Architecture for Humanity Responding to Myanmar Cyclone Disaster

Architecture for Humanity has decided to respond to the Cyclone Nargis that hit the heart of Myanmar (Burma), where government figures have reported 15,000 dead but reports claim it is now 22,000. Currently, more than a million people are displaced, and in the coming weeks many will be moved into makeshift tents and lean-toos.

If they are going to get involved and make local impact they will need to raise a minimum of $10,000 for an assessment team or a local team with international support. At that point they will see if they can help in the transitional and long-term phase.

If you care about what is happening and you have $10 or more to spare, please donate via the link below:

http://www.cooleremail.net/users/csinclair/2006FullList_Myanmar.html

Jazz Is Life Community Dialogue: Innovation & the Art of Future Building

Tuesday, May 20, 6:30 PM — Japan Society, New York
Thursday, May 22, 6:30 PM — Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans

Innovation, improvisation and collaboration are critical ingredients for recovery. New approaches to problem-solving in Japan and the United States are helping people envision a better future, whether it’s a community coping with natural disaster or an individual rebounding from homelessness. These symposia explore the art of recovery from a range of different perspectives, keying off of conversations with members of the U.S.-Japan Innovators Network, including Rosanne Haggerty, founder of the supportive housing non-profit Common Ground Community, Kohei Nishiyama, CEO of design-to-order company elephant design, Marty Ashby, Executive Producer of MCG Jazz, and Jay Weigel, Executive/Artistic Director for the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

Co-organized with MCG Jazz, Contemporary Arts Center, The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

Followed by a reception.

Tickets: (May 20 only, New York): $10/$8 Japan Society members/$5 students & seniors. Order tickets online at www.japansociety.org/ or call the Japan Society box office, Mon-Fri, 11 am to 6 pm, Weekends, 11 am to 5 pm, (212) 715-1258. A $3 service charge is added to all orders. Member ID number required for member ticket purchase. No refunds or exchanges. Programs subject to change.

Tickets: (May 22 only, New Orleans): Free Admission. For more information, please call the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, (504) 528-3805, or visit www.cacno.org/.

Jazz Is Life Concert to Benefit Homeless

The U.S.-Japan Innovators Network is pleased to announce Common Ground’s first annual Jazz Is Life Concert to Benefit Homeless, which will be held on April 18, 2008, at the Prince George Ballroom in New York City. Featuring Nancy Wilson and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, this event is a collaborative effort between IN participants Rosanne Haggerty, founder of Common Ground, and Marty Ashby, Executive Producer of MCG Jazz, who began discussing this event as they headed to Narita Airport after the Innovators Network retreat (IN)SIGHT: Bridging Gaps.

For tickets please visit http://www.commonground.com/

Social Entrepreneur Bill Strickland Speaks at Japan Society

LECTURE SUMMARY
Changemakers: Make the Impossible Possible
February 27, 2008

SPEAKER
Bill Strickland, President and CEO, Manchester Bidwell Corporation; author, Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary

MODERATOR
Nana Watanabe, photographer and author, Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurs are Making a Difference and Changemakers II: Working as a Social Entrepreneur

Armed with his trusty slide show and 30 years of experience as a leading social entrepreneur, Bill Strickland shared his inspirational story to a packed house at Japan Society on Wednesday, February 27. The program began with an introduction by award-winning photographer and author Nana Watanabe, whose serendipitous meeting with a punk rocker-turned-social entrepreneur earlier in her career motivated her to seek out and publicize the efforts made by social entrepreneurs. Inspired by her successful first book, Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurs are Making the Difference, Japan Society invited her to photograph participants in the U.S.-Japan Innovators Network retreat in San Francisco in June 2006, where she met Bill. Deeply moved and impressed by Bill’s work, Nana profiled Bill in her most recent book Changemakers: Working as a Social Entrepreneur.

After being introduced and invited to the podium, Bill, a man standing around six feet-five inches tall and whose presence commands attention, began his presentation much like every other presentation he has given: with a joke. He has one presentation and he knows it and openly jokes about it. He says he feels sorry for those who have chosen to listen to it yet again, but deep down you know what he’s about to talk about is no joke. It’s this disarming and charming attitude that puts an audience at ease and allows his powerful message to reach the hearts and souls of people every day.

