His session is moderated byMike Watson,Director ofAARP Livable Communities (Programs).
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OPENING VIDEO
LAURA ADARVE: Our newest program at the Latin American Community Center is Connexiones.
ALICIA DOMINGU: Most of our community are essential workers and so it has affected them greatly.
We have clients who are positive in COVID and aren’t able to work.
We have recently started helping our community with crisis alleviation.
People have been receptive.
MIKE WATSON: Welcome.
This video is about four minutes long.
And this includes many diverse neighborhoods that are primarily African American neighborhoods that have experienced historic disinvestment.
So, recognizing that our green spaces are safe spaces.
BRITTANY PEREZ: The AARP Community Challenge Grant has covered many activities for our Pride in Place Buffalo work.
What they need to feel safe and secure in their neighborhoods.
MIKE WATSON: I hope you enjoyed that demonstration of intentional and innovative community engagement.
NANCY McPHERSON: Thank you Mike.
And exciting development finalized this year was Governor Newsom’sCalifornia Master Plan for Agingor MPA.
And after his keynote presentation he’ll also be here to answer your questions.
With that, hey enjoy an incredible presentation by James Rojas, which lasts about 30 minutes.
I was born and raised in East Los Angeles and used to build model cities with my grandmother.
This is where I learned this technique.
And then after college, I joined the Army and went to Europe.
I fell in love with cities and I wanted to study city planning.
I came back to the states and enrolled at MIT and studied city planning there.
After that, I worked at LA Metro for 12 years, planning bike trails and other things.
And we worked on this project in East Los Angeles, the East LA Gold Line Project.
Cities are creative places that we create and build.
I collaborated with John Kamp to create Place It!
I thought, well, why can’t we teach people how to see planning through building models?
So I was kind of a rogue teacher there.
My first workshop was in 2007 with a group called “Taking the Reins.”
It’s a nonprofit that helps young at-risk Latinos become responsible through horse training.
So the Place It!
workshop is a pretty easy activity.
It’s usually one-hour-long.
Part one is an icebreaker.
Part two is a collaboration.
For the part one, some people get really personal, individuals in reflection and validation.
Part two is about collaboration, idea generation and collective community values.
What happens in most typical meetings that are very talk heavy, very, very word heavy.
That’s always kind of what they can resort to.
But in Place It!
we use our brains.
As children we’re all about emotion, but then we learn how to talk.
And that controls our emotions and seeing our parents are the guide for children.
But by talking we become far from our emotions, So we have these talking barriers.
So you ask people what they want, they always say, more parking and less traffic.
Because they have a talking barrier up.
Some of these objects, we activate creativity, connections and we help people tell their story.
A lot of people aren’t good storytellers, but with objects.
they have them tell a story.
That’s what Place It!
But this helps us.
So artmaking creates the power to transform ideas, thoughts, emotions and really you know to negotiable realities.
But she loves to have this kind of experience.
But the community members talk about a feeling.
So we need to really get the feeling right in our spaces.
Step one is a really simple process.
Usually have people build their favorite childhood memory, as a starting point for the workshop.
Because I tell people this memory your DNA to proceed to planning.
So we’ll build it.
And I work with a lot of senior centers, and have them build a community for your family.
And people understand, it affects the emotion.
After 15 minutes of building or 10 minute of building, everybody shared a story for one minute.
I think it’s critical at public meetings everybody speaks, everybody listens.
You want to go to a meeting where you said something and people listened to you.
It is a simple story, and it’s really critical to do that.
So the story building, how people discover their attachment to places and people.
This is a workshop where he had a group of musicians build the first experience of sound.
This is a workshop we did with an African American woman.
And she was telling us how her favorite childhood memory was doing hair with her elders.
Doing hair was really important to her, and how do we take that story into a plan today?
And having those tools, gave her a way to express herself.
You want to create place through these experiences.
These kinds of experiences aren’t really captured in maps or words.
it’s crucial that you go deeper to kind of bring them out.
Yes, after the first activity we synthesize all the memories.
What are some of the common themes and values?
And then people are ready to plan.
So the whole idea is through people’s experiences through building.
This is again at the Bakersfield Senior Center.
This is when I was working on a high-speed rail project.
You need empathy to build cities together.
But everybody tells their story and your story becomes my story and vice versa.
We all connect and now, at this point, we’re ready to plan.
Part two is collaboration, and that takes usually 20 to 30 minutes.
So people collaborate, you know and this is really important.
This is working in Compton, I’m redesigning a Blue Line station down there.
You have to be excited for them.
And by doing this we’re stronger together.
We need to work together this way.
You know, picking up my kid after school.
And after that we’re going to go to farmers market.
So I’d want the model to be a living document.
Now their planning exercise rests in their vision and not in a planning document that sits on the shelf.
