Providence City News: David Gonzalez, AS220 Rhode Show

From the City News interview series...

My City: AS220’s Rhode Show Coordinator David Gonzalez Fosters Young People’s Life Skills Through Art

This summer, when “Celebrate Providence” makes its way back into your local neighborhood parks, a handful of the City’s most talented performing artists will be on hand to showcase their best work. Among them, The Rhode Show, the youth performance troupe from AS220 led by 28-year old David Gonzalez.


Formerly housed at the Broad Street Studio on Norwich Avenue, The Rhode Show (comprised mostly of young people from the Rhode Island Training School) has made its way back in to AS220’s downtown headquarters on Empire Street.

At the recording studio, Dave takes City News behind the scenes to talk hip hop, their new CD project, and the importance of young people’s voices.

What is the Rhode Show and how did it come about? Who is involved in it?

The Rhode Show is a performance troupe dealing with young people age 20 and under. Like Broad Street Studio, we work with kids that are incarcerated in the Rhode Island Training School, which is the youth adjudication system in Rhode Island. We also work with kids in DYCF care and then kids in the community.

The funding then came from the Word! Movement from the Department of Health, so they were this anti-tobacco performance troupe, going around doing little skits and plays about just anti-tobacco things, which was pretty cool and interesting at the same time.

I was transitioning out of the Broad Street manager position here and I wanted to do the performance arts projects. So they made me the performance arts director and one of the programs was the Rhode Show. From that point, I tried to change it to more of kids creating their own universe and fighting against evil businesses that attack young people.

It was a very vague stretch and I tried hard, but then I started realizing that the AS220 mission itself was very alternative and very anti-corporate. So kids doing art for art’s sake was what the Rhode Show turned into – like young people educated about art and doing various art projects.

A big part of my endeavor is also the re-claiming of the hip hop culture, trying to get the kids to go back to the elements which is the rebellion stage of hip hop. Put all that together and we have a performance troupe that we sell as an earned income model for Broad Street Studio. Broad Street Studio teaches a lot of workshops and we’re very grant-oriented for funding and we’re trying to change some of that to some earned income from kids’ CDs and products of the arts.

And have you started to develop some CDs for the Rhode Show already?

(Dave hands over a CD).

So, those (the CD compilation) are three projects altogether. The Rhode Show, in the past, has done collaboration with Festival Ballet. It was good. It was fun. It was interesting.

We wrote a couple of pieces to Sebastian Bach. We sampled Sebastian Bach, made hip hop pieces out of it, got some really really dope stuff. One of them on the CD is a young girl that came from the RI Training School into the Rhode Show, made this piece called “Her Last” and it really exposed the ballet audience to a subject matter they didn’t even think about hearing. It was really cool. Three shows sold out so we were really excited about it.

How do the kids in the Rhode Show get selected to be part of it?

There’s an audition process and anybody who’s interested in the Rhode Show automatically gets accepted if they audition. So there’s no rejection or anything like that.

One of things about the Rhode Show is that you have to be here all the time. There is no taking off. So if you can’t come, we ask you to leave and wait until you can make the commitment.

Tell us about some of the projects that you have done or are doing. What is the general subject matter of your performances and how does that get crafted?

When we first started off, the Rhode Show created this concept directly for the Arts, Culture and Tourism department. We created this concept called “Add-A-Lessons,” (derived from the word Adolescence) which is the third thing on the CD. “Add-A-Lessons” was this combination of youth issues brought up by young people through hip hop.

We wanted to cover everything that everyone has ever discouraged or disregarded because of age-ism, like thinking that kids going to school isn’t as important as someone going out to get a job. As a matter of fact, you see that some of the troubles and obstacles that are in school are very relevant to a young person’s development, which is more crucial than getting a job sometimes.

So we wanted to express some of this stuff. We wanted to express violence in the community, racism in the community, socio-economic status – all these things we just wanted to get out there through a young person’s perspective.

When we go to conferences, it’s thirty-year old white women that are in the education system that are talking about our young people’s development. Those are the majority of the people that go to these conferences about education. None of the young people get to speak and we wanted to make an entire CD speaking to them.

When we started realizing who was hiring us, we noticed that the same conferences that don’t have young people are the same conferences that wanted us to showcase for like twenty seconds and then go. So we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and make an entire performance just for those conferences. And we called it “Add-A-Lessons.”

