WOW! What an event!

On December 12 (two weeks ago today) I had the honor and privilege to participate in the Citizen Schools WOW! event. Citizen Schools is a leading national education initiative that uniquely mobilizes thousands of adult volunteers to help improve student achievement by teaching skill-building apprenticeships after-school. The event that I attended was focused on design and I was honored to be a judge.

Teams of middle school students were paired up with local architecture firms (and one development firm) to work on a public space. They could choose between the Jackson Square Station in Jamaica Plain/Roxbury, or Sullivan Square Station in Charlestown/Somerville. Each team was asked to submit concepts for a new design of the station headhouse (entry to station), a monument and the public space around it.

The value that I saw in this project was huge. First of all, kids are interacting with adult professionals. This makes a career in design more attainable. Secondly, they are learning that the design of our public spaces has an affect on how we interact as humans. They learned to observe the current spaces and be critical of them. What was working with the space? What was not working? How can we improve it? I did not start to ask these questions until I was a working adult, so to expose this thinking to kids puts our society at an advantage. In our efforts to become a more sustainable society, design plays a vital role.

Before I go off on a tangent about how important design is for our communities I will close by saying that Citizen Schools is a great organization to support – through donations or volunteering. If you are interested in the future of our communities you can help by getting involved with the kids. And I will recommend that everyone read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. This book is what woke me up and it made me look at my surroundings in a much different way. Here is a NY Times review of the book. Ask your local book shop if they have it - and if they do not, ask them to order it.