Projects

Local Projects

Youth Activism Design Institute

Partner Organization:
Boston Youth Organizing Project

Project Description:
YADI will invite youth organizers to play with a wide variety of inspirations, tools and approaches to their work, including game design design, large scale art, public festivals, and more. We will explore how these concepts can build opportunities for them to work and play together while designing campaigns that are compelling and engaging to a wide audience.

Collaborators:
Najma Nazy’at, Executive Director, Boston Youth Organizing Project
Collaborating organizations: Reflect and Strengthen, Project Hip Hop, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth), and the Cambridge Kids’ Council’s Youth Involvement Subcommittee.

National Projects

Cultural Commons Project

Partner Organizations:
Tomales Bay Institute
Project South

Project Description:
We believe strengthening the cultural commons is an essential piece of ensuring the health and vitality of communities, yet this piece is often overlooked in agendas for community and economic development. The Cultural Commons Project seeks to better understand the existence of cultural commons in three specific regions of Hawaii, New Mexico, and New Orleans and the Delta. We are also working to showcase the power and possibility of the cultural commons at the United States Social Forum in Atlanta in June 2007.

Collaborators:

Vicky Takamine, Kumu Hula and President of 'Ilio'ulaokalani Coalition

Bob Agres, Executive Director, Hawaii Alliance on Community Based Economic Development (HACBED)

Albino Garcia, Jr., spiritual healer
and Albino Garcia, Sr, Executive Director, La Placita Institute

Advisors:

Lewis Hyde, This former MacArthur Foundation fellow and author of
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property is currently working
on a follow-up book investigating the commons

Dr. Mindy Fullilove, Root Shock Institute Community Research Group

New Organizational Forms Research Project

Partner Organization:
Building Movement in(to) the Nonprofit Sector, Demos

Project Description:
With our main research partner, Building Movement in(to) the Nonprofit Sector, we will conduct an action research investigation of the kind of organizational structures needed to strengthen and amplify the emergence of movement in the US. We will also explore forms already at play in other contexts with vibrant movement formation and activity.

Collaborator:

Francis Kunreuther, Director, Building Movement in(to) the Nonprofit Sector, Demos