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Description > Weekly Summary |
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Meeting 1 |
Introduction and Freedom Trail Walk The first session we began by sharing some of our favorite places and what we like about them. As we went around the table, we gave a variety of examples: the quiet of the movie theater, the activity and energy of Newbury Street, the view from the top of a tower. Some of us thought back to the countries from which we or our family came and others imagined places we have never been, but wished to be. After talking about our favorite places, we went to one of Tim's favorite Boston destinations: the North End. We played tourist for a while, following the Freedom Trail's red line like the thousands of other sightseers that come this way every year and made our way to the North End. Along the way, we paid some attention to the historical sites, but the point of the tour was simply to walk through the city and enjoy the chance to explore a unique neighborhood (not to mention to eat the cheesecake at Mike's Pastries).
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Meeting 2 |
Seeing the City Through Photography Just walking through the city doesn't always guarantee we'll see what's there. Sometime we need a reason to pay a little closer attention in order to catch what we otherwise might miss. Our workshop with a professional photographer, Debbie Scarff, gave some insights into how to take better photographs, and we used this as a way to explore our neighborhoods in new ways. When we finished, our photos demonstrated the kinds of things we notice when we slow down and take a closer look at what's around us. Description and Homework Exercises
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Meeting 2 |
Looking Beneath the City Surface While exploring the city with a camera is one way to heighten our awareness of our surroundings, another way is to walk around with someone who knows what to look for. The next several tours and workshops were meant to help us see the signs of change, to uncover those layers of history in the city landscape that we often wouldn't be able to see on a first glance. Much of that history is right under out feet, as we discovered on our tour with Boston By Foot. We looked down during much of our walk, following our guide's prompts to pay attention to the markings on stones in front of Faneuil Hall or the manholes on a back alley nearby. Our guide helped us understand Boston's role as an innovator in municipal sewage systems, subway construction, and electrical power. As we walked underneath the green mass of the Central Artery, we discussed Boston's unique physical history: how much of the land around the Shawmut Peninsula and into the Back Bay was filled in and how now the Big Dig project has dug out millions of tons to put the Central Artery underground. At the end of the tour, we left for our separate subway rides home with a new awareness of all that goes on beneath the surface to make a city livable above.
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Meeting 4 |
Listening to Stories of Community Change If our Boston Underground tour helped us imagine the layers of physical history below the surface, MYTOWN (Multicultural Youth Tour of What's Now) uncovered layers of cultural history often buried beneath other more popular official histories of Boston. On a cold, rainy Thursday our high school-aged tour guides told the story of the South End as experienced by people of color, working class residents, and immigrants. We learned of A. Philip Randolph's groundbreaking leadership on labor issues, the struggles of poor communities against early waves of urban renewal that served the interests of the wealthy rather than theirs. We visited the restaurants and jazz clubs where some early efforts at racial integration occurred, and saw the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. By the end, we came out wet and chilled, but with a much stronger sense of the hidden stories neighborhoods have to offer when someone takes time to tell them.
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Meeting 5 |
Discussion Session Today's session was a discussion break to catch our breath, a chance to look back at where we'd been and to glance ahead to where the next sessions would take us. Students brought their neighborhood photographs in to share, and we discussed how our photos represented the kinds of things we noticed as we slowed down and took a closer look at what was around us. Some students experimented with the techniques we had learned in the photography lesson earlier and paid attention to places in their neighborhoods that were changing. For example, Fiona made interesting observations about how we could tell whether a house had Chinese or American owners based on the kind of flowers and shrubs planted in the front yard and the cars parked out front. To view some of our pictures, visit the neighborhood photo gallery. After everyone had circulated around the room to see each other's photos, we began talking about how our neighborhoods were changing . In our discussion, we ranged across the four neighborhoods represented in the group—Quincy, Roxbury, Brookline, Allston. As a way to talk about what we thought was good about where we lived, we shared the "Best of" lists we compiled for homework, and the animated discussion that followed helped us get a little better sense of where each of us is from.
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Meeting 6 |
Caring for Nature in the City (Part 1) The next series of sessions were more hands-on in nature, giving us a chance to learn about the city by contributing to various projects working to protect the healthy parts of the city and to heal the damaged areas. Our first session with the Eagle Eye Institute in Somerville introduced us to the import role nature plays in making cities healthy and livable for all creature that inhabit them. After an introduction to trees, we chose to help out with a tree identification guide illustrated entirely by high school students. We spent the next two hours researching our chosen tree species and then sketching the tree components necessary for easy identification: leaves, branching patterns, silhouettes, fruit. We ended with a game that filled out our growing tree knowledge and gave us some terms with which to recognize the trees we would meet on our travels through the city.
