Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

Think recycling is dull? A chore? It doesn’t have to be. Watch this little video about the Bottle Bank Arcade. I dare you not to smile while you’re watching it.

See? You smiled.

And did you already see this video about the piano stairs?

The “Fun Theory” competition (sponsored by Volkswagen) will award £2500 (about $4100) to the project that best demonstrates that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.”

You can take a look at other Fun Theory Award entries here.

These Fun Theory videos make me think about the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen next week. I can’t help but wonder what it’s going to take to change our individual and collective behavior to tackle global issues like climate change. Here’s an interesting article from last week’s New York Times that delves into the dilemma that people’s attitudes often don’t translate into action — which brings me back to the Fun Theory.

What do you think? Can the Fun Theory work on a meaningful scale? Can prize philanthropy (awarding money for innovative solutions to problems) tackle global problems? Should it? We’d like to know what you think.

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Michelle Knapik, Environment Program Director

Atlantic City was the site for last week’s New Jersey League of Municipalities annual conference and the inaugural Sustainable Jersey™ awards lunch, but it was through no stroke of luck that 34 towns achieved the first ever certification honors.   Of the 566 municipalities in the State, more than 240 municipalities enrolled in the Sustainable Jersey program during year-one and started engaging in 43 possible actions to acquire points toward their certification (100 points was the minimum for certification).  The newly certified towns are those that organized quickly to meet program challenges and head down the winning path of sustainability.   (more…)

Elaine Rastocky, Program Associate
with Barbara Fehrs and Laura Cuevas, Dodge Artist/Educator Fellows

Visual learning is the nature of art education, so for members of the Foundation’s Visual Artist/Educator Initiative, group activities such as the recent trip to Connecticut, Boston and Rhode Island spark excitement and renewed commitment to the creative process and to the teaching of art. Following is a travelogue from two of the fellows who participated in that trip:

Barbara Fehrs (Dodge Fellow, 1998)
The recent Dodge trip provided a forum for a great exchange of ideas pertaining to both the classroom and studio. The first stop was I-Park, an artist’s enclave in Connecticut. Hundreds of artists over the past several years, approximately seven at a time, have set up residence for a period of four weeks to focus on a project in the visual, performing or literary arts. The group toured the grounds where several environmental art works are currently installed. Lively discussions developed about the factors that are conducive to art production and this unique setting, with the current residents generously sharing their experiences about writing, composing, and making art while at I-Park.  Anne Dushanko-Dobek, a Dodge fellow and 2007 resident at I-Park, enriched the conversation with a first-person account of her residency.

Boston provided an opportunity to hear artist Fred Wilson discuss his approach to art making. His unorthodox exhibit Mining the Museum (1992) questioned how museums choose to display their collections. His installations continue to question established practices and have had a profound influence on museums worldwide. Boston also provided an opportunity to tour the Boston University School of Visual Arts with Director Lynne Allen. While art teachers are often called upon to counsel students about college programs and facilities, the Dodge Foundation is unique in providing valuable opportunities to gain insights into what specific programs universities have to offer.

Exchanges among teachers continued at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Since many of the teachers in the network have gotten to know one another through Dodge-sponsored workshops and activities, there are always lively discussions throughout the three days. Participants return to their classrooms and studios with new ideas for growth and to sustain their artistic excellence.

Laura Cuevas (Dodge Felllow, 1994)
As with all the Dodge gatherings I have experienced, I came away with a stronger sense of and connection to the role that the visual arts and arts education play in awakening or, in some cases, reawakening the psyche. As an inner-city educator in Newark, NJ, I see on a daily basis that artists, and more importantly art education, are positive venues for change, and as teachers we are the agents of that change. We assist in the development and growth of the individual; we help connect the being to the self, their environment, their home, their community and the world at large. Through this latest experience, I was reminded of a quote by Henry David Thoreau:

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, to affect the quality of the day – that is the highest of arts.

Perhaps that is how we begin to create sustainability.

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Images:

Group Photo, Dodge Visual Artist/Educator Fellows
“Blue Blossoms” at I-Park
Tunnel at I-Park
Boston University School of Visual Arts, Printmaking Facilities
Close-up: “Inner City” Exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum
“Inner City” Exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum
Student artwork at Boston University School of Visual Arts
“Strangers in a New Land” at I-Park

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Korea’s most prolific and revered living poet, Ko Un has led a life as impressive as his literary output: over 120 titles as a poet, essayist, novelist, editor, and literary critic.

Born during the Japanese occupation of Korea, when reading and writing his native tongue were outlawed, he had mastered the Chinese literary classics by the age of eight. During the Korean War, he survived the deaths of family, neighbors and his first love. Still in his teens, he was forced to work as a gravedigger, which included the gruesome task of carrying the corpses on his back up the hill to the graveyard.

He ran away and eventually joined a Buddhist monastery and became a monk. A decade later, he left monastic life and founded a charity school. In the 1970s he became a political activist, which led to his imprisonment in 1980. He spent many years as a political prisoner. It was while in an unlit cell that he began envisioning the massive Ten Thousand Lives, a sequence of poems with the intended goal of portraying every person he has ever met. Considered his masterpiece, fifteen volumes have been published so far.

