Ornamentation and Life in the City

Eliza Squibb: Shipibo Textiles

With Las Madres de Ashé de Cantagallo we are applying to the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.

http://www.folkartmarket.org/category/videos/

The most important lesson I have learned during my grant period is that it is my research moves along much better if there is a way for me to align my own interests in culture and art with the greater interests of the group.

No one is interesting in sitting around an answering a researcher’s questions. That was the first lesson I learned.

I am not interested in simply buying crafts and then disappearing, as most visitors have done before me.

How do we reconcile these conflicting desires? I want to learn about craft and culture, and las Madres want access to a broader market for their art and to learn new textile techniques.

So far, we have come up with two solutions:

The first was the needle felting workshops, where I provided tools and enough materials to teach and begin experimenting and developing new products on which las Madres could express their traditional patterns. Essentially my position changed from “researcher” to simply “fellow artisan”, and this was a lot more comfortable for everyone, myself included. The workshops are a continuing event, and each time we set up the materials and work on projects together, joined by whichever madres are free at the time.

The second is the application to the market which takes place every July in New Mexico. I don’t know what our chances are of getting accepted, or getting financial assistance, which would be crucial since we aren’t supported by an organization… But if I learned anything at art school, it was how to apply for scholarships! The application in an interesting activity for us to do together because not only is it a chance to gain a new venue for Shipibo art, but we must answer extensive questions about the culture and history; the same kinds of questions that I would want to ask for my research.

So, we have started taking pictures of different forms of traditional art each time I go to Cantagallo, and having discussions with different artisans about their work.

Yesterday I met with Diana Ancón Rodriguez, a member of Las Madres de Ashé, and her husband Fernando, who live in the upper level of Cantagallo and specialize in making beaded bracelets and pecheras, a necklace/chest ornament that are a traditional part of Shipibo adornment. In Shipibo culture, beauty is synonymous with adornment, and therefore coronas (headresses), pecheras, bracelets, earrings, pampanillas (skirts), cushmas (tunics), and historically body paintings with huito oil, are all an important part of being a beautiful Shipibo man or woman.

In the “Testimony of a Shipibo Woman”, Koshi Shinanya Ainbo describes the Shipibo aesthetic of feminine beauty:

Metsá ainbo

Shipibo ainbobo iresbiresi metsáyamai. Iti jake boo nenké, rapanistani; ikaxhbi jan metsati joaikaya riki non raoti. Jain non saweai sha atibo, jonxhe. Jaskarakaya riki metsá ainbo. Wetsabiresma iki metsá en oina. Jawe kopíma noa raotaoma yakataxh noa metsáma iki, tson noa metsá ayamai. Ja kopíra noa iti jake westíora metsá ainbo inoxh raotia. Jati jake min tononon ati, min keshá ati, paronoti, koribo, mia maxhen bekenetai, mia nanen bexhtetai, mia nanen taxhtetai, mia wikenetai; ja riki metsá ainbo. Noa jawebi raoyamai, noa iamai jawenki noa metsáti iki.

La mujer bella

La mujer shipiba no es bella así nomás. Tiene que tener el cabello largo, ser algo delgada; entonces con lo que viene a ser hermosa es con nuestros adornos. Nos ponemos campanillas de semillas en la pampanilla para que suenen con los movimientos, pulseras y tobilleras. Así es una mujer bonita. Yo creo que cualquiera no es bonita. Si no estamos sentadas con nuestros adornos no somos bonitas, nadie nos dice que somos hermosas. Por eso, para ser una mujer bella, debemos ponernos los adornos. Debes tener tus sonajas de la cintura, tu adorno de la pampanilla, corona, aretes, adornos labiales, te diseñas la cara con achiote, te pintas la frente con huito, te pintas los pies con huito, te diseñas la pierna; ésa es una mujer bella. Si no nos adornamos no hay nada que nos haga lucir bellas.