So we did an entire body of work with that mentality. It’s like, if we had three minutes and you had something to say to someone, someone who can change something, what would you say? That was the whole concept of “Add-A-Lessons.” Your voice is important and your art is extremely important. We can’t get too far from that because that’s just the work of AS220 in general, is that young voices are important and young artists are the joint!

When we start projects, I really try to get inspirations from two things. This time, it’s been Jean-Michel Basquiat just because in his paintings, the amount of chaos in an organized canvas made sense to us. The other artist is Jurassic Five. Those are our two influences this year. To blend the mentality of ‘all is one.’ So take those two things and we should be creating something new.

Why is the Rhode Show valuable to the young people who are in it? Why is it beneficial to both them and the community at-large?

A former Rhode Show member, 18-year old Alex Baptista, who is visiting from college, joins Dave at the studio. He is asked by Dave to respond to the question.

Alex: The benefit of something like the Rhode Show on an artistic level gives a lot of kids a chance to one, have a lot of respect for the recording process ‘cause I know personally I had no respect for the whole music-making and writing process at all before coming here and meeting someone like Dave who pretty much lives and swears by it. So, I guess one thing you do is you really respect what it means to be an artist and it’s not just some turn that people just kick around, and it’s not something you do for fun. People really use this stuff to survive off of. That’s one beneficial thing I got off it.

On a community standpoint, it really makes people realize the power that a lot of young people have. I know that a lot of the people that were really holding it down were a lot of the young people that were really tenacious about it. And they want to do it and they really want to give back to their communities. This is the way they choose to do it.

Dave, what do you hope your participants will take away when they get involved in the Rhode Show?

It’s very much different agendas for different principles of the program. One is that we are a transitional program for the kids coming from the RI Training School – (as well as) for kids in DCYF care, and then kids from the community that just hear about us from AS220. But our main population is the kids in the training school. We go in and I teach two workshops and also have three 1-on-1s with young people in the RI Training School weekly, with the hopes that that sparks some kind of flame for them to come down here.

Through that, my entire objective is (to develop) life skills through arts. To me, there’s no difference between making a beat and filling out a job application. There really isn’t. It’s the dedication you have in yourself in completing something. Knowing how to finish something is the most important part.

One of our mantras is ‘the person who focuses longer, wins.’ Really trying to get them to understand that everything you do is a focus game. How long can you participate in something and completely be there. It’s very Buddhist-Zen in that we want them to be here, be an artist, and try to validate your artistry. Like don’t say, ‘I’m not a writer,’ when you’re writing. If the kids can understand the principle of that concept, then I think that life skills just come – why do you have to set your alarm in the morning and wake up, why do you have to keep a book of all your dates and calendars, why do you have to go to the things you say you have to go to. I think then if you can really understand that, then I think that’s our entire purpose of being at Broad Street Studio.

Now there’s the other side – which is the business aspect. With AS220’s campaign to resist corporate music, and just hearing how corporations have taken advantage of young people, hearing the young kids reclaim or learn hip hop and make it evolve, shutting off the radio and creating their own world (will allow) us to get them to learn how important their voice is, and that we really have something – something that’s completely unique. Something that’s like traditional old school hip hop with young people’s views and perspectives.

Where is the future heading for the kids of the Rhode Show?

Where I think, in ten years, where AS220 wants to be, is that these young people can live off their art. This is the most important part for me that they have a real tangible means of living off their writing, or their beat-making, traveling through their writing, traveling through their beat-making.

Why do you this work?

This is all Umberto Crenca’s imagination. When I was going from college to college, you know he really saw something in myself that I really didn’t capture yet. And he offered me a job and now it’s this amazing thing. Bert’s aura is something that attracts me to this place.

And I was living off the arts and spoken word and hip hop myself, and he vaguely asked, ‘can you teach kids how to do this?’ And my ignorant self said yes. I didn’t know what I was doing in life then, but helping create the beginning of Broad Street Studio definitely got me invested in the project.

Imagine saying that we aided the process of incarceration by creating an art transitional program. Kids won’t have go to their parole officers, they’re going to their drawing classes – that is cool beans! And that if you don’t paint or draw, that’s how you get in trouble – that’s really dope stuff right there. That mission right there is worth it.

The other part is, I’ve learned so much on AS220’s dime, why give it up? I didn’t know how to record, I didn’t know how to create a studio, and they’ve supported me in learning that process. And that’s a very small part of what I’ve learned here. Learning how to handle myself in a professional manner too.

And I’ll stay here until the kids don’t want me anymore.

