Also, check out more video interviews from the M@L Story Project and leave a comment on our new academically enhanced version of the M@L Story documentary entitled Sustained City-Campus Engagement: Reflections on Our Practice on our MIT TechTV collection at http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/mitatlawrence.
If you like these videos, you’ll also like videos from our friends at the Community Innovator’s Lab (Co-Lab) focusing on how communities like Lawrence and departments at MIT can work together to solve the challenges of civic engagement, environmental sustainability, and economic development in the time of crisis and stimulus. Check them out on TechTV and CoLab Radio - a place to find out about innovative things happening in communities, to explore the relationship between communities and universities.
The Lawrence History Center’s exhibit, Made in America~ Story of Southwick-Union Crossing~People Place, Product will open on June 18th, 2009 at the Lawrence Heritage State Park (One Jackson St, Lawrence, MA), featuring oral history interviews and research done by Lawrence Community Works staff and youth members, and MIT@Lawrence practicum students in Spring 2009.
The exhibit tracks the 100 year history of the Union Crossing site - from manufacturing textiles, shoes and clothing, to creating this vibrant new Lawrence community. Focusing ont eh themes of “People, Place, Product”, the exhibit highlights transformations that took place in the complex and celebrates the spirit of community present throughout the site’s history.
Check out this video of the final presentation to the Lawrence Community WorksUnion Crossing Committee, describing programs devised by the graduate and undergraduate students in the Spring 2009 Lawrence practicum course in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning (11.423 LAWRENCE PRACTICUM: Info, Assets, and the Immigrant City). The presentation described three ideas for programs where LCW could incorporate storytelling as a process for community building around the re-development of a mill complex into green affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization - through channels such as on-site installation, skill-building workshops that feed into larger events, and virtual story documentation and sharing online on a social network.
Have you heard the MIT@Lawrence story lately? Join us for an on-campus screening of the M@L Story Project documentary this Friday May 1st, in the Bush Room of Building 10 at 1:30pm.
The partnership between MIT and the City of Lawrence has grown from a commitment made between the Dept. of Urban Studies & Planning and Lawrence CommunityWorks in 2002 to today’s thriving network of 29 departments, labs and centers at MIT and 27 partner organizations in Lawrence. This year’s initiatives, a mix of new ideas and ongoing projects, include: a practicum course focused on incorporating storytelling as a community-building tool for the nation’s first LEED Platinum certified mill redevelopment project; a strategic city-wide affordable housing plan; a GIS help desk and laboratory; a college prep program for low performing high school freshmen; and a spatial inventory of publicly-owned infrastructure gathered by iHouse undergraduate volunteers. With support from the Co-Lab, we’ve also spent the last year strengthening our student-run management strategy and incorporating collaborative approaches to reflect on our practice and learning.
Earlier this week, we had over fifty attendees at our end-of-year celebration expo in Lawrence where we screened our new documentary and interactive timeline (see http://mitatlawrence.net/matl-story-project/). Special thanks to the hard work of all the guest speakers (including Milagro Grullón and James Barnes from the City of Lawrence Community Development Department, Jess Andors from LCW, and MIT’s own Ezra Glenn and Lorlene Hoyt), old and new partners, the hard-working research assistants, and the sounds of the Bruce Ferrera Quartet who made the night a great success!
Next year, we look forward to welcoming the incoming MCPs and PhDs we recruited and integrating them into such projects as a Lawrence-based green jobs working group and the Lawrence@MIT youth math and science program.
We’ve just updated the list of research from M@L graduate assistants and friends, including new research on green jobs, regional economic growth in Merrimack Valley, and career and technical education in our new Class Papers or Projects section. Also, check out the extensive new curriculum for networking college bound high school students, developed for the Lawrence Leadership Project in Spring 2009 and the notes from the first year of the Green Jobs Working Group.
If you like these videos, you’ll also like videos from our friends at the Community Innovator’s Lab (Co-Lab) focusing on how communities like Lawrence and departments at MIT can work together to solve the challenges of civic engagement, environmental sustainability, and economic development in the time of crisis and stimulus. Check them out on TechTV and CoLab Radio - a place to find out about innovative things happening in communities, to explore the relationship between communities and universities.
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