The Beautiful Woman

The Shipibo woman is not beautiful just like that. She must have long hair, she must be slim, and then she will be beautiful with all of her adorments. We put seeds around the edges of our skirts so that it makes noise with all of our movements, we wear anklets and bracelets. That is how a beautiful woman is. I don’t believe that just any woman can be beautiful. If we are just sitting without all our adornments then we are not beautiful, and no one tells us we are good looking. For that reason, to be a beautiful women, we must put on our adornments. We must wear our beaded belts, our decorated skirts, our headdresses, earrings, lip ornaments, and paint decorations on our faces, foreheads, feet and legs with huito. This is how a woman is beautiful. If we are not adorned, there is nothing to make us look beautiful.

Life in the city of Lima is very different from the Shipibo homeland on the Ucayali river however. Although the artisans of Cantagallo still have their traditional clothing and adornments, it is difficult to go out in the bustling streets of the city dressed as a beautiful Shipibo. At best, it’s a bit awkward, and at worst, everyone I talked to mentioned incidents of discrimination. Cesar Maynas Bardeles, a practitioner of traditional medicine in Cantagallo, talked to me about how people of the community have to live dual lives, maintaining and protecting their heritage, language and customs, as well as conforming to modern mestizo ways of dress and city life.

Fidelia Franco Ahuanari, Cesar’s wife and a member of Las Madres de Ashé, works on her embroidery in her house.

Cesar works on two paintings commissioned by a restaurant.

Cesar works on his computer

Cesar and his son Alesandro put on their traditional cushmas and coronas for a picture.

A traditional beaded corona with seed pod fringe, and hair/feathers from a garza, some kind of animal/bird from the jungle…

We played dress up to get pictures of the pecheras in their traditional use, and both Diana and Luz Franco Ahuanari were practically rolling on the ground laughing as they got all their traditional ornamentation in place. They managed to put on serious expressions for the camera however, but broke out in giggles every few seconds.

Señora Diana Ancón Rodriguez

Señora Luz Franco Ahuanari

We photographed an inventory of the jewelry they were working on. Because it’s hard to sell these relatively expensive, time consuming works on the street, they only make them on commission. Often their commissions come from teachers who need traditional costumes for dance performances, or family members who work as shamans in Iquitos and sell pecheras to tourists.

Different pechera patterns have different metaphorical meanings, such as “the union of the family”, but in general the kené patterns represent all elements of the Shipibo world: rivers, forests, animals, life, death, and the union and balance between all these elements. Different parts of the patterns have names and significance: the zig-zags around the edge represent piranha teeth, and other parts represent a turtle head, trees, and rivers.

Fernando shows how the fringe decorations are cut out of an aluminum pot lid and hammered into a convex shape.

Fernando, Diana and Luz show how the pecheras are put together from beads. (Diana and Luz are both almost collapsed with laughter because Luz is posing as if she’s making one)

Needle-felting Workshop in Cantagallo

(Catch up post from Eliza Squibb: Shipibo Textiles)

“Why could no one come to this meeting?”

I wondered out loud to Señora Luz during my second “official” meeting with Las Madres de Ashé. Ostensibly the meeting had been their idea to get everyone together and have a further discussion (about whether or not they wanted to deal with this gringa researcher), but no one had showed up..

“You know, las mamitas are difficult, if it’s cold, no one wants to go out even if a meeting has been planned… But, on the other hand, if there’s something interesting going on, everyone will just show up of their own accord, you don’t even have to tell them to come!”

Ok, I got the hint. What’s the plan of action to get this research moving? Make something interesting happen! And fast! Luckily, I already had a plan in the works due to some quick brainstorming after my first meeting with las Madres. They seemed very interested in learning new techniques, and I managed to come up with the idea of a needle-felting workshop because it is one of the more portable textile techniques (i.e. no loom or knitting machine required). The more I thought about it, the better it seemed: needle-felting involves adding fiber to a base cloth, in the same way that the embroidery needle also adds material, yet it has a freedom of movement that can be painterly or expressionistic. In that way, needle felting seemed like a technique that could be a middle ground between the techniques already used by Shipibo artisans: painting and embroidery. In addition to that, the women could use the technique to put their traditional designs on a wide range of fabric types to make new products for Lima’s climate. I proposed the idea and it was met with great excitement. Even better, I managed to find all the necessary materials in the nearby wholesale market, although needle felting is still relatively unknown in Peru: perfect timing for Shipibo needle felting to land! (My research for this involved going to a hobby fair at the national museum last Saturday, wandering around, and making tacky crafts with a couple hundred middle-aged ladies…there weren’t any needle felting workshops..)

