Class Description
Where are our gathering spaces? How has the urban grid isolated us? What are ways we can combat it? How do we reclaim public space? The City Repair Project has been asking these questions for the past 20 years and through active place making via community art, gardens, and installations, we can re-design our neighborhoods to be sustainable in social and earth care. Come learn some successful strategies to transform public spaces from car-centric to people-centric, accelerate culture change within public agencies, and effective community building tools for continuing change. This presentation will provide a dazzling spectrum of real world tools for building participatory culture and manifesting lasting change through physical interventions, while also presenting powerful ideas for building resiliency while also addressing the negative effects of gentrification. Bring your own ideas, you may leave this presentation ready to activate your neighborhood!
Instructor Bio
Priti Shah is a community focused eco-activist with a diverse background in environmental chemistry, permaculture, youth farm-based education and reclaiming traditional place-based livelihoods. Priti has spent a good chunk of her service career focuses on rural development and reforestation in the tropics: Hawai’i, India, and Costa Rica before coming up to the Pacific Northwest. While serving as numerous roles at City Repair, Priti also teaches garden education at a shelter for families overcoming domestic abuse, and is very active in social justice movements including Don’t Shoot PDX, Anti-Colonialism PDX, and more. Priti is excited to help manage and build capacity within City Repair and aid the vision of peaceful, progressive urban development and social reform.