In the morning we had breakfast with with Renee, Lena and Maria to evaluate what had happened the last two weeks and to talk about the next steps. We decided to return in the fall. In the mean time, we will hire Ngani to be our studio assistant. She will start mid-September by doing some […]

Around noon we gave a short presentation of our work to the to kids of the summer youth employment program at the Kingsley Center. Afterwards we went to Mama Rose’s again and ate shrimp curry and shared a fruit punch. At 2pm we arrived at Meadow street and while one of us was setting up […]

Today we met Renee at 9AM at our house to discuss what had happened so far and to hear what she thought about our approach and the project’s process. Halfway through our coffee, the phone rang and Maria called to let us know that Mr Bankston would be able to meet us at 11AM at […]

What can we do right now besides showing that we are here?  How do we communicate some kind of commitment without waving around a glossy print out of a five year plan? If we could have thought of a better way we would have done it, but nothing came to mind. So, here we were […]

At 12:50pm we knocked on the office trailer that is parked in front of the old school building in Larimer. Carlos had sent us this way. He thought it would be interesting to talk to Mr. Emmett Miles who had bought the school building in 2005, developed plans for it and since then uses the […]

We decided to let the lemonade stand rest for two days. Sometimes people start to appreciate things more once they are gone. We used the morning to check out the “waffle shop”, a restaurant, initiated by artist Jon Rubin, which produces and broadcasts a live-streaming talk show with its customers. Before we could enter the […]

We had a late start today, one of us was battling some kind of stomach flu. We arrived at 2:30 pm and set up. Since it was Saturday it seemed like more people were home, so more cars were parked on the streets, two in front of the lot, one of them directly in front […]

We set up our stand around 1:00 pm at the same place as yesterday. Nothing had changed. We could still see the impression on the grass where the table had set before, so we just used the same spot again. It felt vaguely familiar and after we had settled in, routine started quickly. Nothing happened […]

We thought a good start to get a feeling for the neighborhood and its people was to spend time there. So, we opened a Lemonade Stand, that also offered Iced Coffee. We set up shop at 12:30 on a public lot on Meadow Street, near the corner of Paulson Ave. For the first 45 minutes […]

In order to have a base  from where we can operate, and get more insights on what is going on in Larimer, and provide a space where we can meet people, Renee connected us to The Kingsley Association, a community center in Larimer. We were provided with an office at “Imagine Larimer”, an initiative that […]

Thanks to Renee we are back in Pittsburgh for Part Two of this pilot program. The plan is to spend time in Larimer, develop and execute a “test” project before we’ll be leaving again on August 14, 2010 (less than two weeks). We are staying at the “city of asylum” on the North Side of […]