Bill began his slide show by describing his organization, the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, and the numerous job training and community arts programs they provide to disadvantaged children and adults. Inspired and, as Bill puts it, “saved” by his high school art teacher, Bill knew from the time he entered the University of Pittsburgh as a probationary student that he wanted to transform the lives of the people in his neighborhood. He knew that the first step in achieving his goal was to build a center worthy of the people he wanted to help. It would have to be a beautiful structure with tons of natural light, beautiful displays of artwork, flowers and a huge fountain in front of the building, because according to Bill, “When you put people in a world-class facility, you create world-class people. When you put them in prisons, you get prisoners.” This was his first step in killing the “spiritual cancer” infecting the poor people living in the ghetto. As a result, he had a student of world-renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright design and build his center, which as we all found out, became the scale model for the Pittsburgh Airport.

The second ingredient of Manchester Bidwell’s recipe for success is the cutting-edge education people receive. Not only are students given a sense of the possibilities, but also a sense of control over their lives through music and arts programs. Additionally adults are learning trades such as pharmacology, culinary arts, and horticulture that can be applied to finding jobs that Manchester Bidwell has smartly identified as hard to fill by corporations in the greater Pittsburgh area. Connecting music and ceramics with pharmacology might seem like an odd paring, however Bill’s ability to see opportunities where others might only see obstacles allowed him obtain funding and expand Manchester Bidwell to the point where it is today. His relationship with the late Senator John Heinz brought his center a million dollar kitchen and top-notch culinary arts program, and contacts with Hewlett-Packard birthed a state-of-the-art computer lab and visual arts program.

After expounding Manchester Bidwell’s philosophy of light and beauty as a way to lift people out of poverty, Bill explained his new goal: 100 centers in the United States and 100 around the rest of the globe. Centers have already been built in San Francisco, Cincinnati and Grand Rapids, MI, and new centers in places like Philadelphia and New Orleans are in the planning stages. Internationally, Bill was recently in Israel and sat down with Jews and Arabs where they discussed a plan for a new center that would target a diverse group of Jewish and Arab children and adults as well as immigrants to Israel from Russia, Ethiopia and around the world. Conversations about building centers have also begun in Ireland, South Africa, San Paulo and Costa Rica

Bill wants his book Make the Impossible Possible to be a source of inspiration and guiding light for people without hope. He wants a number one book for the media attention and financial backing that a best selling book can bring to help him communicate his message all over the world.

The lecture was followed by a Q&A session, reception and book signings by Bill and Nana.

[photos by Satoru Ishikawa]

Upcoming Event - Lecture: Changemakers: Make the Impossible Possible

Wednesday, February 27
6:30 pm
Japan Society (333 East 47th Street, New York, NY)

Over the past 30 years, Bill Strickland, a leading American social entrepreneur, has been transforming the lives of thousands of people through jobs training center and community arts programs at Manchester Bidwell. He and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and build a better future. Keying off his new book, Make the Impossible Possible (January 2008, Currency/Doubleday), Mr. Strickland, a master storyteller, shares his inspirational story from growing up in a Pittsburgh ghetto to running a nationally-recognized organization that successfully balances social action, artistic creativity and entrepreneurial acumen. More recently he has worked with the Society’s U.S.-Japan Innovators Network, a multidisciplinary network of innovative leaders committed to creating a better world. Nana Watanabe, an award-winning photographer and author of Changemakers II: Working as a Social Entrepreneur (in Japanese), which includes Mr. Strickland, will preside. Followed by a reception and book signing.

Tickets $10/$8 Japan Society members/$5 students & seniors
Purchase Tickets at www.japansociety.org

Kyoto 2007: Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion

RETREAT & PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM
Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion
November 4-10, 2007
Kyoto, Japan

PARTICIPANTS
Ruth J. Abram, President, Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Ayako Fujii, President, Environmental Co-op Union, Shiga; & President, Nanohana Project Network
Jeanne Giordano, Urban Design Consultant, Jeanne Giordano Ltd.
Taneo Kato, Secretary General, Asahi Beer Arts Foundation & Executive Director, Yokohama City Arts Promotion Foundation
Keito Kohara, Producer, artcomplex group
Limbon, architect and Professor, Urban Planning, College of Social Sciences,
Ritsumeikan University
Rick Lowe, artist and Founder, Project Row Houses
Osamu Maebashi, President & CEO, M.crew INC.
Tomohiko Okabe, Director, Funnybee Co. Ltd. & CEO, Okabe Tomohiko Design Studio
Villy Wang, President & CEO, BAYCAT

***

Kyoto, a city of 1.5 million people and Japan’s traditional seat of culture, faces challenges familiar to many American cities. At the top of the list are the revival of downtown commercial districts and the inclusion of economically depressed “outsider” groups.