So I arrived in Cantagallo Monday afternoon, as fully prepared as I could possibly be with a brand new tool box full of needle-felting tools, brushes, replacement needles, sheep and alpaca wool, different kinds of fabric, and a list of the prices of everything and the business cards of each store where materials could be found.

We set up in the meeting room, and sure enough, people wandered by, poked their heads in, and joined the workshop. Certainly not because we had put up posters a few days before! I never pictured myself as a teacher, not to mention leading a workshop, but that’s the best thing about artists: You don’t have to explain anything to them, just make a lot of materials available, and they are already on their way! In fact, I barely needed to demonstrate how the needle-felting tool was held and already these talented artisans were manipulating the new materials with ease, tracing out their patterns, and needle felting like pros.Women wandered in and out of the workshop, on their way to or from buying fish, sometimes rushing back to their houses to grab a different material to experiment with. A little girl named Belén came in with her mother, and was asked by all to sing us songs while we worked. Very quickly she decided she wanted to needle felt too, and although the tool is filled with very sharp needles, it seemed like a safe enough toy for a five year old, right?Belén sings to Señora Luz.  At the end of the workshop, Belén asked me what day I would be coming back, I answered that I didn’t know, and it could be which ever day. She said “I want you to come every day!”, which made me feel like the workshop was a complete success. In fact, everyone agreed that we should meet at the same time the very next day to continue the workshop.

Zoila, Belén’s mother shows off her first experiment.Sylvia,  Nemia and Fidelia concentrate on making complex kené patterns.

Señora Luz works on her pattern, with Nemia in the background.

When heading to the workshop the next day, I thought to grab a handful of printer paper and a box of crayons just before leaving the house. So, when a whole group of roaming, curious children showed up at the workshop in the afternoon, nine year olds carrying their baby siblings, I was prepared. The felting workshop turned into a card making workshop as they all made drawings and letters for their mothers, sharing well, and yelling to each other “who has the green?” “give me the brown!” “hey! the baby dropped the blue on the floor!”. They would show me what they were working on periodically, pointing out who had copied their drawing of mountains and houses. Most cards featured big red hearts and rainbow lettering “te amo mamita“. Once they had used up all the paper, they picked up the crayons, picked up their siblings, and trooped off in search of the next activity.

Trip to Gamarra in search of materials

Eliza Squibb : Shipibo textiles

I needed to find materials for the needle felting workshop I had planned with the artisans of Cantagallo, and in Lima, there’s one place to go to get textile materials: Gamarra. A large area of pedestrian-only blocks dedicated to clothes, fabrics, materials, and a whole lot of other stuff, Gamarra is located in La Victoria district, a dangerous part of Lima’s risky downtown area. I asked a contact for advice and she gave me very specific directions for navigating this neighborhood:

 “It’s best to go in the morning when there are less people. Wear workout clothes, sneakers, nothing that would attract attention like a watch, expensive earrings or cell phone. Hold your money in a secure location, and wear an empty backpack to carry what you buy. Walk only on the well-transited streets and never go into a place that is more removed from the action. There are a lot of “jaladores”, people who will ask you if you need anything, ignore them, because they will take you to another place or drive you crazy. It’s better to ask where to find things inside of a shop. Good luck!”

I followed these directions to the letter. From my neighborhood, I took the electric train for the first time: For a full five minutes, I enjoyed a peaceful, fast, efficient means of transportation that took me straight from San Borja to Gamarra, traveling at about roof-top level over the packed and confusing highways. It was such a strange feeling not to be stuck in traffic, not to hear car horns blaring, I wouldn’t have minded riding around to enjoy it longer, but it was already time to descend back into the crowded streets and start my Gamarra adventure.