That’s a truly important part of our lives.
We need to express it, and artmaking, I think, does it.
And, you know, it helps people develop plans and projects.
And how they’re respecting each other.
And also with artists, you have more leeway.
Here they built a model of Santa Monica, California, a couple years ago.
I turned it into a half circle, with a focus on transit.
So this is working with the LA Metro and mayor and the department.
So this is LA 2050, or you know, thirty years from now.
You know, and they want to be part of this change.
You know so the models are really fun.
But people up here again they’re using their hands.
By using their hands, you released your emotions.
That’s what’s critical.
This is working in Eugene you know and how to get more Latinos to use city parks.
I collaborated with the planning department and the University of Oregon.
In the design process they build something with their hands and they get excited about it and see it.
This is how to design Leimert Park, an African American neighborhood in south LA.
Just how this plays, feels.
Because people know their feelings.
And that’s been driving really to change the world.
The parking lots are the worst places in the world for human beings.
But people do find a space that they like you know, a weed growing through a crack.
A piece of shade.
And they talk about it.
And we do that in the parking lot.
They’re designing with their bodies.
This is during the moon festival in Chinatown.
But in play like this, there’s no limit to what you’re able to create.
And we’ll say, how would you redesign the space to make you more comfortable?
Working with Latina women in in LA where we said, how would you redesign your street.
They designed it themselves, and now they know how to design these things.
The whole process of design.
This is working again with women and how do you decrease traveling time in your life.
They have a FastPass, they can prove it.
But for this woman, this was a physical way to really articulate what this all means to her.
And it’s a different way of kind of expressing yourself.
So, who are we asking, and what are we missing?
So, for them it’s really, really important to get people to articulate their ideas.
How does that make you feel?
So, working with women, it was working, working with African American women in Minneapolis.
And having them develop a bike plan for the river, the Mississippi River.
So you give them the tools to really engage.
And for them that’s a really easy way to engage with the public.
So this is a project that I worked on a couple of years ago, in Phoenix.
Did a workshop out there with the disability center.
And the city of Phoenix had just built a really beautiful recreation center for them.
The cross street was a light rail line, but no station.
And most people with disabilities use public transportation.
So the station was a mile away and it was really hard for them to get there.
And now they have this level of independence they didn’t have before.
City planning is half about the city and half about you.
Yes, some people use stuff like this.
Somebody used their shoes, to create a walkable street.
They wanted shading and a plaza.
Thank you for your time.
I thank you for your time and for listening to my presentation.
Could you react to what you see?
JAMES ROJAS: Yeah it’s pretty universal.
People think about family play, you know outdoor spaces, you know.
I just did a workshop yesterday in Flint, Michigan, where you had the same reactions.
Physical activity, family playing outdoors, interaction, curiosity.
Always just same thing.
So we have the solutions in ourselves already.
We just have to articulate and bring them out and apply them to our cities today.
Thank you, thank you for participating.
So I’m going to go ahead and get started and read the first one.
You talked about the power of art-making.
What about people who are very uncomfortable with their artistic skills?
How do you put people at ease and help them freely engage?
By using everyday objects, people are really comfortable.
Hair rollers, popsicle sticks, bottle tops.
They’re really comfortable with these objects.
We have a lot of questions coming in, about next steps, after a Place It!
But for me it’s like creating a vision for the community that will rest in people’s minds.
It’s good way to get people thinking.
Then they’re in a positive mode.
So I don’t really go to that dark space, otherwise you’re lost it.
you might’t get positive from there.
The people will build with their hands automatically and apply their framework.
JAMES ROJAS: Well there’s two ways.
People built different child memory from objects from around their home.
And what was amazing is that people actually had objects from their childhood.
So it was really amazing.
I’m going to shift a little bit to more of the implementation and engagement process here.
In your experience have you worked with local government as the initiator?
And what has that been like?
We did a workshop in Long Beach on zoning for Habitat for Humanity.
We did like maybe 10 workshops just to get people up to speed on their lives and zoning.
Whereas the city would probably just have one workshop.
workshops that are an intergenerational pairing with a senior and a child and what does that been like?
JAMES ROJAS: That’s really fun.
You know there are questions that you never really ask each other but they kind of drive our lives.
Her daughter went for her childhood memory and her child memory was about roses.
Were looking at roses.
And again you have this connection between two generation and had these really different ideas about roses.
It’s really important to get people to think about.
Now look at him.
He speaks perfect English."
To understand who you are, where you come from, what drives us.
Its a really fun workshop.
It’s a really fun family activity.
JAMES ROJAS:You know, childhood memories that we saw were very similar.
I think when you start from that childhood memory, you start from a nurturing, caring place.
And that’s when you create the collaboration.
James we want to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights.
