User Groups: Douglas Park, Santa Monica

In Winter 2008 I took a Site Planning course and wrote a 35 page Site Analysis of a 10 block area of Santa Monica along Wilshire Blvd. The report includes a lynch analysis, maps of perceived and actual zoning, architectural typologies, historic landmarks, a Sanborn map as well as suggested design interventions. The following images of user activities and movement patterns are from the section on Douglas Park. (Click on image to enlarge). Click here: (http://abreports.blogspot.com/) to view the complete Douglas Park chapter. Please email me if you would like a PDF of the entire Site Analysis document.

Arts Education in Richmond: Creating Cities Project

From 2003-2005 I worked for The Richmond Art Center, in Richmond California, and ran an arts education program in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. Additionally, I taught art as an Artist-in-Residence at several of the schools. I designed a curriculum that integrated arts learning with themes of identity, culture, and community. For one of the projects, a class of 4th graders at Grant Elementary created a model city. Each student made a house, apartment, or commercial building from paper. Together they placed the buildings in a grid and added trees, streets, traffic signs, and other elements of their choosing. They discussed what they liked and disliked about Richmond and used these ideas to collectively create a set of rules and concepts for their model town.

Community History and Social Change in South Berkeley

In 2005 I worked with Dona Graves, a public artist and historian, on her research project Community + History: Francis Albrier and Social Change in South Berkeley. The project celebrated the contributions of Francis Albrier, the granddaughter of a former slave who moved to Berkeley in 1920 and, for over sixty years, was a civil rights activist. Dona created an interpretive plaque for the Berkeley Public Art program, and organized a community celebration and memory gathering event. Additionally, Dona and I cowrote and taught curriculum about social change and neighborhood history to middle school students at Longfellow School.

The City of Berkeley highlighted the project on it's website