As with so many places that I’ve been on this trip, I was dying to take pictures the whole time, but I’ve definitely given up on carrying my camera around with me. I would miss it too much if it got stolen, and I’ve gotten used to leaving the house with only a small amount of money and my cheap cell phone in my front pockets only. So, I stole some pictures off the internet to provide a visual.

The sights and smells were both overwhelming and tantalizing. Each step brought a new smell of food or, sometimes, garbage. The first thing I bought was some kind of cookie made entirely of slivered coconut. To wash that down, I bought was a cup of warm “maca”, kind of like diluted peanut butter, and according to the sign it was good for my brain, my stress, my anemia, my lungs, my tuberculosis, the malnutrition of my children, the decalcification of my bones, my menopause, my infertility, my sexual impotence, my hormones, and my rickets….(The internet is telling me that this powdered Andean root is what helped the Inca’s carry rocks up to Machu Picchu). My cup of maca came topped with a sprinkle of bee pollen and molasses, and while I drank it, I could observe what was going on in the rest of the shop, where powdered maca was sold as well as fruit smoothies made with quinoa. I watched a man methodically take live frogs out of an aquarium, peel their skin off, and place them in a glass measuring pitcher where they continued squirming in a transparent pile. Would they also be ingredients in a smoothie? I left to continue my mission before I could even begin to contemplate the medicinal benefits of that…

After asking where to find wool in a few shops, I found myself on the block of medicinal plants. Piles of cactus, fruits, herbs, and stacks of mysterious bottles lined both sides of the side walk. A few tables sold what looked like very recently killed snakes. I swear I saw a bottle labeled “Dolphin Love Milk” or maybe it was “Milk of Dolphin Love”. Some objects were so mysterious, I had no idea if I was supposed to eat them, wear them, burn them, or hang them up in my house to ward off evil spirits. Foods included every kind of fried/grilled fishes, meats, potatoes, corn, plantains, clams. Vendors had boxes strapped to their chest selling hard boiled quail eggs on toothpicks. There were enormous slices of papaya, pineapple and watermelon, and also, people walked around selling slices of cake off of huge platters, as well as ice cream cones that never seemed to melt (it looks like it’s whipped cream, not frozen?). I saw a few women on street corners selling small green parrots. If I started to feel my energy flagging, I was quick to treat myself to a fresh fruit juice and continue my search.

The next block over was filled with shops of traditional costumes, masks made of mesh, wool, and leather with glass eyes, props, and everything needed for traditional dance outfits: sequins, braids, beads, bells, feathers, buttons, and powdered dye. There were ikat scarves from Cajamarca for the marinera dance, ponchos, and woven blankets from Cusco at a fraction of the price that they are sold for in the Miraflores artisan markets. Some costume skirts were so packed with embroidery that they were more solid than cardboard and cost 500 soles. 

I felt sure that in this textile heaven I would find what I was looking for, but after asking in several yarn shops, a stop owner explained to me that raw or dyed wool roving could not be found in Lima. I would have to go to Arequipa, an eight hour bus ride away, if I wanted to find unprocessed materials. Here in Lima, I was told, everyone wants brightly colored synthetics, no alpaca or sheep’s wool or anything natural looking. Those products look too much like traditional stuff from the mountains, “we have a complex, we don’t like anything that looks serrano”, the shop keeper explained. I guess what foreigners consider one of Peru’s finest exports, high quality Alpaca wool, looks too “rural” for most city-dwellers.

So, I made my way back to my favorite of the costume shops where I had seen something like a feather boa that was made of colorful bunches of alpaca wool. It is also a prop for some kind of dance, and it’s definitely too bad to buy something only to take it apart just for the materials…. but no wool, no workshop…

When I proposed the idea of the needle-felting workshop to Las Madres de Ashé in Cantagallo, they were very excited about the idea of leaning a new method for making their traditional patterns. With a new technique that bears similarities to embroidery and painting, they could expand their range of products to possibly include wool and silk scarves, shawls, or even blankets that might sell well in Lima’s winter climate. I wanted to be able to teach them a technique that they could continue to develop, and it was important to me to find an accessible, cheap source of materials, so that they could keep experimenting with the tools. Although the trip to Gamarra wasn’t a hundred percent success, at least I found materials to hold the initial workshop. In reality, the Shipibo artisan community moves around an impressive amount, traveling throughout Peru for craft fairs in different cities. If they like the technique enough, then they could possibly invest in wool when they travel to a city in the mountains.

