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Storybook Farm: Secret Garden

This garden has been built with hundreds of hands, big and small, across the communities of Storybook:

University and diverse community volunteers, children of all ages, caretakers, retired military, and the amazing gentlemen from Alabama Power. As Co-Director of the Design Team Mobile Studio along with my partner Daniel Neil, we have framed the landscape transformation as a community-based planning, design, building and growing project.

The seed of the garden came from a student on the Committee of 19, Allie, who dreamt of growing fresh healthy food here, for the Storybook family and beyond, raising awareness about global hunger issues and local food insecurity. Talented local builders including Fleming Blackburn, Jesse Dallas, Sage Construction, and Robert of Fix It Auburn, and the tireless efforts of Andrew to coordinate teams of volunteers, have shaped this magical site as you see it today.

The vision is to extend the therapeutic programs and moments of Storybook here, offering a place of respite, of healing, of the delights in the bounties, and living processes of the Garden.

We are pleased to share with you the result of the first six months of planning design and construction, and I’d like to take just a moment to tell you about what is ahead. Please picture in one corner, a pizza oven, here a demonstration backyard compost, a seed starting shelter/green house, an arching entry to the Secret Garden. And in the middle- a protected bench, birdbath, and fruit tree. The next phase includes a fully accessible outdoor classroom with bathroom, storage, and teaching-kitchen.

Over time, with the guidance folks such as: Tia Gonzalez of Auburn’s Medicinal Plant Garden, Jimmy Wright of the Wright’s Market in Opelika, King Braswell and Donna of Blooming Colors, and many more hands, this garden will grow to provide healthy produce, flowers and herbs, stories, and memories while enabling informal and formal gatherings, rest and respite, and special occasion (such as the annual Derby Party).

Your gift today will help Storybook extend their role as a place where peace and hope grow. We hope to see you back in the fall for a pizza oven workshop and/or to read to children in the garden, or to harvest a first tomato, or host a garden soiree.

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Mobile Studio SF: Comfort Women Memorial

With Grandma Lee

Many memorials honor the courage, bravery, and sacrifice of soldiers during wartime.     Few, if any, honor women. This memorial is in honor of the 300,000+ women and young girls from Korea, China, the Philippines, and other countries of Japanese occupation, who suffered human trafficking and sexual slavery as ‘Comfort Women’ by the Japanese Imperial Military during World War II. Their violent exploitation and abuse was a crime of war, and their courage to speak out has changed the Human Rights and Justice landscape around the world forever.

In San Francisco, the “Comfort Women’ Justice Coalition,” led by the indomitable, retired Judges, Julie Tang and Lillian Sing (seen above with Grandmother Lee) has written a resolution, now approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors, to build a Memorial to the ‘Comfort Women’ in this capital city of freedom. Mobile Studio, as project managers, will be running an international design competition and call for artists proposals. The competition, which will be launched in the upcoming weeks, seeks visions for the selected site in St. Mary’s Square Park that address the desire to honor and remember those who have suffered, to commemorate their courage and bravery, to inspire a commitment to truth telling, and to fighting for the safety and equality of women and children around the world.

Memory, Dialogue, Peace and Reconciliation, Transformation, Resistance and Justice. The memorial will offer a place for community members and visitors to remember, grieve, learn, find peace, and commit themselves to human rights. The work of bringing justice to the Japanese Government regarding this violation of human rights is yet unfinished. Denialism is not acceptable. Token gestures are not enough. All nations that profit from denialism are implicit. This addition of public art into the City of San Francisco at the crossroads of Chinatown and the Financial District will serve as a touchstone of memory, a beacon of hope, and a call to action for years to come.

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MADE IN MACON COOKOUT: A DELICIOUS CONVERGENCE

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Saturday, January 31st 2015, Mobile Studio hosted a Local Foods, Local Places grant kick-off meeting and winter picnic at the Macon County Food Pantry, in partnership with Tuskegee Youth Safe Haven, the Macon County Minister’s Council, Tuskegee Housing Authority, Tusk-Mac Community Development Corporation, and the Carver Integrative Sustainability Center. The meeting brought together a diverse group of community members already engaged in work related to food security and health in the region. Strengthening the capacity of the food pantry to feed people and transform lives, the Made in Macon, Homegrown in Tuskegee Proposal invests in the food pantry as a critical food hub. Mobile Studio’s proposal includes a Co-Op Kitchen & Design Lab, Community Garden & Teaching and Learning Workshops, and Mobile Market & Food Truck. Civic Leaders such as SEED (Students for Education and Economic Development), TULIP, (Tuskegee Unified Leadership and Innovation Program), and Farmscape Solutions underscored the importance of these initiatives to create sustainable, green, and creative economic development opportunities.

