City Beautiful Project: Put On For Your City
Civic engagement through the vehicle of sustainability is a fundamental way to learn about your city, connect to your city, and contribute in positive ways to enhancing its livability. When it comes to the purpose and mission of IYE, we put on for our cities by conducting outreach to encourage civic engagement and sustainability, with the youth...
Connected Perspectives: 2012 Black Environmental Thought II Conference
If there is one thing I can say about September 2012′s Black Environmental Thought II Conference (BET2) held in Minneapolis on the University of Minnesota’s campus, it is that such a gathering was momentous. It needed to happen, especially at this time in our nation’s history. Urban farms and farmers are sprouting up in cities...
Placemaking
Placemaking (v) According to the Projects for Public Spaces (PPS): “Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Put simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people who live, work and play in a particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations. This information...
Artistically Inclined: How I Came to Understand Public Art
Once I thought I didn’t know what art was. I knew I wasn’t alone because not everyone ‘gets’ art. Not everyone wants to ‘get’ art. Some individuals could care less for it. For the latter though, not me. I have wanted to be relegated to a more invested role than just an observer of what...
Open Borders
Go ahead and pick a random spot on the map. You might just end up there one day. Inspire imagination, along with the desire to travel by installing map art in the classroom. A really fun project as well could include students imagining the place they would most like to visit, and then creating that...
We Came, We Saw, We INSPIRED
This past Saturday, Inspire Your Environment (IYE) hosted it’s first community forum, titled ‘New Skool Fresh‘ at Cephas’ Hot Shop in Ybor. It was a time to be introduced to the community engagement project IYE, hear inspiring speakers from the community share youth/eco-friendly/civic engagement stories and suggestions, and meet other people who believe in inspiring...
Bioswale
Bioswale 1. Bioswales are landscape elements designed to remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water. They consist of a swaled drainage course with gently sloped sides (less than six percent) and filled with vegetation, compost and/or riprap.[1]:19 The water’s flow path, along with the wide and shallow ditch, is designed to maximize the time...