If you happen to catch The Rhode Show at your neighborhood park this summer, perhaps you’ll want to bring more than a beach chair and a cool drink to the outdoor performance. There is a deeper message to be taken back for sure, but you might have to come with an open mind and listen real carefully.

The youth of the Rhode Show, including Dave, will have worked tirelessly to cook up some food for thought about the everyday life issues affecting them today. And maybe, we can all catch a glimpse of what’s in store for our future.

To learn more about the AS220 Rhode Show, go to www.as220.org or call 467-0701 and ask for Dave Gonzalez. Log on to the ArtCultureTourism website to get updated schedules and performances for this summer’s neighborhood performing arts initiative.

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Spring Blooms in the Hackable City

Good weather is here, and the hackable events are poppin'. A quick rundown:

Providence Open Market: gotta love how the organizers of this outdoor market [downtown | local vendors | Saturdays] are using the online discussion forums of Urban Planet (see Hackable Places, below left) to communicate to the public, get feedback, and decide what changes to make to this new community experiment. Very smart.

New design for the Waterfront Park: have to give the city props for holding an open competition for the park design, and opening the final designs up for public feedback. Now that the winner has been picked, it deserves its own post, which I'll accomplish later.

ProvFlux 2007: personifying hackability in the art world, ProvFlux "brings together artists, theorists, urban adventurers, and the public to share their visions of what the city can be, and to take action to make it a reality. It is a completely free, unjuried, and 100% participatory event." Run by the Pipsters, which stands for a whole bunch of things, simultaneously. These folks are crazy (in a good way), I think they may be my first Hackable City interview.

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Hackable City makes local press

Out of the blue, I got a call from Providence Business News last week to talk about Hackable City. Working past my fumbling attempts at describing the concept of hackability as applied to an urban community, David Ortiz wrote a good article on the blog and some of the other hackable stuff happening in Providence.

Having said that, I haven't gotten any emails or comments since the paper came out, so perhaps it was unintelligible after all.

Read on for the full story, if you don't have a PBN account to access the article.

Allan Tear is trying to make Providence “hackable” – in a good way.

Tear, an innovation consultant whose firm, Aptus Collaborative, organizes projects for the Business Innovation Factory, has launched a Web log dedicated to exploring ways in which unlikely groups of people in the city are collaborating, forming social networks and seeking to participate in city planning and economic development.

The blog, “Hackable City: Providence,” advocates the notion that open-source philosophy – a movement in the IT industry away from closely guarded, proprietary software and technology platforms toward open, collaborative ones that “hackers” are encouraged to improve upon – can be used to understand social and economic trends occurring in Providence.

Tear said he launched the blog in March to help brand Providence as a bastion for creative-economy types, among other things.

“What I’m really attempting to do is to start documenting … how groups are beginning to work together, and starting to actually create templates that other people can use,” Tear said. “In the technology arena we’re seeing people like Providence Geeks; there’s the stuff that the Business Innovation Factory is doing with the NGen Network. In planning we see a lot of neighborhood groups starting to come together to exchange ideas and actually share best practices and team up working on things like the Providence Plan, the I-195 redevelopment.”

As an example of the “hackable” culture being created in Providence, Tear cites artists and industrial designers from The Steel Yard teaming up with technology experts from Providence Geeks to purchase a 3-D printer and link it to a milling machine at the Steel Yard, enabling both groups to do personal fabrication and rapid prototyping from computer designs and drawings.

There is now a tension within Providence city government, Tear said, between a push to become more “hackable,” or open and inclusive, and a pull to maintain traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic mechanisms of government.

The tension can be seen in the unfolding of the Providence Tomorrow neighborhood planning process, which Tear said was initially intended to be far more inclusive than it has been.

“I think we see the beginnings of some processes which could have some more community ownership,” Tear said. “But actually underlying them, I think, the structures that are running those processes still haven’t quite figured out how to let that happen.”

Regardless of how inclusive those planning processes turn out, an increasingly collaborative and innovative social environment is emerging in Providence, driven by artists, academics, students, entrepreneurs, technology geeks and members of the nonprofit sector, Tear said. The connections they are making may not be front-page news yet, but soon they may have major impacts on public policy and corporate innovation.

“I think that inevitably those people are going to continue to share information, make unusual connections, find ways to reuse what they do in one part of their world into another,” he said.

Tear, 36, a native Midwesterner, moved to Providence’s East Side from Atlanta five years ago. He has become a leading member of the Summit Neighborhood Association, bringing his “hackable” approach to neighborhood organizing.

