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Healthy Environments Across Generations -- Unpaving Our Way to the Future: Creative Expressions
Imagine a world unpaved, where bicycling, walking and non-polluting public transportation options are primary features of our everyday lives--where plants and natural materials are an integral part of our homes, neighborhoods, schools, offices and businesses. What would it take to create communities that are no longer paved with concrete and asphalt, but instead are designed to nuture our health and well-being and that of our communities for generations to come?
As a part of the Healthy Environments Across Generations conference we invited creative artists of all ages and levels of experience to imagine how parking lots and other paved areas that cover so much of our landscapes,urban and rural, could be transformed into healthy, sustainable environments. Artistic submissions could include photography, poetry, essay, dance, music, painting, drama, etc.
Talk to Me
written for theHealthy Environments Across Generations Conference by Tina Lear
Listen to the MP3 recording
I’ve got the “2” from the “1,2,3”
You’ve got the “B” from the “A,B,C”
To work together for a better world
You’ve gotta talk to me, you’ve got to talk to me.
I got the stars, and you got the moon
You got the words, and I got the tune
To play together for a better world
You gotta talk to me.
I love the planet just the same as anybody else
But it looks like we’re headed straight to hell
The answer might be staring us, right in the face
Your face, my face…talking?
I got the shimmy, I can shuck and jive
You got the skills so that we can survive, but
do we know it means to be alive?
It means you talk to me.
So much wisdom, sittin’ here in this room
So much education and technique
The only way we’re gonna get through this gloom
Is if we open our mouths and speak
So tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine
We’re gonna make a world that is so divine
Our great grandchildren will be doin’ fine
Because you talked to me, because I talked to you
Because you walked with me, because I walked with you,
Because you danced around, just a little,
Because I danced around with you too
The world is gonna be just fine
Because you talked to me.
By Kyle Preish
Urbavore:
This “day-after-tomorrow” scenario depicts an afternoon in a self sustaining community. It shows how transitioning our public roads into productive food zones will decrease the reliance on the car while creating surpluses of high quality food. In addition, urban farming on public land will also increase civic pride, supplement a fractured farming industry, decrease water usage and waste, and beautify our urban zones. As population density increases and industrialized food supplies become increasingly detached from our culture, it will become imperative that communities produce their own food supplies. In order to increase food security for all demographics and ecological zones, resilient systems of farming need to be practiced by local communities.
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A Tree to a Building (PDF)
by Peter Berry
Ontario, Canada
Here Sir!
Know you my stature?
I know yours!
Solid state
you contemplate
with sharp angls and unbroken lines.
Fierce in a storm
a Titan at war
glory (or calamity) is born.
Your glean disguises your glitter
with broad stroked landscapes of glass.
Inside your walls
run secretive walls
whispering,
knowledge, commerce - life!
Delusions of grandeur
All!
But you must be kind to me
for my brawn is the stuff of your innards
I hold your soul together Sir
and give you the stength to sing
About the Author
Peter is a published author and poet. He also paints in oils and has had several paintings exhibited at the Art Gallery of Sudbury in Ontario. Married to a pianist, he enjoys writing and painting with his young children to explore the use of colour and light as a form of individual expression.
Born in southern Ontario and educated at the University of Toronto where he received his doctorate, Peter currently works at Health Canada on climate change and health issues.
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A Day In The Life
 In the video project, “A Day In The Life”, four older adults in San Francisco share the story of what “home” means to them. They filmed the main footage themselves with flipcams, and in their own words, recounted how they use their homes in their daily lives. The protagonist of the video is the “home” itself - how it is manipulated by the resident, how it affects the resident's lifestyle, and how the role of the home for the resident may have changed with age. Architects, designers, social service providers and government agencies shape the environments we grow old in. Their full creative energy could better support old age in inventive and mindful ways. The goal of this pilot project is to initiate discourse and stir up the creative community that resides in all disciplines. We want to innovate for allowing everybody to be “at home with growing old”.
This project is the beginning of an exploration of the daily life of older adults – from living independently to different forms of communal and assisted living – as well as an exploration of the views and attitudes of a diverse group of disciplines that shape their environments.
Project Team:
This pilot project was made possible with support from the Family Service Agency of San Francisco and is a joint effort between Susi Stadler, Stadler Architecture; Jarmin Yeh, doctoral student in medical sociology at the University of California San Francisco; Paige Hansen, video producer and editor. The pilot was contributed to the OneAway Campaign and can be seen at their website at:
http://www.oneaway.org/In-Your-State/California/A-Day-in-the-Life2
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Heirloom (PDF)
Brian Sonia-Wallace
Los Angeles, California
Dad always grew tomatoes
They were his pride and joy
So when the lady outside Home Depot
Offered me the box and said,
‘Do you have a garden?’
I didn’t say no, though I should have
I said, ‘We have a theatre…’
And somehow that was just as good.
It grows like a weed in Hollywood
In the cracks between Film and Industry
It was a grease monkey’s garage, then a shooting range
But only now
Can we call the people who run it clowns.
We put the tomatoes out
On the air conditioning supply unit
To try to add some poetry to that phrase.
Today is tomatoes in the parking lot
Tomorrow is white roof, filtered water, solar
panels, cycle racks, urban garden, green
building, public plaza, artist’s village
To build a cultural heritage for the city
I once heard described as ‘Hell’s parking lot’
Tomato by tomato
Because nobody dreams as hard as poets
And nobody works as hard as clowns.
About
Brian Sonia-Wallace is an artist living and working in Los Angeles after a lengthy sojourn studying sustainability in Scotland. This creative expression, the poem Heirloom, is about a project he is currently involved in that works toward the ‘green’ refurbishment and growth of Art/Works Theatre on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Heirloom is defined as a valued possession passed down through future generations, or a plant cultivar that is open-pollinated (non-commercial) and so has exhibits superior flavour and unusual coloration. The theatre may be considered an heirloom, in both senses.
This poem touches nearly all of the environments discussed in Unpaving Our Future, as the built environment of a green theatre is also a reflection of the environmental, cultural and economic realities of a city built on cars and film. The gift of tomatoes that sparked this poem was a gesture that had significance not only on the levels urban gardening and food, but also in a broader personal and cultural context as an expression of community and caring. This poem is about first steps toward a better world.
You can find more information on the artist and his projects at briansoniawallace.tumblr.com.
And more information about the projects at Art/Works Theatre at www.artworkstheatre.com.
Public Farm
By Kyle Preish
Paying the meter; it is a common practice when driving a car in any urban center. In an attempt to reduce automobile usage in urban zones and as a way to create productive zones from public land, metered parking spots and lots can be repurposed into “for rent” plots for gardening and farming. Because the infrastructure is already in place (meters, pay booths, etc.) and the divides are already drawn (painted stalls), parking lots are public gardens in waiting. Park some corn and carrots into that parking spot instead of the Camry.
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