I rarely expect a hundred percent success these days, and with this mind set, everything qualifies as an invaluable learning experience! I guess I could also try smearing myself with snake oil or drinking a bottle of dolphin love milk to see if that brings me success!

Taking the Forum out West

Ryan Murphy: World Economic Forum – Rethinking Personal Data Project

Downtown Seattle!

Checking in from the World Economic Forum, with an exciting two weeks since my last blog post and crunch time settling in as I finish up the summer.

As part of my work with the Forum, I am collaborating with Microsoft on project around cross-cultural personal data attitudes and behaviors and their impact on a potential recommender system, user agent and identity management system. My role as the designer in this work comes from the User Interface / User Experience (UI/UX) side, in laying out how such a system could play out as an interface and how best to engage individuals in the process of personal data use. Check out the image below for how this is starting to play out with a specific scenario related to Sweden.

Personal Data Management Interface – Scenario Example with Sweden

As part of this project I had the great opportunity to go out to Redmond, WA to work in person with Microsoft’s Technology Policy Group. Redmond is an interesting “little” place, about 30 minutes outside Seattle and home to Microsoft’s 60,000 person campus (headquarters). I stayed in Bellevue, a beautiful town in between Redmond and Seattle, giving me the opportunity to check out a few different places around the area. In my three days there, I was able to get over to downtown Seattle and check out the great sights (Space Needle!) as well as enjoy some delicious Washington coffee. Regardless of the great sights though, the trip was most beneficial because of the work I was able to do in person with Microsoft. In a world where we are so digitally connected I still see tremendous value in face-to-face meetings.

Microsoft showing off their latest products

Getting a test run at some of the new Kinect technology

Being on the West Coast already, I was able to hop down to San Francisco and the Bay Area for a few days to work on some RISD related initiatives. I had the great fortune of staying with a friend in Palo Alto who showed me a fantastic time.

Iconic Golden Gate Bridge

Back in New York things are winding down with only a week or so left, though I will certainly remain busy finishing things up. RISD all-nighters, critiques, and final projects have certainly prepared me well to hammer out the work, so no worries there!

Until next time,

Ryan Murphy

Lombard Street in SF!

Space Needle in Seattle!

Ferris Wheel along the coast in Seattle!

Interview with Leonida Maldonado Agustín

On one of my last days in Pucallpa, I asked Leonida to explain her textile techniques and patterns for an interview. My only request was that she describe processes in the way that she had been telling me informally while we worked together. As the interview unfolded however, she took the opportunity to speak about larger issues and challenges that face her fellow artisans and members of the community. While I had sometimes heard artisans talk about personal hardships, shortage of money, illnesses in the family, I hadn’t heard the larger issues of over-population, over-fishing, deforestation, lack of educational opportunities, addressed in such a direct manner.

Please excuse the unprofessional quality of the footage, there were numerous interruptions! Audible interruptions during the footage include mototaxis passing in front of the house, and the hand that appears in from of the camera belongs to Leonida’s four year old daughter, Grace. The youngest daughter, Faviola, wakes up from a nap, and also makes a later appearance in the interview. Both daughters are recently recovering their energy and smiles after being sick with bad fevers. They are both a bit underweight for their age, and often my plans with Leonida were postponed due to visits to the clinic. Leonida’s older daughters, Mary and Liz, are also mentioned. Of course, just as Leonida describes how much concentration is required to make the kené patterns, we were interrupted once and for all.

