Design & Build

In this digital story I have put into practice what I've learned through the Digital Storytelling course. I've made it a first person narrative, and taken the story from my last post and gone into greater and more personal detail. I've embedded a YouTube video using html code at the end, with an audio narrative that explains the beginning of the project. 

In this YouTube video with audio you'll see the seeds of Design & Build as the two Principals of the schools that share the building describe their vision for the Green Roof and Playground

The principals in the video invited me to be part of the school community to take the lead in helping them with these projects. I helped them develop a joint vision to improve the school environment, and to involve the kids, parents, staff and school community. I have a small Brooklyn based business that does this type of participatory planning. 

I helped them develop a common vision for environmental improvements that included a green playground, food gardens, fresh drinking water and more fresh fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria, a green roof farm, and bathroom improvements indoors. I helped them raise funding for all these improvements and together with the kids involved the community in the design and building of them all.

As these projects progressed my daughter took a lead role in them, and as the middle school expanded to include a 1st grade my daughter was just old enough and she is in most of the photographs throughout the story. 

I will add some articles to the blog that show what was going on in the school community right before they asked for this environmental improvement and planning help. Conflict and tension had been exacerbated by media accounts, where the media narrative was "newcomers vs. long timers" and "black vs white" in the two schools represented by these two principals. These joint environmental improvements have healed some of those wounds and made people more aware that both schools are racially and culturally diverse and committed to improving the environment. 

The photographs and architectural designs in the digital story are all my work (with participatory input from the kids and adults involved)