Community Engagement – Page 2 – Creative Minds Out Loud

Episode 93: Creating Public Space for Community Health

Matthew Mazzotta is an artist and activist. His work utilizes – and fuels – community dialogue. Through the creation of public artwork and space, he aims to leave people with an experience that expands their view of where they live.

Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape our relationships and experiences. He is as much as an inventor as he is an activist using artistic sensibilities to bring real world issues into the social discourse and lead collective public imagining. His community-specific public projects integrate new forms of civic participation and social engagement into the built environment and reveal how the spaces we travel through and spend our time living within have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges.

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Episode 91: Igniting Community in Central Mass

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Heather Cook founded Three Match Creations with an aim to spark community in Central Massachusetts through creativity, innovation, and education. Their Co-Lab offers a center for connection between whoever is looking for a support system – artists, makers, creatives, and/or growers.

Raised in the backwoods of Montana, completely off-grid, Heather Cook learned at an early age the necessary skills to keep herself alive and how to make her own heat. Because of this, she grew up understanding the crucial need for community, creativity, and innovation for the betterment of life. In 2018, Three Match Creations was formed.

As a child in rural Montana, Heather was endlessly motivated by things that challenged her endurance and would often take just three matches into the woods and see how long she could survive. She found that even with limited resources, she was able to develop life-sustaining support. Heather has carried this analogy with her in her professional life for the past 16 years. Through her humanitarian work and massive life challenges (her own and within her community), she thrives on survival.

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Episode 85: Innovation at the Edge

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David Sun Kong is Director of MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative; Founder and Board President of EMW Community Space, an art, technology, and community space in Cambridge, MA; a DJ and photographer.

He says there’s a disconnect between the life sciences sector and general public. His work at the intersection of art, science, design, and engineering seeks to “disrupt” our notions of science and the broader human experience of it.

He discusses his work introducing the human microbiome to the public through music and shares how community biology labs around the world are creating an infrastructure to support residents who are excited about science to learn about biotechnology, life sciences, and engage in wonderful hands-on experiences.

David Sun Kong is a Synthetic Biologist, community organizer, musician, and photographer based in Lexington, MA. He is the Director of the MIT Media Lab’s new Community Biotechnology Initiative. Our mission: empowering communities through biotechnology.

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Episode 83: Engaging Diverse Artists

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Rosemary Tracy Woods, Executive Director of Art for the Soul Gallery in Springfield, MA, discusses how artists can plug into their local arts community and how a community’s efforts to engage local artists can be more inclusive, and ultimately more representative of all the people they serve.

Rosemary Tracy Woods, Executive Director of Art for the Soul Gallery, strives to embody the intersection of art and social justice. Growing up the only girl in a Philadelphia family with eight brothers, one of whom was the late R&B singer, Harold Melvin of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Woods was immersed in art from a young age. Continue reading “Episode 83: Engaging Diverse Artists”

Episode 80: Partnering with New Immigrants

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Greg Jenkins, Executive Director of the Somerville Arts Council, shares how he and his colleagues build relationships with Somerville’s diverse new immigrant populations as both arts audience members and programming partners. This type of community engagement identifies new sources of cultural energy and assets, he says, and a willingness to enter a world that may be unfamiliar.

Greg Jenkins. Photo courtesy of Commonwealth Journal. Since 2001, Greg Jenkins has been the Executive Director of the Somerville Arts Council. His professional experience includes arts education, public folklore and community-based programming. Since 2005 he has spearheaded cultural economic development initiatives within Somerville. Jenkins holds a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Folklore.

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