PBS Newshour of 2/21/23 included a segment on how In 2016, Hall started a donation-funded organization called Art This Way. Now a nonprofit that’s part of Fort Wayne’s Downtown Improvement District, the organization facilitates public art projects on private property and the development of pedestrian-friendly spaces.Alexandra Hall created a non-profit to spearhead a transformative art initiative in her community of Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was all inspired through her love of traveling, during which, she found communities across the world with vibrant art-facing environs. She dreamed of moving to such a place, then gradually decided to create such a place in her own city.
My Garden 2016
I stumbled onto the Society for Utopian Studies in summer 2015. They publish a journal, Utopian Studies, and a newsletter, Utopus Discovered. In addition, they hold an annual symposium hosting scholars from a broad range of disciplines: art, classics, cultural studies, history, languages, literature, philosophy, politics, psychology, urban planning, etc.
Last November’s (2015) symposium theme was “Global Flows: Diaspora, Diversity, and Divergence in Utopia.” This year (October 26-30, 2016) the society will meet in St. Petersburg, FL, and the theme will be “Harbors and Islands: Explorations of Utopia, Past and Present.” This is the 500th anniversary of publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, and the theme was chosen to emphasize contrasting notions of isolation and community, safety and trepidation, the exotic “other” and the familiar, and similar examples of exploration, imagination, or “social dreaming” inspired by Utopia or its later antecedents.
Visit the Website!
The Huffington Post ran an article in May of 2013 about 9 modern day utopias! Most of them are modeled on a simpler, slower ways of life–as I would expect. However, one–in New Songdo City, South Korea–is quite modern, fast-paced, and state-of-the-art. When it is complete, everything from lamps to cars will be computerized and on the network–FULL TECHNOLOGICAL INTEGRATION!
And, in keeping with my blog theme, one of the communities is on the Big Island of Hawaii. These members strive to live by the core values of “karma yoga” (selfless service), which is probably a prudent keystone principle for a utopia!
Visit Modern Utopias
An ANIMAL UTOPIA! Jon Stewart has found something much more rewarding than delivering coy jabs at Donald Trump this election season. He and his wife, Tracy, have plans to expand their 12-acre farm by 45 acres to become a sanctuary cum sustainable farm and outreach to schools in Middletown, New Jersey.
One might question the legitimacy of this item in a culture blog, but on some vital level, a utopia for animals offers lessons for communities of people. While we are still striving for peace among men, the animals–cows, sheep, turkeys, goats, horses– blithely and diversely commune with only basic needs met–food, shelter, compassion.
That said, I do miss Jon’s brand of news coverage.
Visit Jon & Tracy
MY UTOPIA! In Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations, my favorite character was Mr. Wemmick, whom Pip described as “a dry man . . . with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel.” But there was another Wemmick, the “Walworth Wemmick,” transformed with energy as he welcomed Pip to his wee utopia complete with moat, drawbridge, arbor, lake, fountain, cannon (shot promptly at 9pm each night)–and a revered “Aged Parent.” Heading back to work from Walworth to Little Britain, Pip noted Wemmick growing “dryer and harder . . . his mouth tighten[ing] into a post-office again.”
Wemmick’s passion for his “pleasure-ground” was something that snagged my heart. Life’s dog days, when careers and obligations–and even loving families–sap one’s sauce, by turns, require some small bit of succor –some wee utopia. My utopia is in progress and will hopefully look something like the photo at left. I feel a little as I think Wemmick did as I add to my list of features: frog pond, chimes, flagged area for a table, sculptures, and a little waterfall (which I have a hill for!). I will skip the canon; I’ve never been a gun person. Check out the links below for a tutorial I’ve been studying for creation of a frog pond. There is another button for some Paul Margetts’ sculptures I’d like to add.
I plan to install only native plants, and with the advice of a dear friend and my son–both of whom nudged me to “just start”–I am now making good progress. My plants, so far, are Inkberry, Viburnum, Mint, Hosta, Sea Oat, Mountain Laurel, and Obedient Plant.
Update 8-13-16: I’ve finished the landscaping of my back yard. Now I am waiting for the electrician to come hook up power to the pond pump. I’ve uploaded a current video of my progress onto YouTube (use “Anna’s Garden 2016” button below).
Frog Pond Garden Sculptures My Garden 2016
A friend’s visit to the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, WI, inspired me to take a look at that website. An article about artists repurposing trash for art caught my attention. The quote below, as the article recognized, “hints at a dystopian future for the world” where citizens of a consumer culture are choking our world with trash.
We will die, civilization will crumble, life as we know it will cease to exist, but trash will endure, and there it was on the street, our carelessly erected, ceaselessly broken cenotaphs to ephemera and disconnection and unquenchable want.
That said, I do like the ingenuity of turning a headache into a object of interest and value!
Shamayim “Shu” Harris has watched schools, libraries, and even street lights removed from her city of Highland Park, a city surrounded by Detroit, as the recession decimated her community. But, she has an almost utopian (albeit a practical utopian) dream of something better.
She has energized the people of her community to rebuild, to make their community beautiful and useful. Initial plans include a park to equipped with tennis and basketball courts, a homework house for the children with afternoon tutors and a chef preparing healthy food for little brains, and a healthy market made of shipping containers. But, Shu is doing some planning for the future and is determined NOT to be dependent on unreliable services. Her community is investigating geothermal and solar energy of heating and lighting, rainfall collection for watering future greenhouses. She hopes to attract businesses back to her community and to establish a wellness center.
For the necessary start-up capital she turned to crowd sourcing and successfully collected $242,000 (and a little extra!) within the Kickstarter time period. What a magnificent dream and what spectacular follow through. For details, click on the button below.
Avalon Village
Socially responsible investing appeals to me as a key to more humanistic communities. In searching the internet for a way to participate in this sort of investing, I came across RSF Social Finance (RSF), an investing organization that describes itself as “a pioneering non-profit financial services organization dedicated to transforming the way the world works with money.” Although I am no financial advisor, I was intrigued by the list of entrepreneurs from the United States and the globe, usually small, sustainable, eco-friendly, who were supported by investors.
Another intriguing component of RSF is their emphasis on transparency–financials are printed on-line quarterly and pricing meetings are held periodically with both investors and borrowers at the table.
And perhaps most interesting to me was the RSF’s participation in a jointly hosted (with Praxis Peace Institute) a symposium of presentations, workshops and conversations with a focus on finding fixes for current economic infirmities–systemic inequality, environmental collapse, etc.–by investigating local-living economies, non-violent economies, and generally instituting economic models that serve everyone’s needs. Keynote speakers, James Galbraith and Vandana Shiva set the tone.