Save the date for our next Enlightened Spaces Salon – July 18. It will be held at Intersection for the Arts in downtown San Francisco.

While we are still putting together the details, we know it will focus on the creation of  meaningful and engaging experiences.

What what makes an experience meaningful, and how can placemakers know what is the right experience for their location?

This promises to be a fascinating dive into the art and science of experience creation with insights from diverse fields. Learn what is experience strategy, how it works, and how to apply its principles and practices to the public realm.

Details to come.

Join us for an evening of food, music and festivities as we celebrate the completion of our most recent project–the first “living wall” in downtown San Francisco. (Since the official unveiling is that night, we can’t show you photos here!)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2

5-8:30 pm (come by 5:30 if you can!)

12 Gallagher Lane

Near 5th at Clementina, SF

Willie L. Brown Jr. and District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim will unveil the artwork at 5:30 pm and honor the neighborhood leaders and donors who made this beautiful gift to the community possible.

The Living Wall is a collaboration between ClementinaCares, the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District and 7Story. The piece was designed by internationally acclaimed landscape architect Paul Kephart of Rana Creek, known most recently for the living roof at the California Academy of Sciences. 7Story helped shape the vision funded by YBCBD and managed the project.

I am delighted to announce that a placemaking concept we developed for Richmond’s historic downtown has been awarded an “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Fifty-one projects received grants, including just two in California, from over 400 applications.

We share the spotlight with partners East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, the City of Richmond and internationally acclaimed digital artist Scott Snibbe.

The project will center around a new digital artwork integrating the real-time motions of people on the street with choreographed video images of Richmond youth performing dance, music and rhythms from the East Bay Center’s global repertoire. The piece will be placed in the storefront windows of the Center’s newly renovated, state-of-the-art performance facility, located on main street.

Our hope is that this joyous project adds vibrancy to the street, attracts new visitors to downtown and boosts the economic vibrancy of the Iron Triangle area. Now we get to make our vision a reality!

ABOUT “OUR TOWN”

The Our Town grant program features public‐private “placemaking partnerships” that strengthen the arts while shaping the social, physical, and economic characters of their neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions. Fifty-one communities in 34 states received Our Town grants from over 400 applications.

There’s a story behind the name 7Story, as you can probably imagine. It goes like this.

When I was shaping the vision for my yet-to-be-named company, one thing was clear to me: people embrace spaces that are not only functional, but are also personally meaningful. Such spaces reflect their experience and values. Such spaces speak to them, strike a chord. As I remembered places where I felt this kind of resonance, the word that kept coming to mind was “story”–these places somehow expressed my story. And so the word stuck.

As for the “7”… Initially, I was looking for alliteration. And I liked that “7Story” had the architectural allusion to a seven-story building. But I settled on the number seven when I remembered the belief held by some Native American cultures that our actions today will affect the next seven generations. This reflected my own hopes and dreams, that I might help create strong and thriving communities that will be here in seven generations, caring for each other and the planet.

So 7Story came into being. 7Story stands for bringing personal connection back to our public spaces and helping people care about their communities once again. It stands for using art and design and technology to connect (or reconnect) people to spaces that are part of their public lives. And it promotes the idea that connection to place is what grounds us, and it is what will sustain us and our communities as we move into an ever changing future.

The American Planning Association’s new set of briefing papers, The Role of the Arts and Culture in Planning Practice, may not bring earth-shattering news to some of you. But they so clearly (and succinctly!) articulate many of the principles we use in our work that I encourage you to check them out, news or not.

 The Role of the Arts and Culture in Planning Practice illustrates how planners are working with partners in the arts and culture sector to use creative strategies to achieve economic, social, environmental and community goals. The framework supports the work of policy makers, planners, and economic development and community development professionals, as well as professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, arts, culture, and creativity, in the creation and development of healthy communities.

Specifically, the papers explore how arts and culture contribute to:

• Strengthening cultural values and preserving heritage and history
• Building community character and sense of place
• Enhancing community engagement and participation
• Enhancing community vitality

They also discuss how artistic and cultural activities can be used to engage the public more fully in planning practices, such as:

• Long-range community visioning and goal setting
• Plan making
• Supporting economic development
• Improving the built environment
• Promoting stewardship of place
• Augmenting public safety
• Preserving cultural heritage and transmitting cultural values and history
• Bridging cultural, ethnic and racial divides
• Creating group memory and identity

With the planning association embracing arts and culture as part of planning practice, we advocates will have an easier time making the case. At last, arts as a planning tool won’t seem so far-fetched!

