Invoking the Pause Grant Partners Gary Nabhan of Taco Diplomacy and Stephen Antupit, Chris Saleeba and Critter Thompson of CityLab7 reach across interstate borders to unite the Northwest and Southwest at Tucson’s Meet Yourself festival. Both teams reminisce separately about their cross-collaborative work and the birth of the Taco Diplomacy Food Wagon.

Gary Nabhan/Taco Diplomacy/Sabores Sin Fronteras:

City 7 Lab meets Sabores Sin Fronteras and Celebrates

When Stephen, Critter and Chris of City7Lab parachuted into Tucson for the Tucson Meet Yourself mega-festival in mid-October, the Taco Diplomacy Food Wagon had just had only come out of the womb at Dust Design studio of Jesus Robles and Cade Hayes a few hours before. It was still learning how to walk on it own four tires, let alone talk to the 100,000 people already arriving for the Southwest’s largest homegrown food-and-music fest. Stephen, Critter and Chris quickly became the nannies and voice coaches for Taco Diplomacy’s newest baby, helping the Sabores Sin Fronteras Foodways Alliance imagine how to nourish its identity and broaden its impact.

CityLab7 further expanded its repertoire of participatory engagement techniques with their recent Cross-Pollination collaboration with the Taco Diplomacy Truck at Tucson’s Meet Yourself Festival in October. Visit CityLab7′s multimedia blog to get a “taste” of what dozens of Taco Diplomats had to say. Coming up next in the collaboration will be the Tucson team’s border-to-border participation in the Seattle-based Fertile Grounds Urban Food Utility Pop-Up.

Thanks from Chris, Critter and Stephen to Maggie Kaplan and her generous support through ITP’s Blossoming Possibilities Fund for making this collaboration possible.

From the initial migration of the Council of Pronghorn to the Big Apple, to the experience of meeting over a thousand visitors on opening day of the Value of Water exhibit, Felicia Resor and Ben Roth describe the joy of bringing their brainchild to Manhattan.

We at ITP celebrate the successful collaboration of the Pronghorn project created by Terry Tempest Williams, Felicia Resor and Ben Roth and the Value of Water Exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Council of Pronghorn was designed to bear witness to the environmental harm of the Natural Gas Fracking operation in Wyoming.

While no one– including the artists themselves– anticipated the project’s migration to New York, these collaborations and the project’s proliferation is aligned with the mission of Invoking the Pause. And so far it has been a huge success: opening day saw 1,500 visitors to the Value of Water Exhibit, and an expected 1 million visitors are expected before the exhibit’s close on March 25th.

These are the summaries and excerpts from our interview with Ben and Felicia after the opening exhibit.

Photo Courtesy of Helen Kubicka

Libby Modern recently reflected on the past year and her involvement in developing the Super Power Magic Motion Machine (SPM3) and what the future holds in store for the project.

From idea to innovation, SPM3 is a bike, an art exhibit, a power plant all in one — a mobile art installation that closely resembles a bicycle and trailer. However this is no ordinary bike. It’a custom-made piece of art that transforms into a pedal-powered generator, allowing three other bikes to hook to its mobile trailer and create power. Traveling through greater Lancaster, PA, the SPM3 will cast the conversation about energy consumption in a whole new light.

Windowfarms Kickstarter funding platform challenged you to place $200,000 worth of orders by December 7th in order to produce the gardens kits in the USA.  That challenge has not only met, but has been surpassed and the orders continue to come rolling in!  Congratulations Britta and the Windowfarms team!

See the latest updates on Kickstarter here.

Watch the video of Windowfarm’s Britta Riley talk on R&DIY and how we bring together our community using open source platform.

Watch video here

In Early September, I was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police paddy-wagon with two-dozen other guys. Everybody was in a good mood. We had all just been arrested in front of the White House, as part of a large-scale, peaceful civil disobedience action in which, over the course of two-weeks, more than 1200 people were sent to the DC city jail…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Fast Company and Gizmodo like Windowfarms!  Please visit their blog sites to read the latest buzz on Britta and the Windowfarms project.

UPDATE – The Windowfarms Kickstarter goal has been surpassed and continues to grow! You still have until December 7th to back this project. Congratulations to Britta and the Windowfarms team.
A newly designed Windowfarms vertical food garden is available for order on the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects – Kickstarter. Visit the Kickstarter Windowfarm page before December 7th to back this project.