The interview is transcribed below in English. (The one word in Shipibo, Keraswe, which was shouted at Grace to make her be quiet, was translated for me by Carolina. Since she did her linguist profession such justice in the translation, I am compelled to share it with you (I will always be a nerd for language):

First, I collect bark and cook it for about four hours, it needs to boil well. Then, I take it off, so it cools a bit, no, it needs to cool a lot, not a little, it needs to cool off well. The next day, I have to start dyeing, about eight times, according to how we want the color, right? Sometimes more, ten times makes it darker, eight times is like this more or less, and six times is a bit less, it depends on how a person wants the color to be. When it’s dry we take it and paint it (Grace! get down!), and we paint it with special clay, and we take this clay from the river, from the river bank, we take it and in a bucket, we mix it up, and then we paint our patterns with it. These patterns come from our ancient culture, and sometimes from ayahuasca (Grace! Don’t touch, my daughter, don’t touch!), from ayahuasca and also from our ancient culture. So we paint, and when we are finished painting and it’s dry, we wash it and it stays a black color like this, and no one can explain why when we paint like this with special clay it turns black. That’s just how it is! White cloth is done with a different bark, and we only put a little bit. (Be quiet Grace!) We paint with that bark, and we cook it as well, and then we put clay on it, and this one we pour clay over all of it, and when it’s washed it also stays black, with white, and that’s how we work.

But sometimes, we make quite a lot, but sometimes we don’t have a market that we can sell to. We are looking at this time for someone who could support us, someone who could support us from over there, because here, we don’t have, how can I explain to you, we’re not professionals and that’s why we work this way because our grandmothers showed us how. So, from our culture, this is how we make a living, because sometimes we don’t have a profession or any schooling. Before, in the past, we never studied, only our mothers would show us how to embroider, how to paint, how to cultivate crops, how to fish. Before, there were no people, but now a lot of people have moved in from other places, Mestizos [general Peruvian population] most of all, they moved in, they made nets to catch fish, and now in the lake there’s barely any fish. And we used to produce plantains, they fumigated it, and yucca, nothing. In this way, we have to search for a way to raise our children, right? Now, raising a family is difficult because everyday prices get higher for food, clothes, soap to wash things. People cut down the trees, and there’s no place to plant seeds, any person can move in, and we don’t have land to use.  Now that they’ve fumigated the ground, it doesn’t produce plantains or yucca, and all the fish have been taken out with nets, and there aren’t any left. Before, when I was that small [points to four year old Grace], I remember there was fish here, when the river was low, ooooo, enough that I could fish with an arrow! Now you can’t do that, and for this reason, we’ve devoted ourselves to doing this more, showing our children, as my mother showed me, and my mother’s mother showed her, and now I have to show my daughters, and that’s the way that it is. Sometimes, people think that we have food, but sometimes we fall short of food because we don’t have money, now everything happens with money, without money you can’t live, you have to struggle. And when there is money, I have to buy only something to eat. When there isn’t, or there’s only a little, we fall short. It’s much worse for those who have more children, they suffer, and for those who don’t know how to paint, they suffer as well. Sometimes, when there are tourists, they come and buy from us, and recently we are getting by, more or less. If they don’t buy, we’re fucked! You’ve seen my grandmother, right? My mother is suffering, she wants to buy medicine, and so when she buys medicine, how does she buy food? We fall short. This is why sometimes we want someone to support us or export our work, this culture that we have, this art, more than anything. This is as much as I can explain to you! Any time that you can come or tell your friends and your contacts that could support us, we could export. At the moment, I’m happy that you showed me [how to use the sewing machine]. We don’t know how to operate, for example, I never learned how to the use the machine, I only embroider by hand or paint, that’s all, but no one comes to show us or support us. I’m glad that you showed me, I’m very happy with you. I’ve dedicated myself to this because I never studied, my mother never said to me, “Go study, I will support you”, because my mother also never had that opportunity. When we were kids, my father passed away, and because of this, my mother didn’t have the possibility of taking care of us and sending us to school. That is why I never studied or finished middle school or anything after that. That’s why I’ve dedicated myself to this, what else do I know? Sometimes I see my community members, even though they are suffering, not eating, walking all the way, they manage to get an education and a profession, some of them, others don’t have these things. For this reason, I told my daughters, Liz and Mary as well, that I wanted them to study and become professionals, but I didn’t have the opportunity, and so it’s just stayed this way. I feel terribly for my daughter, she didn’t finish school, she only had one year left, but she dropped out.