Under Tear’s direction, the group has created how-to guides for residents seeking to organize block parties, tool exchanges, gardening clubs. One guide focuses on how to resolve disputes with local merchants over traffic, signage and other typical neighborhood issues.

Tear is now revamping the group’s Web site to make the guides available online.

“We’ve moved successively from a model where the neighborhood association’s job was to raise issues and to fight and to be sort of an advocacy group to one that actually builds these little tool kits to give to neighbors to build social capital on a street-by-street level,” Tear said.

“These are codes for social, neighbor-to-neighbor engagement,” he added. “Often you never get above that level of energy that actually starts to create a community, so we’re lowering that barrier to doing this.”

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Can You Hack Providence Public Schools ?

I dance with Providence Public Schools a lot. As a parent of a first grader in a mainstream elementary school. As an internship mentor to a freshman at the MET alternative high school. As a volunteer participant ranging across PTA meetings, the facilities master plan, and the East Side Public Education Coalition. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how a hackable education environment would look and feel, and whether its possible from the public school system we have today.

If something in our city and society were to be hackable, to be own-able and edit-able and open to the wisdom and the contribution of the larger community, the education of our youth would be an obvious first choice. But schools carry with them 100 years of tradition, and that tradition doesn't include parents as co-experts and contributors.

So lets start a dialogue, about how students, parents and the community can be invited to "plug in" to the school system, to the life of the classroom, the customization of the curriculum, and the support of the kids.

What should a hackable education look like? How would the "architecture of participation" work? Who should hack - students, parents, community members, teachers?

Are there good examples of education hackability out there in the public or private realm, at a school or even a classroom level ? Can those examples take root in other places? Can they scale ?

How do we get past the can't/won't/shouldn't sclerosis that grips the system ? How do we prove or be accountable to standards as the federal government demands (or do we)? How do we make a hackable education work for as many families as possible ?

I have more questions than answers - this is a problem for the wisdom of the crowd !

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Wunderkind from Facebook talks Hackability

"There's an intense focus on openness, sharing information, as both an ideal and a practical strategy to get things done"

A quote from Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year old CEO of the internet phenom, Facebook, on redefining "hacker" caught my eye. For those of us who haven't spent time with Facebook, it is making a jump from the place that college kids used to define their online identity, to the place where professionals, groups of common interest, and high schoolers manage their identities and connect with each other. It feels so much more purposeful, less random, than MySpace to me.

Anyway, Zuckerberg was riffing on how "hackability" is really harnessing the power of a larger group, giving them a sense of shared ownership, and enabling them to authentically shape the raw material of a place/technology/community into something that is of value both to them, and the communities they belong to.

"What most people think when they hear the word 'hacker' is breaking into things."

Zuckerberg admits to being a hacker--but only if he's sure you understand that the word means something different to him. To him, hacker culture is about using shared effort and knowledge to make something bigger, better, and faster than an individual can do alone. "There's an intense focus on openness, sharing information, as both an ideal and a practical strategy to get things done," he explains.

The article on Facebook in Fast Company here.

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Providence City News: Taylor Ellowitz, Southside Community Land Trust

From the City News Interview Series...along the same lines of the entry on the NY Sun Works sustainable urban farming project, urban gardens in Providence have been quietly flourishing in the background. However, as property values rise and the affordable housing bond drives infill development, less vacant lots will be available for urban farming, forcing us to think more "out of the lot".

City Farm Manager Rich Pederson and SCLT’s Outreach & Development Director Taylor Ellowitz talks with City News about the value of buying from and sharing goods with your neighbors.

How did the Annual Plant Sale come to be?

Taylor: It’s been 26 years since a group of Brown graduates, who lived just behind where the city farm is now, took this abandoned property and, along with the Hmong residents that lived in this neighborhood, began preserving the land for growing food. When they first began, they operated a microgreen business and would sell their produce to local restaurants.

Over the last four years, the plant sale has really grown. It started at about 400 people to about 1,400 in attendance last year. It’s a big fundraiser for us and helps support our programs.

How does it benefit the SCLT?

T: It raises money for our education programs. We’re funded partly by grants and individual donations, so we really rely on the plant sale to help subsidize our programs.

City Farm is also an educational site. We hold adult programs and children’s workshops throughout the summer. We have about 200 children who are sent from various community groups like the YMCA, Project Outreach, and the Boys & Girls Clubs. One of their summer activities is to come to the farm.

But in large part, the plant sale also meets our mission because we’re able to provide people in the city with plants and food for their backyard and window boxes.