Preparation for the Winter Picnic began Wednesday morning at the Macon County Farmers Market in beautiful downtown Tuskegee. A day of visiting local farms across Macon yielded the bounty and inspiration for the meal. Mobile Studio served up a vegetarian and meaty version of West African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup and Cornbread Cornucopia inspired by Dr. George Washington Carver. The meal featured produce from across the county including cabbage, kale, collard greens, and sweet potatoes from Hooks Produce in Shorter, pecans and yogurt from Pecan Point Farm near Creek Stand, hibiscus, tumeric, ginger and honey for Sunbright Organic’s Happy Heart Tea, as well as leeks, green onion and turnips from their hoop houses. With the help of our most amazing studio partners, Gabriella Arevalo and Rachel McGraw, we fed about 65 people throughout the deliciously sunny afternoon. A truly amazing convergence took place around this comprehensive food systems initiative and savory winter meal, as film makers and musicians from Chicago shared stories with blueberry goddesses and snack shack sweeties from Tuskegee, well-water drinkers traded tales with the Vietnamese spring roll artist, and the radical justice activists and Auburn’s philanthropists brainstormed the future.

For More Information on the Local Foods Local Places Grant and the community partners and farmers mentioned above, please see:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/03/local-food-local-places-bringing-expertise-and-creative-thinking-community-economic-

http://www.seedincorporated.com/index.htm

http://www.farmscapesolutions.com

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/al/about/?cid=nrcs141p2_022971

http://www.sunbrightorganics.com

http://pecanpointfarm.com

http://www.tuskegee.edu/about_us/outreach/farmers_market.aspx

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MOBILE STUDIO: LOCAL FOODS, LOCAL PLACES with TUSKEGEE PARTNERS!

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Mobile Studio’s proposal “Made in Macon, Homegrown in Tuskegee,” just won a technical assistance grant called Local Foods, Local Places from the White House Rural Council. The collaborative project will work with local partners of the Macon County Food Pantry to create a community kitchen & garden business incubator, and local fresh food truck system. Tuskegee was one of twenty-six communities selected to participate in the Local Foods, Local Places Initiative.

Local Foods, Local Places is a Federal Creative Economic Development Program funded jointly by the EPA, the USDA, The DOT, CDC, ARC and DRA. “Made in Macon, Homegrown in Tuskegee” uses the Mobile Studio methodology to foster meaningful dialogue and advance design solutions to develop an implementable plan for promoting local foods, enhancing the downtown Farmers Market and main streets, and extending access to healthy foods through civic infrastructure in Tuskegee, Alabama and the surrounding region.

Mobile Studio is honored and delighted to partner with Dr. Raymon Shange at Tuskegee University Carver Integrative Sustainability Center and Tony Haygood with the Tuskegee-Macon Community Development Corporation. Shange brings an expertise in sustainable soil and water systems, and directs student outreach organizations focused on food security and community gardens. Haygood and the CDC work with local contractors and businesses to connect professionals, students, and community members through on-the-ground project development and educational workshops. Please contact us if you are interested in being a part of this unique entrepreneurial collaboration focused on community food health and celebration.

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Birmingham X Birmingham: Design Journey

This short film is a spark to ignite the Birmingham, Alabama/ Birmingham, England trans-Atlantic design exchange through Mobile Studio’s: Station to Station platform. These two cities share an intertwined history of industrial power, and manufacturing capability, as well as a commitment to renewing these traditions by design in the 21st century.

The film explores the role of creative industries in urban place making and regeneration. The goal is to connect community transformation projects and interested citizens with the universities and businesses that create a route for talent into work in our city and region, to create and enhance quality of life. This is a matter of expanding access, overturning barriers, inviting dialogue, and celebrating innovative achievements.

Design Week Birmingham of Alabama http://dwbhm.com/, meets Birmingham Made Me of the Midlands, UK, http://birmingham-made-me.org/, and through collaboration and co-creation, aims to expand the network of participants and opportunities.

 

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Dakota Dreamin’ is Live!

The Dakota is a new model neighborhood that will bring the best of Auburn’s local slow craft qualities together in a unique community setting. Featuring a riverside performing arts stage, native plant rescue nursery, harvest gardens, and wildcrafted galleries, the Dakota is a place you’ll want to stay past sunset.  Mobile Studio partnered with Developer and Custom Builder, Michael Murray, in fall 2013 to dream a bright future for the Dakota. Led by Professor Jocelyn Zanzot, Master of Landscape Architecture, students explored the potential of the Dakota as a sustainable and aesthetic neighborhood from the macro-scale of the 78-acre site within its urban context to the micro-scale of the home garden. The collaborations featured in this short film will be cultivated  and extended this spring as we build the first phases of this delightful neighborhood in north Auburn, between the city and the Saugahatchee!