Design Corps

SFI8 SPEAKERS

Panel II: political . art

Panelists
Dan Adams, Landing Studio (Cambridge, MA)
Amy Balkin, Invisible 5 (San Francisco, CA)
John Fetterman, Mayor (Braddock, PA)

Moderator
Lonni Tanner, Loeb Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Director, In Kindness

Daniel Adams operates 'Landing Studio', which is a design and planning practice that principally focuses on developing tactics for integrating active industries into their local contexts: 'landing'. He is actively working on projects with port facilities in Boston and New York. Since 2004, he has been engaged with landing large salt piles through such mediums as the design of shared industrial and public park infrastructure, light projections, festivals, museum exhibitions, tours, signage, neighborhood presentations, and industrial/community operations agreements. Since 2005 he has been studying the development of the salt industry around the world and locally as part of a traveling research fellowship with Harvard University. Currently, he is also a visiting design critic at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Invisible 5 is a collaboration between artists Amy Balkin, Tim Halbur, and Kim Stringfellow, and organizations Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, and Pond: Art, Activism & Ideas. Invisible 5 investigates the stories of people and communities fighting for environmental justice along the I-5 corridor, through oral histories, field recordings, found sound, recorded music, and archival audio documents. Invisible-5 tells the stories of communities tied together by the geopolitics of the I-5 corridor, and by their struggles for environmental justice along the route of California's major North-South highway.

The communities in the San Joaquin Valley along the I-5 are often hidden just out of sight of the freeway, where easy truck access moves toxic waste to landfills through small towns like Patterson, Kettleman City, or Buttonwillow. In the areas around San Francisco and Los Angeles, communities sit directly under or adjacent to the I-5, with homes, playgrounds, and schools just yards from the freeway. Invisible-5 examines the historic reasons why polluting industries and businesses are often sited near poor, rural and inner-city communities of color in California, through the oral histories of people fighting for environmental justice along the I-5.

John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and a core group of activists are serving in Allegheny County’s poorest community to re-energize a historically important steel town confronted with staggering decay and neglect. This group has implemented a number of projects in Braddock that fall within two broad categories: those focused on the community within, and those designed to attract from outside Braddock. Initiatives include activities and jobs for community youth, facilitation of urban homesteading through art and green practices including urban agriculture, and active opposition of the construction of a large toll road designed to run through the heart of town. This presentation will begin with a historical framework of the town and what has been left behind in the wake of it’s economic downturn. Focus will then turn towards elaborating on the projects underway and the intention behind focusing on small, targeted, grassroots projects as a means for development.

Lonni Tanner has 20+ years serving as "creative lightening rod" for companies, non-profits, and foundations. She has an uncanny ability to take "ugly" social problems and make them resonate in a brand new way. Her “fresh approach” to solving problems has earned Lonni and her projects a dozen awards, including a Lyndhurst Prize.

Her specialty is taking so called "lemons" - or social issues the world has grown weary of - such as persistently low reading scores, homeless families that can't get ahead, and the trailer cities of Katrina, and imbuing them with her own brand of “lemon-aid”. Lonni is responsible for creating The Library Initiative: 31 libraries designed by leading architects for New York City’s public elementary schools; Camp Bookaweek: a reading camp to ensure that failing kids don't fall further behind in the summer; Home-Aid: an affordable solution to outfit thousands of apartments for homeless families; a soup kitchen akin to a restaurant; a housing project that feels like a high-end hotel; a school playground turned into a slice of Central Park; and Emergency Cultural Vehicles to dispense everything from arts to sports programs to families living in the "instant neighborhoods," sprouting along the Gulf Coast following Katrina.

Lonni runs her own consulting practice based in New York City, called In Kindness, which helps non-profits, foundations, and companies think and act creatively to solve social problems. For 11 years, Lonni served as Director of Special Projects for the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City, where she amassed more than $50 million in cash, goods, and services on behalf of innovative poverty-fighting projects. She was Director of New York Shares, a division of New York Cares, which redistributed more than $1 million in used furniture and business equipment to 200 New York City charities. And she served as Vice President for Development during the launch of City Year, an action tank for national service.