Loeb Collaboratory
2024 Loeb Collaboratory
Please join Loebs and GSD alums for the 2024 Loeb Collaboratory on Friday, June 14th at Noon EST!
The Loeb Collaboratory is fundamentally a mutual aid society. This round you’ll learn about three (3) new projects, offer commitments of support to help them launch, get brief updates from past projects, and have the chance to share your own (under 1-minute) mini-pitch.
If you haven’t joined before, this is your chance to experience the Collaboratory process. We’ve provided some background and a summary below. However, the only real way to understand how it works is to participate! We’ll move fast and facilitate tightly to respect everyone's time - and complete the entire program in little more than an hour. No prep required, except to RSVP. Get ready for a ride!
GSD alums are invited to fully participate in the Collaboratory this year. Starting with our next round, we’ll welcome project proposals from both GSD and Loeb alums. As you listen to this year’s proposals, perhaps you’ll get ideas for how this amazing network could help translate one of your ideas into reality.
Details:
Friday, June 14, 12:00 - 1:20pm EST
REGISTER HERE for a calendar invite and Zoom link
See you soon!
Your Loeb Collaboratory Planning Team
Cheryl Hughes ‘04, Sally Young ‘21, Arif Khan ‘16, Chris Calott ’12 and Eli Spevak ‘14
2024 Loeb Collaboratory Proposals
Builders of Change, Will Hunter, ‘22
Builders of Change (BoC) is a start-up on a mission to inspire, connect, and empower a new generation of diverse entrepreneurs to create positive change in cities globally. Being launched by the founder of the London School of Architecture, BoC will combine an online media platform with personalized mentorship hosted in a network of participating cities. By year 10, the goal is to have over 500 purpose-driven ventures in 20 cities around the world. At this early stage, BoC is seeking to leverage the Collaboratory to expand the network of collaborators, partners, and supporters.
Modular Workforce Housing in the Breadbasket: A Case Study in Ojai / California’s Central Coast, Jennifer Siegal, ’03
California’s bountiful Central Coast, often regarded as our country’s breadbasket, is experiencing the same dire housing shortages as larger cities throughout the state and country. This Collaboratory proposal aims to harness the collective expertise and skills of Loeb and GSD alumni to explore effective strategies for funding, developing, and delivering modular Workforce Housing in California's Central Coast region.
Focused first on a pilot project with a community partner in Ojai to house teachers and essential workers, this proposal envisions a development model replicable throughout the Central Coast region to meet the housing needs of underserved groups, including farmworkers and rural low-income residents.
Vision Plan for the City of McMinnville, Oregon's Library in a Park, Stephen Goldsmith, ‘00
The goal of this project is to provide the community with ideas for the redevelopment of the city's library, located in McMinnville's City Park. The park site is just over 16 acres and currently houses the historic 1912 Carnegie Library building with an adjacent 1983 library addition. Also on the site is an outdated aquatic center, playground, an old mill site, an active floodplain, an arboretum waiting for curation, and a vacant historic house. City leaders describe the library as the park's hub, and the other elements as spokes, all functioning as an integrated ecosystem. Located along a state highway and across from the city's main street, the site needs to honor the original indigenous presence, culture, and land rights. McMinnville, with a population of about 34,000 people is located in Yamhill County in the Willamette Valley Wine Country, about 40 miles south of Portland.
2023 Collaboratory
The 2023 Collaboratory took place on June 2, with Michelle Sullivan ‘95 and Betsy Otto ‘07 seeking Loeb assistance for projects in Wyoming and Maryland. See project descriptions below.
An image from Michelle’s presentation
Betsy Otto ’07 Equity and Sense of Place in a Changing Suburb, Riverdale Park, Maryland
Help frame out an interpretive signage program and community engagement strategy for Riverdale Pk, MD, where I now live. Specifically, I’d like to work with the town, the county, nearby Univ. of MD, and staff at the county Riversdale museum (a former plantation) to create a system of signs explaining the former boundaries of 3,000-acre Riversdale and to share the ‘forgotten’ history of this community, where over 100 enslaved people lived at any given time. Riverdale Pk. sits in historically Black Prince George's County, an area of modest middle class homes that was developed as a Washington DC trolley line bedroom community in the early 20th Century. It is rapidly changing to both a Latino immigrant, White and Black mixed community - with rapid increases in home prices and real estate taxes.
Michelle Sullivan ’95 Neltje Center for Excellence in Creativity & The Arts, Sheridan, Wyoming
Abstract expressionist painter Neltje (né Doubleday) died in April of 2021 leaving much of her estate and control of the Jentel Artist’s residency to the University of Wyoming. Considered by some to be her greatest work of art, Neltje’s home, art collection and studios are located in the Piney Creek Valley about twenty minutes from Sheridan, Wyoming. Historic landscapes like the Little Big Horn Battlefield have long drawn visitors from around the world. These same landscapes inspire artists and writers are now helping to foster an emerging cultural destination. This Collaboratory seeks to garner the expertise, experience and thought partnership of Loeb alumni and GSD Friends to help explore how to most effectively utilize Neltje’s home in ways that support the creative growth of students and help drive the creative economy in Wyoming and Montana.