But listening to him read with such energy and intensity at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, we hear no trace of bitterness. Despite the hardships he has endured, Ko Un’s poems are not full of lamentation or complaint, and they do not ask for retribution. Instead, they remind us it is foolish to ask for any more time than the time we have on earth, and point us, again and again, to the here and now.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Translations of Ko Un’s works in English include the poetry volumes Flowers of a Moment, The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems, Ten Thousand Lives, What?: 108 Korean Zen Poems, and The Sound of My Waves: Selected Poems by Ko Un.

Next week, Poetry Fridays will be on holiday hiatus.  Join us in the weeks ahead for readings by Linda Hogan, Brian Turner, and others.

Michelle Knapik, Environment Program Director

I’m not sure I’d pose this question quite this way in too many settings, but I’m at a gathering of funders who are working at the intersections of sustainable agriculture, food systems, smart growth and sustainable communities, so throwing around the KYF acronym is acceptable, but my hope is that the issue of whether you Know Your Farmer and Know Your Food (USDA’s outreach campaign ) is one that more and more foundations will help communities address. Currently, we are a nation comprised of predominantly KYF challenged people. When introducing the topic of food systems, the moderator of our first panel discussion, Gail Imig, Program Director at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation said “we’ve lost our way.” In fact, based on the cultural currency of industrial agriculture and commodity markets, funders and others have felt compelled to reintroduce the words “food” and “natural resources” because of the tenuous association.

I have to say that exploring the benefits and opportunities of re-regionalizing our food systems, including urban-rural linkages and the frontiers of urban farming, is no straight line assessment. It is about land use and preservation (No Farms, No Food), food production, “control of choice” in disinvested urban neighborhoods, food access, food justice, human health, green jobs, eco system services, climate change, community revitalization, local economies, and, dare I say, the future of our relationship to the land.

Finding our way to KYF-KYF seems to hinge on “the local integration of food systems” (a slight, but important distinction from pure local food production, which was highlighted by Dr. Mike Hamm, C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University).  Here’s a quick rundown on what local integration entails: farm to fork concepts (I learned that the “direct to consumer” food pathway has grown 100% in the last decade and is projected to be a $7 billion enterprise by 2012); farm to institution initiatives, including farm to school efforts (Dodge supports Fair Food Philly’s farm to institute program in the Greater Philadelphia region); fresh food financing initiatives (the Obama Administration is interested in seeing The Reinvestment Fund’s FFFI go national in scale); healthy corner store efforts; Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or, for the urban at heart, City Supported Agriculture; Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaigns; and the expansion of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) outreach efforts.  Carol Kramer LeBlanc, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Director of Sustainable Development, framed many of these strategies as “key ingredients to creating regional food systems and urban farms” (for policy geeks, just knowing that this position exists at USDA is the equivalent of comfort food).

The group of funders ended up talking about public policy strategies that touch on both supply and demand for regional foods. We heard about creative solutions and systems thinking in urban centers across the country (Detroit, Cleveland, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Newark, etc.), including the regional food system study from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (that Dodge supports) and the rise of Food Policy Councils that help communities distill various food interests and perspectives. What we face now, however, are the challenges of accelerating and scaling-up projects and programs for small and medium farms and food enterprises.

Kathryn Colasanti, an Academic Specialist at Michigan State University, helped us think about scale at several levels: 1) the household level (people building skills and saving on food costs); 2) the neighborhood/community level (skill building/entrepreneurial opportunities, plus opportunities to serve youth, formerly incarcerated, and/or other underserved or marginalized groups); and 3) the city level (reduction of blight and the cost of vacant lot maintenance, increased property values, and opportunities for downstream enterprises).

There are still a number of gaps to be filled in on this “going to scale” conversation, as well as a need for “improved economic research on the impact of regional food production,” but I was encouraged to hear about program innovations that point in this direction. Here are some highlights and links: the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network’s D-Town Farm (a 2 acre model urban farm with organic vegetable plots, two bee hives, a hoop house for year round food production, a composting operation, and market arrangements with urban growers in Detroit); the Detroit Garden Resource Program Collaborative (an aggregator of services such as seedling and transplant support, soil testing, tilling services, tool sharing, niche urban ag workshops, etc.); urban farmer collectives; growing season extension technologies; value-added enterprises; food distribution and storage solutions; and local policy initiatives like Cleveland’s “garden zoning” and ordinances that address livestock in the urban core.

As these food system pieces come together, regions will increase their “food production potential,” and we might even see the rise of “Agri Food Districts” in some older industrial cities (depending upon the assemblage of large numbers of vacant lots). But before we once again “lose our way” in the seduction of yield per urban acre or food bucks per urban acre, let’s remember that this exploration started with the notion of reconnecting people with farmers and food. To that end, I point you to the work of the Community Food Security Coalition and their recently published Whole Measures for Community Food Systems. I think this work will help many of us “find our way” to important people, land and food connections. Hey, if the DIY (do it yourself) minded folks spurred a home renovation revolution and market, I bet a KYF generation can spur a regional foods revolution and help build strong local economies. Are you a KYFer?