It’s also just a great community event, a lot of fun, brings people together, with live music – it’s just a very festive event!

Rich, what is your role as the City Farm Manager?

Rich: I work in the greenhouses. I prepare the farm for the two farmers markets that we sell food at – Parade Street and Hope High School.

When are those starting up again?

R: Parade Street farmers market opens June 19 and Hope High School starts June 9.

Great, what else do you do?

R: I work with volunteers. I teach classes, both formally and informally. We teach at conferences on topics like community/public service. I work with college and high school students at the farm with a sweat equity approach.

Why do you choose to do this type of work?

R: I really like the people I work with. I really like working outside with plants. I’ve been here for six years now. I feel like my work brings to neighbors in the community the opportunity to share knowledge and uses for their own benefit.

Tell us about the selection of plants this year.

R: Thousands of plants have been started here. I estimate about 15,000 mostly medicinal and culinary herbs, and annual and perennial flowers and vegetables. People in the community donated a substantial amount of the perennial plants. It’s kinda’ interesting that people are giving their time and their plants instead of going to larger places like Home Depot. This sale keeps the money in the community and it’s supporting a local cause.

So what would you like guests to take away with them from the sale, other than a plant?

R: A lot of different things. In the modern practices of agriculture, a lot of the literature being done today talks about agriculture being local. It reminds us that food can be grown in the local communities. With regard to the plant sale, for example, people are getting the opportunity to bring home and grow their own food. I really like the idea that people are taking care of their own gardens.

I also feel that the spirit of the plant sale is in the gathering of communities and gardeners, who are celebrating spring, celebrating the Southside Community Land Trust. They go home with a plant but they come to congregate, catch up, meet, and ask questions. It’s pretty exciting.

In your opinion, what makes your plant sale unique?

R: Well the Mayor makes a special trip to every plant sale we’ve had so far! We also have live performances by local area musicians who come because they support the land trust. But also, just the idea that we’re doing ‘city farm,’ ‘urban agriculture.’ – the world is in opposition here but we’re fusing ideas together to recreate space.

Where do you see the future of city farms, or urban agriculture, heading?

R: Right now, we account for 1,000 people in Providence growing their own food in some way. We want 10,000 people to do that. I’d like to see more city farms, more Gano Street gardens, doing more work. I’d like to think that we’d have more garden clubs, more after school programs with school gardens. I’d like to see more green space in the city designated for areas growing food. I’d like to see a City Farmer, or a specialist become a real position in the city, a real resource for residents and neighbors to go to. I think that would be awesome.

T: We also have a great coalition of about twenty-eight organizations, everyone from the SCLT to housing development corporations to nonprofits and health organizations – that make up the Urban Agricultural Policy Task Force. We are all coming together to promote urban agriculture and all of these organizations believe that their mission can be forwarded through urban agriculture.

The City Farm is located on the corner of West Clifford and Dudley in South Providence. The 15th Annual Rare and Unusual Plant Sale runs this Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. To learn more, visit www.southsideclt.org or call 401-273-9419.

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HIOW: New York Sun Works

New York has been doing some heavy lifting on sustainability. Given that cities consume 75% of the world's energy, it would only seem to make sense, and its good to see Bloomberg and NYC leading the charge here.

New York Sun Works has created the Science Barge, which combines environmental education and sustainable agriculture. I'm not very fond of the name, but the underlying idea is pretty cool. The barge is a zero-carbon hydroponic farm, producing local organic produce in the city.

Urban gardens have been around forever, but they compete for space with for-profit development or affordable housing, and often lose.

But local food production is a hackable idea, truly something the community can own, modify, and share. In the industrial era it made sense to separate production from distribution, but local and distributed methods of producing life's staples are seeming wise in the emerging energy/sustainability economy. Fuel costs and weather instability are driving produce prices through the roof, and much of that produce can now be produced locally using new techniques for much less money.

Cities aren't exactly agricultural epicenters. Food and water are shipped over hundreds, even thousands of miles to reach urban areas, and that consumes a massive amount of processing and transportation fuel, which in turn contributes excess carbon dioxide to Earth's atmosphere. Traditional agriculture, too, consumes energy and large amounts of water, and despite the popularity of organic food, toxic pesticides are still in wide use. And since the world population is continuing to grow rapidly, Caplow explained, it's going to get worse. "As our city grows with new people and new buildings, it will place increasingly huge demands on the countryside for food, for power, and for water," he said to the crowd.