So it was natural that Japan Society’s U.S.-Japan Innovators Network should hold a two-day retreat in Kyoto, bringing together architects, urban planners, and leaders in culture and civil society from the United States and Japan to share ideas on urban revitalization, social inclusion, the role of arts and culture in stimulating local economies.

The two-day retreat, Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion, was held in collaboration with the Keikan Machizukuri Center in Kyoto, and was followed by a public symposium where American participants discussed their work in revitalizing communities in the United States.

The retreat and symposium were inspired by ideas that arose from the U.S.-Japan Innovators Network’s second retreat, (IN)SIGHT: Bridging Gaps (Tokyo 2007), and recommendations made to Japan Society during its third retreat, The Next Phase: Innovators Network (IN).

The Kyoto retreat began with a walking tour through the Kamo River area, with some emphasis on Higashisanjo, a predominately burakumin (a Japanese social minority group) neighborhood, and the Kiyamachi entertainment district, a historically popular entertainment area that has deteriorated.

This provided participants with a first hand look at some of the ongoing issues—commercial and entertainment revitalization, education, crime and beautification—related to the revitalization of depressed communities in Kyoto. The walking tour was followed by a day and a half at the Kyoto Keikan Machizukuri Center intensely discussing each others’ experiences, successes, and ongoing challenges in four sessions:

• The Economics of Community Revitalization - Once commercial activity dies in a community, how do you revive it? And once you’ve revived it, how do you make it sustainable, while making sure the original community does not get chased out as a result of over-gentrification?
• Community Inclusion: Working with “Outsider Groups” - Whether working with low-income minority communities in San Francisco or Houston, or NEET (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training) and people at the bottom of the social pyramid in Japan, the challenge is the same: How to give the dispossessed a voice and a vested interest in the larger community.
• The Role of Arts & Culture in Community Renewal - A strong magnet for cultural communities is important for the health of all urban areas. Strong cultural communities attract people, tourism, new businesses and business investment.
• Financing Community Innovation - Whether in Japan or the United States, obtaining financing is a constant challenge for entrepreneurs, both social and business, working in community revitalization.

Each session featured two participants presenting his or her ideas, challenges,
and/or successes on the subject at hand, followed by extensive dialogue among all the participants. From these discussions we uncovered a number of important steps for community revitalization and some poignant observations:

• Important Steps to Community Revitalization/Innovation:

• Change negative perceptions/mind-set.
Break the emotional barrier.
• Use the media to get the word out.
Tell your story to people all over the world.
• Build partnerships to increase social network.
Create greater opportunities for outreach and support.
• Create new or strengthen fading values.
Foster a community that cares and wants to be involved.

• Interesting Observations:

• “Outsiders” are not bound by the status quo, bring fresh perspectives, and can affect change.
Invite outsiders to be involved in the design process.
• Economic hard times can increase opportunity in community revitalization/innovation.
People are more willing to try new, riskier ideas when things look bleak. The freedom to make mistakes, learn from them, and try new and daring things are critical.

During the final wrap-up session a number of people voiced their desire to continue discussions and collaborate with each other. Discussions started in Kyoto are continuing:

• Jeanne Giordano and Limbon are interested in forming an urban development “swat team” to create a
revitalization blue print for Kyoto.
• Tomohiko Okabe and Villy Wang, representing organizations that have successfully used the video arts, are
interested in deepening their relationship to build more effective means for using the media to empower people and change negative perceptions.
• Taneo Kato is interested in collaborating with BAYCAT and is interested in the Tenement Museum’s
unique business structure.
• Limbon, Ruth Abram, Jeanne Giordano, Katsuhide Takagi, Manager of the Department of Preservation, Kyoto Keikan Machizukuri Center, and Japan Society staff will meet in January 2008 to discuss future collaboration on historic preservation and community revitalization.