DON’T LET THE INTERACTIVITY REVOLUTION PASS YOU BY. JOIN OUR WORKSHOP ON FEBRUARY 26.

Saturday, February 26

PUBLIC SPACE AS MIXED REALITY: ART, DESIGN & COMMUNITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD

10 am – 4pm @ Sasaki Associates (downtown SF)

Cell phones, GPS, folksonomies, augmented reality… what do these mean to the parks, museums and streetscapes of tomorrow?

How can such tools engage the public in new and exciting ways? How can they create a richer experience of place?

Join us for our first Enlightened Spaces workshop! Led by New York-based Hana Iverson , creator of the international Neighborhood Narratives, the workshop will explore the hybridization of the public realm.

Through a mix of presentation, discussion and exploration of a nearby physical space, you’ll expand your thinking and toolkit related to this “mixed reality.” And you’ll strengthen your ability to facilitate community participation and social action using both digital and non-digital tools.

Join like-minded creatives from diverse disciplines for this exciting day. Details/tickets here.  Space is limited.

Announcing our new Enlightened Spaces Sponsorship Program! Next deadline is 1/28.

Held several times a year, Enlightened Spaces Salons are exciting public events produced by 7Story in San Francisco. Each focuses on a different aspect of placemaking and features an interdisciplinary panel of experts presenting ideas and projects from around the globe. The salons now regularly sell-out.

Demand for the series has grown so high that we’ve decided to launch a sponsorship (advertising) program–a a win-win for all involved.

Sponsorship enables companies involved in public space design to introduce themselves to the diverse and creative market that attends (and receives publicity about) the salons: architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, public artists, exhibit designers, museum and cultural arts organizations, community non-profits and city agencies.

There are three opportunities for sponsorship.

1. PUT YOUR LOGO ON EVENT PUBLICITY, which includes emails to 10,000+ members of AIA SF, ASLA of Northern California, Cultural Connections and 7Story (included past attendees of Enlightened Spaces) — plus be included on the websites/facebook pages of these and other organizations. Your logo will also spread across the country as our colleagues forward the information to their networks.

2. HOST A DISPLAY during the reception/event (can include a laptop, installation or projection). With 150 people maximum at each event, this is a great way to interact personally with attendees.

3. WE INTRODUCE YOUR COMPANY TO THE AUDIENCE at the top of the panelists’ presentation and by including your logo at the start and end of the visual presentation.

As a sponsor, you can mix and match these options to meet your needs and budget. Cost depends on what you select and ranges from $250 to $1200 per event (less for multiple events). Complimentary tickets are included!

Our next salon is February 23. Deadline for sponsorship is 1/28.

Want to learn more? Contact me at (415) 302-8195 or lisa@7story.net.

Don’t miss our next salon on February 23 — INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTVITY: WHERE TECHNOLOGY AND PLACEMAKING INTERSECT.

I came to this topic because of how utterly ubiquitous interactivity has become. We are no longer content to simply observe and absorb; we expect to shape every aspect of our environment and personalize our experience.

Held at San Francisco’s beautiful new McLoughlin Gallery, this salon will explore how cities, neighborhoods and cultural organizations are using interactive media to engage people in public spaces and create a sense of place.

Our panel, as usual, is an eclectic mix, representing public art, community advocacy, exhibit design, social media and experience design.

• Blaine Merker, Rebar
• Scott Snibbe, Snibbe Interactive/ Media Artist
• Zakary Zide, Designer of Branded Environments + Experiences
• Hana Iverson, Neighborhood Narratives
• Lisa Zimmerman, 7Story (moderator)

Tickets/details

More about our presenters below. And check out our  past salons.

Scott Snibbe is a media artist, researcher and entrepreneur in social interactivity. Whether on mobile devices or in large public spaces, his interactive art spurs people to participate socially, emotionally, and physically. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art, and he has written bestselling apps for the iPhone and iPad. Scott serves as the CEO of Snibbe Interactive, creating magical spaces where marketing, museums, and entertainment become interactive social spaces. Snibbe Interactive has staff on four continents and installations in more than twenty countries. Over 25 million people have experienced the firm’s Social Immersive Media.

Blaine Merker is on a mission to transform public space. He believes that inspiring creativity, connection and joy should be as easy as taking a walk outside-and that it’s possible, if we change the way we design. As principal and co-founder of Rebar Art and Design Studio, he combines his passion for building things with an activist’s zeal for changing the culture of the commons. He has created dozens-and helped instigate thousands-of urban “interventions” around the world and writes, teaches and speaks internationally on the potential of experimentation and play to remix city life.

