baltimore sweep action parade

www.baltimoresweepaction.org



Baltimore Sweep Action: Towards the Center is a cross-neighborhood project, which engages four distant communities in Baltimore. Through the meditative and cleansing action of sweeping, participants perform a gesture counter to the expanding motion of gentrification. Pushing towards the center, participants will celebrate crossing boundaries, and civic pride while being drawn towards the beautiful Mt Vernon Place raising awareness for the Walters exhibit Maps: Finding our Place in the World. The viewer in the park is confronted with a monumental relic of community collaboration. The trash is displayed openly as a reminder to the viewer that we must openly face our social and environmental problems.

the amazing port street project

www.nytimes.com

a safe haven in east baltimore that includes a labyrinth, garden, and murals where abandoned houses once stood.

maps on purpose

www.artonpurpose.org


an ambitious art on purpose project that sought to engage as many baltimore neighborhoods as possible in community map making. the final maps were shown at the walters art musuem in conjunction with their maps exhibition.

the urban forest project

www.bmore-urbanforestproject.org

the urban forest project started in new york city in 2006 by worldstudio. the idea was to have well known artists and designers create banners to hang around the city using the tree is a metaphor for sustainability. when the banners came down, they were will be recycled into tote bags and sold to raise money for a local non-profit. in spring and summer of 2008 baltimore installed their own version of the urban forest project to promote awareness about something called treebaltimore, a mayorial initiative to increase the "tree canopy" in baltimore from 20% to 40% by 2030.

the neighborhood exchange program

www.urbanitebaltimore.com

"the idiosyncrasies and individual character of these neighborhoods contribute to baltimore's rich texture and coarse charm, but they also reinforce baltimore's stratification and contribute to its entrenched problems. neighborhoods are pitted against one another for shares of city resources, close neighbors willfully ignore problems in adjacent communities, and residents are discouraged-through ingrained habits, prejudices, or political pressure-from straying beyond their neighborhood boundaries."

"we hope that other neighborhoods will see this as an impetus for their own neighborhood exchange programs, reaching across the walls to meet with the unknown other that we are taught to avoid, combat, or ignore. this idea should not be limited to community groups–any individual can take steps to expand his or her horizons. the goal is to reach out and meet our neighbors, looking outward as well as inward. we believe that a collection of neighbors and neighborhoods can rally around their commonalities and respond to their collective differences, proving literally greater than the sum of their parts."

edible estates

www.edibleestates.org

Edible Estates is a practical food producing initiative, a place-responsive landscape design proposal, a scientific horticultural experiment, a conceptual land-art project, a defiant political statement, a community out-reach program and an act of radical gardening!