For more on Upcoming Events and Innovators’ News, visit the Innovators Network website: http://innovators.japansociety.org/

Upcoming Events

IN JAPAN:

In collaboration with the Kyoto Keikan Machizukuri Center and The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Japan Society is hosting a two-day retreat and a symposium in Kyoto:

Private Retreat: Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion
November 6-7

Symposium: Invigorating Communities: Learning from Four Successful Initiatives in the United States
November 8
By Invitation Only

Learn more about the two-day retreat and symposium in Kyoto.

IN THE U.S.:

OFF SITE EVENT
November 29, 2007
6-8pm

The New School
Conference Room 510
66 West 12th Street

Beyond Web 2.0: How the Next Tech Revolution will Change the World

Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka, Professor at Tama University in Tokyo, and President of Thinktank SophiaBank, has authored numerous books on the philosophy of working, management theory, business strategy, the Internet revolution and knowledge society, as well as paradigm shifts in human society. A specialist in complexity systems, Dr. Tasaka will explore how next technology revolution will further empower the individual, blending the monetary and voluntary economies to create a new system of Capitalism. Dr. Tasaka will also discuss ways in which technology will help build bridges between the U.S. and Japan, as well as among countries in Asia in the emerging post-knowledge society. Reception to follow.

Introduction by Professor Eiko Ikegami, Professor of Sociology, The New School for Social Research

FREE ADMISSION. This event is free on first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited. For registration, please go to www.imaginingglobalasia.org

For further information, please call (267)266-0209

Co-organizer: The New School/ imagining global asia

群集のエネルギーを電気に変換する「Crowd Farm」という試み

マサチューセッツ工科大学建築学科の大学院生２人が「Crowd Farm」というコンセプトで、群集が歩いたり、走ったりするときに発生する機械的なエネルギーを電気に変換するという試みを提案し、ホルシム財団持続奨励賞を受賞した。（ホルシム社は世界有すのセメント会社）「Crowd Farm」を訳すのは難しい。「群集農場」？？？意訳して「群集発電」か。人間の一歩は６０ワットの電球を一秒つけるくらいのエネルギーを発するそうだ。人が多く集まるコンサートや駅に取り入れれば、かなりのエネルギーを生み出す。ベネチア・ビエンナーレやイタリアのトリノ駅構内でも実験が行われたこの「Crowd Farm」の群集エネルギー変換法とは→人が多く歩く場所（例えば駅の構内）の床下にブロックを積み重ねたできたもう一つの床下をつくる→人が上を歩くと床下のブロックが動き、熱対流運動による発電作用 を生み出す→人が歩いたときのエネルギーが電気に還元されるというのが大雑把な仕組みらしい。通勤ラッシュが大変な東京のような街で実用化するのが最適かもしれない。 

Wisdom From Tokyo

“I predict that the 21st century will be most effected by a new breed of something we have not seen yet, which is a new form of chapter based organization.  Institutions always need to be blown up every once in a while, because even with the best intentions and the great people, new things, you just need ‘new’ to be effective.  There’s going to be a whole new breed of organizations like this.”
-Scott Heiferman

When I first heard these words I was taking notes as a relatively new member of the Japan Society staff.  Japan Society’s U.S.-Japan Innovators Project was holding its second major retreat in Tokyo and it was my job to capture the overall experience, i.e. atmosphere and important ideas, of the three-day event.  Needless to say I was very nervous and anxious to take on one of my first big tasks on the job.  I listened and typed and tried my best to record what I could; however, after the retreat I realized nothing really sunk in.  There was no time for me to mull over the information that flowed into my ears, through my fingers and onto the screen in front of me.  Now, almost six months later I finally got a chance to sit down and go over my notes and transcripts for a purely personal look at what I may have missed.  Let me tell you that after re-reading those notes I realized that the wisdom that came out of that retreat was incredible, and I’d like to share some of it with you.