Zakary Zide wakes up excited to get to work. He’s insatiably curious, enjoys turning big ideas into reality, and is an evangelist for the end-user. Trained as an ecologist and interaction designer, Zide is an award-winning strategist whose work integrates physical and digital realms to generate impact and intimacy between people, brands and the natural world. Author of Designing Outside In, he also maintains the Form Follows Gumption blog, and is Founding Director of the 8th Annual EarthDance Short-Attention-Span Environmental Film Festival.

Hana Iverson is a media artist focused on networked communities and wireless technologies. Her public projects employ the neighborhood as social practice, exploring questions about place, embodiment, and social engagement inside of mobile and other alternative forms of distribution. Iverson is the Visiting Scholar with the Institute for Woman and Art at Rutgers University (NJ), and founder and director of the Neighborhood Narratives Project; on the faculty of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Creative Research (NYU).

Walking down Soledad Street in Salinas, it is unclear why this area is called Chinatown. All that is visible is blight and homeless folks. However, long-time residents remember when Soledad was the center of a bustling, thriving Chinese community — a history that is at risk of total erasure when redevelopment begins.

Given that communities across California and the country are facing this same risk, I decided recently to attend a symposium in Salinas about the community’s effort to change that trajectory. For five years they have been making steady progress toward the creation of a Salinas Chinatown Cultural Center and Museum, which is part of a larger Chinatown Renewal Project. National experts from Asian American museums, acclaimed public artists and oral history students shared in the discussion. Here are some of the lessons I gathered.

1. No one group can “own” the story of a place. Only through broad participation, including individuals, groups and institutions who may not have gotten along in the past, will the emerging project be authentic, compelling and sustainable.

2. Participate in the larger redevelopment scenario. Whether you’re developing a single institution, a main street or a set of artworks, make sure all pieces are part of the larger vision for that place. 

3. Celebrate incremental progress. The Salinas Chinatown effort has been underway for five years. While some have been working on the concept for the new museum, others have been collecting oral histories and artifacts. These have been made public in temporary exhibits, raising awareness of the history and engagement in the project.

4. Include the full story. Every community has parts of their history of which they are ashamed or fear will anger others or bring up difficult feelings. It is critical that no part of the history is excluded or whitewashed to make it more palatable.

5. Make the past relevant. The only way a fading history will be saved is if it engages contemporary audiences. The project must be able to answer the question: why is this history important today and what lessons can we learn for our future?

6. Tie the local history to larger, more universal themes and experiences. What links this history to other people, other communities, other places? What was going on elsewhere in the region, country or world that sheds light on this local experience?

7. Don’t assume you know everything about a place. Let the stories and research reveal new connections, insights and understandings. Let yourself be enlightened as the process unfolds.

8. There is no one truth. History, memory, storytelling and culture are mysterious, unwieldy elements. What seems true about the past at one moment is reshaped again and again. Every individual and community’s experience is distinct. The more people are encouraged to engage with the complexity of a place, the more powerful that experience will be.

Our October Enlightened Spaces Fall Salon was quite a night! The topic (Where Cities Meet the Water), location (on the water) and panel (ecclectic and expert) were spectacular, culminating in a rich conversation about interdisciplinary engagement at the water’s edge. Here are some of my favorite bits from our four very different panelists.

Acclaimed public artist Ned Kahn spoke about his work combining art, science and interpretation in mesmerising ways. I particularly liked his “crying” sculpture that shoots water and makes evocative noises in response to the tidal movement. Also, his mirror-laden pier in Oakland, which offers a rare vertical experience of water.

Dan Hodapp, Senior Planner for the Port of San Francisco, talked about the importance of continuity, sequence, and variety when creating successful waterfronts. I was intrigued by his plan to make sure pedestrians have a special “experience” every 5 to 7 minutes as they walk. Here is one particularly successful “experience” in San Francisco–the Raygun Gothic Rocketship.

Maria Mortati, Senior Exhibit Developer for Gyroscope and director of the SF Mobile Museum, has done extensive interpretive work with the Exploratorium and other museums. One of her aims is to invoke curiosity about what is NOT known about the water’s edge and to encourage new ways of experiencing the water. For instance, she noted, people tend to look out OVER the water rather than look down INTO it.

Kate Bickert, Director of Trails Forever for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, focused on events and programs that bring people to the water. One of the most compelling was this floating environmental education barge on Virginia’s Elizabeth River. The program enables urban kids to interact with what is otherwise an off-limits industrialized waterfront.

What we didn’t talk about much that evening — we’ll save it for another salon — is how these designers know their work will, in fact, inspire and engage the users. Intuition? Research? Pilot and observe? And the age-old question: how do they balance their own artistic vision with what users appear to want?