Guest Artist: Ava Bromberg (participant, Eyebeam’s College of Tactical Culture): Urban Planning PhD candidate at UCLA.
Workshop Description: Students will learn about how cities get made, what they’re for, and how public space gets made from a policy perspective. Students will then consider spaces familiar to them, how they might transform those spaces for creative or civic engagement.
Critical Frameworks: Urban research, creative intervention, personal perspectives, built environment, public / private space
Resources: The social life of small urban spaces – 10-min excerpt here:
• Ava’s websites:
www.justspaces.org
www.inthefield.info
www.messhall.org
Ava's face lights up as she begins to talk about urban planning
Ava Bromberg doesn’t play around when it comes to Urban Planning. You can tell by the way her face lights up when she begins to speak about what exactly it is.
The second day of DDC began with a quick icebreaker. The question: “Why did you choose to do DDC, and where do you reside”, the latter most important to Ava. Today’s activities were designed by Ava to help educate us on urban research, creative intervention, personal perspectives, built environment, and most importantly public vs. private space.
Ava keeps track of our thoughts on the board
The most provocative section of the day’s activities was our discussion on public vs. private space. We, along with the help of Ava, created an extensive list of all the places we visited on a daily basis, or were important to us. Some examples would be the library, school, the Internet, and so on. Then we decided, in a discussion, whether to an extent was each public, private, or social. We had a stimulating conversation on what exactly it meant to be a public space or social space.
Our list kept growing
Throughout the discussion, however, we came across some questions that none of us could answer. Also, we entered new discussions based on thoughts from previous discussions. Ava color-coded the map we made at our discussion, and almost ran out of colors to use, if it wasn’t for the carousel of markers Stephanie brought in for the day. There were so many classifications made today based on the shades of grey in between public, private, and social.
Bucket of Markers Stephanie Provided
Overall, the discussion we had was exhilarating, and really made us think about what exactly classifies a place as public, private, or social.
Following the discussion, we tried our best to watch a short film, although it seemed as if the color was ebbing into the wall due to the sunlight sitting on the projection. The film was a ten-minute teaser of “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”. It was a mix of environmental psychology and urban studies, created by William Whyte. The film showed us how people interact in urban spaces, and at times was hilarious.
We tried our best to watch a film
Afterwards, Ava talked us through some of the various projects she has worked on, using a slide show. She also showed us other projects deemed compelling. They were all projects presented in the public space, designed to get the inhabitants interacting. Examples of these projects would be a moveable, butterfly-shaped “café”, that provided tea and pillows to the community. Another would be giant murals painted on intersections with the help of the community.
Our Discussion
At the end of the workshop, we discussed what we learned, and what stuck out for us. Ava also asked us what we liked about the day’s activities, and what we would change. Everyone was extremely polite, and enjoyed the workshop.
We thought it was marvelous, and couldn’t have been better, minus the sitting in chairs the entire time with the exception of a fifteen-minute break.
We must, however, along with everyone else in DDC, commend Ava for her wonderful effort and charisma, which made the second session of DDC a success!
We all enjoyed today's activities
Pictures and Blog Post by Luther Cherry and Siena Larris
Digital Day Camp '09 