Below is a list of some of my favorite quotes that came out of that retreat, in no particular order:

• “The high cost of the status quo, well basically what I keep writing down in my notes is SQ > C.  Status Quo is costlier than a change.  Now that’s a huge idea.”
  -Dan Pink
• “You know, I’ve kind of figured out how to go from the bandstand to the board room and make it swing.  I kind of figured out a way to improvise through that and think of the balance sheet as a set of changes, and never lose that ability say, ‘Why?’  Why do we have to do it that way?  Can’t we have some fun with it and play with it?  At the end of the year it’s going to be the same numbers.  Why don’t we do it this way?  And so we’ve been able to kind of improvise our way through it, and still have fun, and keep it going.  I mean, that’s the point, is that without the fun part and the play, oh my goodness, I never could deal with these arts administrators and stuff.”
  -Marty Ashby
• “Start off with the assumption that people are assets, not liabilities, and treat them that way and you will see extraordinary things happen.”
  -Bill Strickland
• “What we need to do is to create these cycles, and allow innovation to be adaptive and not recreated, because we’re wasting so much money in international reconstruction trying to reinvent the same solutions to similar problems.”
  -Cameron Sinclair
• “Knowledge that can be expressed by word is available to anyone; therefore that knowledge is losing its value.  However, it has become more important for us to have the tacit wisdom that cannot be expressed by words; for example, intuition, insight, imagination and creativity.”
  -Hiroshi Tasaka
• “I call it innovation acupuncture. The idea is that if you want to create large change, don’t do massive projects and expect a society or a culture to come with you. You have to do these small, little interventions and you put one in and you see if that thing spreads. That little pin makes a huge difference. If it doesn’t that’s okay, we’ll put another pin in. And we’ll keep going until those pins eventually make you feel better.” 
  -Cameron Sinclair
• “Money is the raw material of politics. And politics is either the raw material of change or preserving the status quo.”
  -Ann Rutledge
• “I am rich in terms of life, which I believe actually has more value, ultimately. I am not personally wealthy.  But that is precisely – that actually gives me an advantage. Because when I’m able to talk with young people, particularly students and my staff, I’m able to say that I am not doing this because I am driven by wealth in the conventional monetary sense. I’m driven by a higher order of things that is more in the range of what this Japan-America conversation is all about. I believe at the end of the day, at the last day of your life, you only have your memories. You can’t take the money with you. So the question becomes to make sure that you have memories that reflect a quality experience and reverence for life.”
  -Bill Strickland
• “We need to examine is what we believe about homelessness and other social challenges…If we think that homelessness is about altruism, then we are comfortable with gestures like giving people money, handing out a bowl of soup. That’s something that makes us feel better. It doesn’t change the situation of someone who’s homeless.”
  -Rosanne Haggerty
• “I’m here to contend that sooner or later, it does not come down to money.  Sooner or later, it comes down to people. And you can call me some sort of a hippie freak if you’d like.”
  -Scott Heiferman

P.S. - Check out the August 2, 2007 New York Times’ article Design Steps Up in Disaster’s Wake, by Allison Arieff.  The article highlights the struggle of a woman trying to rebuild her and her family’s life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and how Architecture for Humanity came to her aid.

TEDGlobalのビデオで印象に残った話し

カリフォルニアのモントレーで年に一度開催されるTED Conference。TEDはTechnology Entertainment Designの頭文字で、それぞれの分野で知名度の高い人々が集まってスピーチを行い、意見交換をする。招待されなければ、参加費は数千ドルというこのTED。でも既に2008年の会合のチケットは売り切れ！ＴＥＤはモントレー以外でも、TEDGlobalといって米国外での会合が2年に一度開かれている。（ちなみにイノベーターズ・ネットワークの一員、キャメロン・シンクレアは2006年にTED賞を受賞。同賞は毎年、世界をより良くしていくためのアイディアや影響力を持っている個人に贈られる。）さて今年のTEDGlobalは6月にアフリカで行われた。その中で紹介したいのが、家に電気がなかったために手製の風力発電機を作って家に取り付けた１４才のマラウィの男の子の話。彼の名前はウィリアム・カムクワンバ。今は１９才。英語だが彼の話が聞けるリンクはこちら。彼の夢はもっと大きな風力発電機を取り付けて、村全体のための灌漑施設を作り、学校に戻ること。会合で彼の話を聞き、今では多くの助けの手が彼の下に差し伸べられているという。最近ウィリアムはブログも始めたので、今後の成長を追うことが出来る。