Gifts & Giving
PCMP-inspired Ideas for my Fellow Procrastinators
It’s that time to think about end-of-year giving. Maybe, like me, you didn’t have your act together for Giving Tuesday, or are procrastinating if you give gifts for the tail end of Hannukah, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, or your “Yay, we survived another year” celebration. Here are a few Planning-Curious Museum Person inspired ideas.
Support a Local Non-Profit
If you haven’t already, please start by supporting your local grassroots organizations working on equity and justice-oriented community issues - those folks on the ground working to develop local food systems, increase everyone’s access to green spaces, support cultural and business districts in BIPOC and immigrant neighborhoods that were historically denied investment, and climate-mitigation where its effects are felt the most.
Look also for local branches of national organizations doing the work, like GroundWork USA, or that support local projects, like the Project for Public Spaces.
Support non-profits that put forth solutions like PolicyLink or the digital publication Next City (disclosure: I participated as a Vanguard in Next City’s Vanguard urban leadership conference in Richmond, VA this past September, so I’m quite partial to their publications.)
Support your Local Bookstore
Here are some books that I’ve mentioned in past blogs or will be mentioning in an upcoming post. Of course, you can buy these for someone else, but I figure most of these are going to appeal to you since you read this blog. Look at it this way, when you buy a book for yourself, it’s not giving yourself a gift, it’s supporting a local business! (Right? – We’re not putting more money in gazillionaire’s overstuffed pockets, when we can order through Bookshop.org, are we?)
In Inspiring Stormwater Management, I mentioned Artful Rainwater Design by Stuart Echols and Eliza Pennypacker.
In my post about ways to engage in planning-relevant work with community groups, I mentioned the work of James Rojas and John Kamp of the urban planning consulting firm PlaceIt! I also have some upcoming posts that talk more about their work. But don’t wait for the new posts, their book Dream, Play, Build walks through their methods of using model-building activities for community engagement.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is the classic book by Jane Jacobs, who we mentioned in my interview with planner Wendell Joseph. I also enjoyed Robert Kanigel’s biography Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs.
In that same interview, I mentioned that I found the book Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck both interesting and very helpful for planning a safe route to commute to work by bike.
And I also mentioned Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights by museum-person Dr. Gretchen Sorin.
A Couple Ideas for the Kiddos (or Your Inner Child)
If you want to inspire a kid to be planning-curious, how about David Macauley’s classic book Underground? (Our museum visitor research showed that where “it” goes when you flush and other under the street stuff is a big hit with the Kindergarten set, but I don’t think there’s really and age limit on Macauley’s works.)
Not a book, but for older kids and adults, I like tabletop role-playing game The Quiet Year, in which players have to collaboratively decide how to build a community and village. It involves map-making, thinking about shared resources, and collectively deciding land-uses. It requires listening to multiple perspectives to shape social and physical structures – the kinds of empathy-driven cost-benefit thinking that we were trying to encourage in the City Science exhibit and that is critical to good civic engagement in community planning. (Note that the game is described as being for ages 12 and up and it is supposed to be set in a post-apocalyptic world. But if it’s played as a family, I think adults can facilitate to make it work for younger kids. And it’s easy enough to skip the apocalyptic setting! I’d rather play on something closer to Gilligan’s Island than Mad Max’s world.
Free Stuff!
If you want to treat yourself without touching your wallet. There are some great free resources that sit at the intersection of museum and planning practice: placemaking and interpretation in public spaces.
Looking at this Tactical Urbanist’s Guide, exhibit developers will recognize that tactical urbanism is prototyping, complete with formative evaluation and design iteration, just described in different language. From the museum world, Michael Burns, through his Omnimuseum Project, offers Tactics cards and a Neighborhood Activation Guides full of ways to highlight and interpret the histories or phenomena of outdoor sites and public places. By the way, during lockdown, the Omnimuseum Project launched FreeTheMuseum.org, with a handful of museum people, including me. Our goal was to get museums to think beyond digital while they were closed, and remember that museum skills work well in the physical world, where much of the content we interpret is in situ. Have a look at FTM’s community page for an archive of newsletters (you might recognize the writer’s voice), and article, and a couple of webinars for some more inspiration. Although these resources are free, don’t be shy about throwing a donation at these nonprofits. A final free resource I like, this one from the public sector, is Cool it With Art: A How-To Guide for Tackling Rising Temperatures with Art in Our Communities, which is put out by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council here in Massachusetts, and is filled with case studies.
Support the Planning-Curious Museum Person!
Aaaand, if you’re feeling flush, you’re more than welcome to pledge your support for this blog.
As it continues to get dark earlier and earlier here in the Northern Hemisphere, here’s hoping that you find ways to bring light into your world.
~ Betsy Loring1
The Planning-Curious Museum Person
Sharing stories and ideas for other Planning-Curious Museum People and for Museum-Curious Planning People.
Betsy Loring is founder of expLoring exhibits & engagement. She has over 20 years’ experience in project management and exhibit development in multidisciplinary, indoor and outdoor museum settings. Her services include exhibit master planning, content and interactive development, and writing, with a focus on hands-on STEM. She also offers staff training in exhibition planning, formative evaluation, and prototyping. Special interests include multi-institutional collaborations, peer-to-peer professional development, and of course – collaboration with municipal planning practitioners.