their basic needs satisfied.