New York Sun Works estimates that there is enough roof space in NYC for roof gardens to supply all the food needs of New Yorkers. This is a bold statement, given that it takes an area the state of Wyoming to do so, but I'm impressed they did the math.

This barge is a metaphor for us and for the future of this planet," said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner. "We can float together, or we'll surely sink together."

It leaves me with a strong impression that a little creativity and entrepreneurial activity could see a network of roof gardens take root and flower.

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Elements of Hackability

WARNING: Conceptual abstracts about hackability lie within this post. Don't read further if that sort of stuff makes your head hurt.

Dan Hill is a guy who knows a lot about a lot. An interaction designer out of London, he spends his time at the intersections of the web, music, architecture, and digital media...with a bit of European football thrown in for good measure. He writes about it all very eloquently at City of Sound.

While researching what had been written so far about hackability and its application beyond technology, I was really impressed by a post he'd put together in 2006, exploring the concept of hackability through architecture and urban planning, in addition to product design. It really swims in the abstraction, but is a great read if you are into that sort of thing.

For brevity, here is his list of the qualities of adaptive design, which overlap how hackable environments would be created.

• Think of platforms, not solutions - overbuild infrastructure, underbuild features
• Build with an architecture of layers; enable fast layers to change rapidly (learning); slower layers enable stability
• Create seamful experiences, based around behaviour not aesthetics; often includes modular design
• Undesigned products, or rather not overdesigned; to invite the user in, to encourage evolution
• Define vocabularies, or basic patterns of interaction
• Leave space to evolve (if physical/spatial, build with modular shapes which can extend easily)
• Enable users to manage the at-hand information and interactions; the surface layers
• Create an aesthetic of ongoing process (this could engender trust)
• This process implies that the designer provides support, engagement over time etc.

Read the full post here.

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HIOW: Virtual Providence

I've never been much into Second Life and the other alternative worlds that have caught fire online of late. My current passion much more about how the web can support and enhance our pavement-level interactions, which often get short shrift to the virtual world. Last week at the Providence Geeks confab, I saw a project that brings those things together.

The folks at Eyegloo are working on recreating downtown Providence in Second Life, the most wide-ranging and immersive of the current 3-D online worlds. We saw some early versions of walking (and flying) around Providence, including the Biltmore, the completed Westin, and the Convention Center.

Why is this more than a parlor trick? A couple of reasons:

• Virtual Providence blends the virtual with the real, creating a parallel place where visitors and citizens can interact with not just the city that is, but the city that will be. Real interactions can cross that secondlife-streetlife barrier, initially to promote commerce - see, spec and build your new condo at Waterplace, by interacting with the architect and development company ! Visit the new restaurant on Federal Hill, browse the real menu, and have a virtual meal ! But if the City takes hold of this, you could imagine virtual town halls, online tours of alternative visions of the waterfront, or even rapidly developed school designs, based on feedback from a neighborhood or online meeting the night before.

• Which leads to the second compelling element of Virtual Providence, open source extensibility. Because Second Life has developed its own language for modeling and creating visual 3-d worlds, anyone could extend Virtual Providence. Summit Neighborhood Association, who are working on re-visioning North Main, could build a Virtual North Main based on the community vision of what could be. Providence Public Schools, Ai3 architects, and East Side Public Education Coalition could build a working version of the Nathan Bishop the community is demanding.

A few other points, one optimistic, the other troubling. Optimistic: the technology underlying Second Life has enormous promise to stand traditional community planning and visioning on its head. Although architects and planners would claim an iterative, collaborative process, the limitations of arranging public meetings, funneling feedback, and creating architectural renderings that are "professional" has forced a linear, filtered, overly mediated approach. A virtual world where you could build out, alter, or present multiple versions in a few hours or days in response to community feedback would blow up the process of community planning and development as we know it. These versions would be visually immersive, and much more evocative than the "perspectives" and "overlays" of today's architects and urban planners. The first city (and architect/planning firm !) to harness this effectively will dramatically alter how planning works with the public, for the better.

This brings up the troubling point: inclusiveness. Even though Virtual Providence is less of a fantasy geek's paradise than, say, Dracula's Castle (another Second Life "island"), it still is the purview of the young and the wired. Income and age continue to play an enormous role in the digital divide in Providence and around the country, and we continue to approach the challenge clumsily, with brute force solutions. An online community that narrows the social environment conversation even further will promote no interesting connections, and create no buy-in.