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Meeting 7 |
Designing City Parks and Public Spaces Boston is in as unique position as the Big Dig will soon make a significant amount of open space available for a series of public spaces in Boston, and as our program was taking place, many people were trying to figure out what these spaces should look like. The "Beyond the Big Dig" Community Conversation we attended at English High in Jamaica Plain was a rare opportunity to experience the urban design process by giving our opinions and hearing other participants' views about how the corridor park should be developed. The format of the conversation was largely interactive and we were given the task of coming up with ideas as a group. We began by thinking of one positive experience we had had with urban spaces in the past, and then jotted down three or four passions we had about what should be in a park/public space to make it work. We created a master list on a large sheet of paper and then, when finished, we each placed dots next to the passions we felt were the most important. We used this prioritized list to guide the scenario-building exercise which took the remainder of the time. The idea we began with was simple: we want a space that would bring many different kinds of people together in ways that they wouldn't experience otherwise. We titled our scenario "The People Mixer: Simply Bringing Diverse People Together," and focused the space on a carousel which could attract children, their parents and grandparents, and young lovers, all in a common space that could be further programmed and activated by supporting structures and activities. The exercise helped us think about the role of parks in our lives and the importance for communities to invest in urban greenspaces that will continue to make the city livable for decades to come. "Beyond the Big Dig" Photographs: 1 • 2
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Meeting 8 |
Fighting Pollution and Protecting Our Health This week's meeting took us to Roxbury where the student volunteers and staff of Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) led us on what they called the "Toxic Tour" of Dudley Square, a experience meant help us understand the struggle for environmental justice in the city. On our way, we learned about the 1100 diesel buses from around the city park that find their way back to Roxbury daily, adding their exhaust to the buses carrying 30,000 people through Dudley station each day; the factory that let off fumes into the air and toxic run-off into the ground; the inferior quality of construction in low-income housing; the inordinate number of waste transfer sites in Roxbury (8 out of 9 for the city). However, while the tour and the discussion that accompanied it illustrated vividly how how neighborhoods of color often bear the burden of unjust environmental policies, it also inspired us with success stories of how youth-led activism can bring about tangible community change. We heard the testimonies of a student whose contribution to a scientific journal article led to changes in air quality legislation and to the construction of air quality monitoring station in the neighborhood; of students whose protests against the high rates of asthma caused by bus exhaust led to the relocation of a neighborhood bus lot; of students whose campaign successfully removed asbestos-laden debris that had been dumped illegally in an empty lot. The stories we heard with our ACE tour guides left us both shocked at the realities of continuing environmental racism in Boston and inspired by students who got to know their neighborhood well enough to fight for its health.
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Meeting 9 |
Caring for Nature in the City (Part 2) Our second meeting with the Eagle Eye Institute offered us a welcome chance to follow up on the issues raised in our previous tour with ACE. Sitting around a picnic table in Davis Square, we spent the first half of the meeting working through more tree identification exercises and becoming more familiar with the kinds of trees that make up Somerville's "urban forest." Since the Eagle Eye Institute focuses on exposing students of color to urban environmental issues, we spent the remainder of our time discussing our definitions of environmental justice and trying to imagine how these issues might inform the long-term educational and career decisions we make.
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Meeting 10 |
Growing Healthy Places Through Urban Farming
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Meeting 11 |
Final Project: Tour with Friends of the Public Garden Today we began our preparations for the program's final project,
a tour we gave of the Boston Common and Public Garden. To get us
started, we took a walk with Henry Lee, the president of Friends
of the Public Garden, an organization which assists the city of
Boston with planting, park cleanup, tree pruning and park education
on the grounds of the Common, the Public Garden and the Commonwealth
Avenue Mall. Henry knows the parks inside and out so this was a
opportunity for us to gather information from one who has spent
decades developing a deep sense of place in the heart of the city.
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Meeting 12 |
Final Project: Tour with a Boston Park Ranger Today's tour with Sergeant Lisa Marsh, a Park
Ranger from Boston
Parks and Recreation Department, added another important layer
to our understanding of these public spaces. She gave the perspective
of someone charged with caring for the parks on a daily basis and
she shared with us some of the challenges in keeping them safe and
healthy year round. She also gave us tips on give walking tours:
how to keep our notes organized, how to cope with nervousness, and
how to project our voices over the noise of the city. By the end
of the walk, we felt confident we learned enough that when our turn
came to give a tour, we would have plenty to say. |
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Meeting 13 |
Final Project: Final Preparations We spent our last meeting before the tour going over the notes
we had gatherer, deciding on what elements of the Common/Garden
to feature, mapping out a route to follow, and composing the talks
each of us would give during the tour. |
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June 23 |
Final Projects: Our Tour of the Boston Common/Public Garden! See the final project page to find out more about our tour.
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