I don’t want [the patterns] to be lost! Some people don’t care, some members of my community don’t want to do anything, but I do, I don’t want it to be lost. But I don’t have, how can I tell you, I don’t have a camera, right? Sometimes I would like to take pictures of what I make and keep them like a book or a catalogue, so I won’t lose my designs. But I don’t have this, and I don’t know how to take pictures. It would be beautiful, right? I could take pictures and and make myself a catalogue so I wouldn’t forget my patterns. At the moment, I make patterns, I sell them, and if someone comes back another time, I have to think hard about it to make the pattern again, little by little. I used to not know how to make patterns, I would always call to my mother, “is this good or bad?”, [She would reply], “Yes, you’re learning, just work on it”, and that’s how I learned. That’s how it is. I invent at times, I look at the patterns and invent them, I have them in my mind, I have to think about them. We have to concentrate to make the patterns.Teresa teaching me how to paint patterns with bark as we work on the bag project.Sewing lesson in Adelina’s workshop.Leonida with the bag that she sewed on the machine.Grace the Intrepid in her hammock!

Great government meeting today!

This post needed to be written today because earlier I was in a meeting that became incredibly eye opening, inspiring, and could create incredible potential for Detroit to transform itself into a leading center for green and blue infrastructure development and experimentation.

Today, along with my manager and our Green T project consultants, I met with Korey Hall.  Korey was here to represent US Senator Debbie Stabenow and their interests in urban agriculture as an effective productive use of urban land that can’t easily be repurposed for any other type of development.

Senator Stabenow is Chairwoman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. She is also a member of the senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  Korey and Senator Stabenow therefore have a big interest in urban agriculture projects in Detroit that can become examples throughout the state and region.

Not only did we talk about the Green T project’s potential for Detroit, but it’s potential as a catalyst for other types of green and blue infrastructure projects.  We had the chance to explain to Korey the process of stormwater remediation and how it can become a more natural process in an urban environment.  How it can become a benefit to the people who live there, the waterways, as well as the stormwater treatment facilities, and a money saving project for the city.  We also discussed the phytoremediation potential of agricultural projects and how it can help bring value back to vacant, toxic land.  Much of what we talked about was new information for Korey.  It was eye opening and reassuring to see that there are people in government who are informing themselves about these things.  After this meeting, its become apparent that many of these projects won’t receive funding or much support from government or private grants because they are misrepresented.  It seems that much of the government or entities that would be able to distribute funding to this type of project don’t see the projects as viable.  But viable to most eyes means that a project would become a money making process.  Unfortunately most projects like the Green T couldn’t be implemented without large initial investments and they wouldn’t become profitable for many years.  However, if city has land that is vacant, toxic, and monetarily worthless, then nobody can or will use it for anything else but agricultural and landscape architecture projects.  In situations like the current condition on the Eastside of Detroit, Korey and Stabenow do believe that green infrastructure projects and urban farming can be used as a powerful tool for neighborhood stabilization.  Improving the lives of the citizens is worth the investment.  My faith in the federal government is low and has been for quite a while.  The meeting with Korey today revealed a bit of hope for me and has put in a great mood for the weekend!

After mentioning mass stormwater remediation and waterways above, I thought I’d share this photo I took a little while ago.  It’s a canal in the southeast corner of Detroit.  Michiganders and Detroiters are constantly using our greatest natural resource, fresh water.  These docks in the canal are attached to the backyards of single family homes.  Although homes like this are only a small fraction of the city, it’s a resource and amenity that most major cities don’t have.  We need to recognize the value and do everything we can to maintain healthy waterways.

2013.7.1 _ Detroit canal

Another thing that we spoke a bit about today was the possibility for the federal government to fund blight remediation projects in the LEAP district.  Very soon there may be federal money coming to Detroit [that are not grants] for simple things like facade remediation and demolition. This is one building on the Eastside that I would love to see preserved and taken care of!  If I had the means, I would preserve this one myself…

2013.8.1 _ eastside abandonment