Here lies an opportunity. Our attempts to bridge the digital divide have focused single-mindedly on equal access and foundation skills: computers in libraries and schools, wireless for all, Windows training for seniors. Recent research in learning shows that learners, of any age, can be started out further up the scale of complexity than we previously thought, interacting with an interesting and exciting application rather than laboring on the underlying theory. Lets invest in facilitation of new groups into something like Virtual Providence - immigrants, seniors, working poor - giving them something exciting, visually compelling, and emotionally relevant. Sounds better than Excel skills anyday.

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Providence City News: Beth Charlebois, Neighborhood Park Services Director for Providence

From the series of City News interviews...

My City: Neighborhood Parks Services Director Beth Charlebois: “Neighbors should feel ownership, a sense of belonging and community, and happiness”

As the sun makes its way into town, more and more people are spending time outdoors. At lunch hour, downtown becomes a sprawling outdoor cafeteria where workers and tourists alike are enjoying the gifts that nature offers this time of year. For Beth Charlebois, the City’s director of neighborhood park services, it’s sights similar to these of neighbors enjoying the one hundred and twelve neighborhood parks all over Providence that inspire her work.

She meets up with City News at the Korean War Memorial on South Main Street and talks to us about why she believes park spaces help to bring people together.

What do you do as the director of neighborhood park services? What does your department do?

I’m in charge of the 112 neighborhood parks in the City of Providence, all the parks except for Roger Williams Park. I oversee an average of fifty-plus employees in the summertime. We also oversee the North Burial Ground for regular maintenance and special projects.

I also work with neighborhood groups, the Mayor’s office, and other city departments in trying to get constituents involved in neighborhood parks.

I’ve been in this position for three years. After a reorganization of the Parks Department took place, this position was created with that reorganization.

Our department deals a lot with groups. It’s very interesting because the issues are never the same. But it’s rewarding as we are doing more in-house projects throughout the neighborhoods.

Since you’ve been in the position, what changes have you seen or made in the last 3 years?

Part of the reorganization involved the crews. We have a crew that handles small parks, which are parks that are an acre and under, which then enables other crews to concentrate on bigger parks. Just by doing this, it has enabled the rotation of services to increase. It has helped to up the services, allowed us to respond more often, and the maintenance of parks has improved.

Projects that may have gone out to bid in the past are being handled in house, like planting bed work, as well as work on the playgrounds. It saves the city money and it gives us a chance to do something that makes a difference in how the space looks. That makes our parks workers feel good about it after and feel proud of what they’ve done. It gives workers a chance to do work outside of their ordinary scope.

What do you want neighbors and visitors to experience when they come to one of our neighborhood parks? What information would you like them to have that they might not know about?

I think park spaces are really important parts of the city, not only visually but also as community-building opportunities. I want neighbors to feel comfortable to utilize it, to feel safe, and to respect their spaces as part of their own. That’s what we try to build more with neighborhood groups.

What do you I want them to experience? To feel more ownership, a sense of belonging and community, and a good feeling, a sense of happiness. I want the parks to be places they can visit anytime and feel a part of.

Even though we maintain and clean the parks, it’s really for the neighbors. We try to work with them all the time. It doesn’t make sense to me to do something that the neighbors aren’t going to want.

Where do you see the future of the neighborhood parks going?

I see community building. I see the community coming back into these spaces more often – for example, through activities like the Arts, Culture and Tourism department scheduling concerts, functions, and special events in the neighborhood parks that bring people out.

We encourage neighborhood groups to be involved. Be our stewards – which could involve anything from calling us to inform us of graffiti, or organizing a neighborhood park clean up.

There was a time when people didn’t spend time in their neighborhood parks, but that’s turning around and shifting where people are meeting with each other in those parks. I see the parks becoming again a vital part of the community.

As the interview wraps up, I ask her if she knows which neighborhood park is the City’s oldest. She places a call to her colleague at the Parks Department, Bob McMahon, to confirm that downtown is the home to the oldest neighborhood park in Providence. Abbott Park, which predates Roger Williams Park completed in 1938, is nestled on the grounds of the Johnson & Wales campus. The newest neighborhood park, Clements Park, was completed in 2004 and is located on the corner of Clements and Dudley in South Providence. By the fall of next year, a nine-acre park on Alleppo Street in Olneyville will be completed.

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HIOW: OpenPlans for Community Organizing

The Open Planning Project, which had alpha-launched several months ago, looks like its getting to its next state of maturity with OpenPlans. Sort of a wiki for community planning and organizing, it offers some good tools for building community projects using online tools.

OpenPlans aims to transform social activism by providing tools that connect people and enable them to share ideas, stay organized, and act collectively to effect change.

Whether you are advocating for public space or working towards better schools, we hope you use OpenPlans to make your community a better place. Our tools help you create or contribute to web sites, share files, upload photos, manage mailing lists, and manage task lists.

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City News: Phil McKendall from La Prima Caffe

From the City News series of interviews...

Phil McKendall is no novice when it comes to the grueling hours it takes to run an 80-hour a week, nose-to-the-grindstone operation as a restaurateur. Before setting sights on the Broadway area of Providence, he made his way through some of the most exclusive kitchens in downtown.

But for the past five years, with the award-winning La Prima Caffe as his home base, Phil has quickly become an active neighbor in a thriving, upbeat Broadway Avenue business district. With an eye for 100% excellence, he talks to City News about the inner workings of his “small big business.”

How long have you been in business?

I’ve been in the restaurant business for 25 years. My older brother is a chef, graduated from Johnson and Wales in 1978. We opened up a family business called The Admiral’s Galley and I worked there in high school. When my brother retired, he took a job for the State, and I ran my own catering business after that called North End catering. I ran that for about 10 years in the 90s then I opened up La Prima in downtown on 96 Fountain Street for about 2 years.

I had to shelf La Prima from 1996 to 2001 while I became an executive chef for the Civic Center for 2 years then a captain at Capriccio’s after that. In November 2001, I opened up La Prima on Broadway.

What do you like most about doing business in this neighborhood? Why did you decide to set up shop on Broadway?

I fell in love with the location. I thought it was a nice scenic hot spot. I knew that it was going to be busy during the day. Nights would take some work. We started with an 18-seat restaurant and expanded to 40.

Is there a difference from when you were located downtown?

I think I was ahead of the curve. Back then it was kind of sparse downtown. You gotta’ really bring enough to survive. You have to be a small big business.

Okay so what do you specialize in?

We specialize in regional, continental Italian cuisine – anything from great sandwiches to hot and cold Tuscan salads, real nice pasta dishes – the whole gamut, the whole Italian experience.

In 2003, we were voted Best Pasta Fagolie by RI Monthly’s Best of.

What’s a fagolie?

It’s a pasta and bean dish.

And your personal favorites?

The tortellini di filippo with pink alfredo sauce. Nana’s meatballs. And I like the chicken franchaise and the fried calamari.

Were you always a good chef?

I thought I was very good until I started working at Capriccio’s! There are some big influences in my career – my brother Stephen, master chef Nino D’Orso, and Vincenzo Iemmo, the owner of Capriccio’s.

What makes your caffe unique?

It’s a blend of old time recipes and jazzy new flavors. It’s true authentic Italian food. I’m a purist in that way. And we mix in a jazzy atmosphere. I think it’s a good match. It makes for a good environment. Most people really enjoy it. I also feature different artists on the wall. We do art openings every couple of months.

What’s your philosophy as a business owner and chef?

You really never stop learning, but with a good foundation you really can expand. You commit everyday to being excellent all the time. As one of my (friends) used to say ‘you’re only as good as the last plate you serve.’ The everyday experience has to be 100% all good all the time.

It’s also a family effort. If everybody is working hard together, you usually get good results.

Since you’ve opened on Broadway five years ago, describe some of the changes you’ve seen in the neighborhood.

I’ve been an active neighbor. We want to improve the area and the neighborhood, not just for myself but for my customers as well so I stay active. With the help of Councilman Lombardi, Representative Costantino, at the time Senator Caprio, Representative Jabour, and of course Mayor Cicilline, we signed a petition to get a $200,000 seed grant for historic lighting on Broadway. I’ve also planted about 80 trees on the street and initiated a project for the Steel Yard cans to be placed on Broadway. So, I’ve been busy!

Why do you think these things are important?

Because the better the neighborhood gets, the better it is for the business owners, our customers, and the neighbors. I want it to be brighter and safer for everyone. Can you imagine when the historic lighting comes here; you’ll get to see how beautiful Broadway really is. We have some of the most beautiful houses in this street.

Where do you see the future of this neighborhood and your business going?

I’d be looking to grow in the future. I think Broadway’s future is very bright. Hopefully I can stay here for a long time.

To see Phil in action (and if you visit La Prima, you’ll probably be greeted by him at the front counter) the restaurant is located at 205 Broadway Avenue, or go to www.laprimacaffe.com.

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