Past/Ongoing Projects
An interdisciplinary project that promotes awareness of our local environment through community engagement and the artistic and scientific exploration of plants native to Watertown, MA. Thanks in part to the support of the Collaboratory, this 2-5 year project recently received a 2 year $70,600 grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. (Sally Young ‘22)
A campaign designed to celebrate and bring visibility to individual efforts, educate homeowners & renters, and accelerate the transition to clean electricity for a healthy home & planet. Thanks in part to the Collaboratory, this program now has over 50 snappy signs popping up around Portland thus far and wide ranging educational opportunities for electrifiers of all incomes. (Eli Spevak ‘14)
The Borden Estate is a 220 acre property that consists of three historic buildings, rolling hills, a working farm, forests, and a 15,000 square foot barn that we are looking to renovate into a community theater and meeting hall. The nonprofit owner’s goal with the adaptive reuse of existing buildings is to generate revenue in order to maintain and rehabilitate the property, and thus to allow them to preserve historical structures, preserve open space, preserve agricultural uses, foster the arts, and increase community benefit of this underused resource. This project was presented as part of the inaugural Loeb Collaboratory in May 2021 and received commitments of support from 26 other Loeb Fellows and four GSD students who provided advice, connections, and technical support to help move this project forward. (Arif Khan ‘16)
LATITUDE
A housing design project beginning in the municipality of Chimalhuacán, in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. This settlement was specifically selected due to the fact that it is in the process of consolidation, and while inhabitants may have the economic resources to build there, many cannot or are not interested in applying for a formal mortgage associated with a finished house. For this reason, architects will be on the ground with owners in this area, interacting one-on-one at scale and using a digital platform to assist with communication and logistics (Surella Segu '18 )
December 2021Collaboratory
The second Collaboratory took place on December 10, 2021. Thanks to the more than 70 Loebs who joined, ready to offer their commitments and support. We felt that this was another success, thanks largely to the enthusiasm and energy with which you all embraced the Collaboratory model and spirit. Thank you!
Please make a special note of the commitments, and be sure to follow up with one another if you made commitments or received them. If you did not attend but would like to make a commitment please email Cheryl so that we can add it to the list.
See the December, 2022 presentations below
Miriam Gusevich '97
Euneika Rogers-Sipp '16
Kathleen Fox '02 (Update)
Sally Young
Randy Gragg '06
About the Collaboratory
The Loeb Collaboratory is based on the Civic Collaboratory, of which Loebs Cheryl Hughes ‘04 and Shamichael Hallman ’22 are members. The founder of the Civic Collaboratory, Eric Liu, defines the Civic Collaboratory as a “network of catalytic leaders from across the political spectrum and many domains" — immigrant rights, veterans advocacy, civics education, voting reform, tech in government, arts and culture, worker organizing, corporate citizenship, and more.” This model was so impactful that Cheryl Hughes proposed that it could provide the opportunity for Fellows to give back to the Fellowship in a way that was attainable to everyone while deepening relationships across the organization.
After several years of Collaboratories with the Loeb alumni community, we’re interested in expanding to include GSD alums as well.
In our Collaboratories thus far, over a dozen Loeb Fellows have received more than 250 Commitments of support from their Fellows, with an estimated value in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of the Loeb Collaboratory pitches have also received funding from the grant program and other funders.
Each Collaboratory is held virtually and lasts 1-1.5 hours. We move quickly and facilitate tightly. Minimizing the time commitment to attend boosts participation, which increases the odds that presenters get the support they’re seeking.
Details:
We gather to make personal commitments to aid presenters based on project needs plus our own interests and talents. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to offer firm commitments of help. This may consist of social, intellectual, institutional, and/or financial capital, and it will be the responsibility of those receiving and giving commitments to follow up on them.
Each 7-8 minute presentation closes with some ‘asks’ from the presenter. Then we'll open the floor for commitments, starting with the phrase “I commit…”
Critique and shared commentary are important parts of any process, but they’re not the point of the Collaboratory — hence why we start with the phrase “I commit…”
Commitments vary based on the presenter. Here are a few examples:
I commit to connecting with you offline to explore a few ideas for collaboration with you
I commit to meeting with you to discuss your program design
I commit to connecting you to the following individual
I commit to sharing research that I know of that might inform your project
I commit to attending/hosting a design charrette for you
I commit to introducing you to the program officer or foundation president at…
I commit to meeting with you to help you create a funding strategy
I commit to sharing this with key allies who will put it out into the world
I commit to introducing you to journalists or media who might be interested in this
These are just a few examples of ways that we can support each other. We aren’t expecting anyone to make long-term or financial commitments to the projects, although both may be welcome. Rather, you are offering your connections and assets to help/aid your colleagues move their work forward. Isn’t this what we do naturally as Loeb Fellows and GSD alums? The Collaboratory is just providing a more open process to do so.
All the commitments will be recorded in the meeting notes and will be distributed to the presenters within two weeks after our gathering. It is the responsibility of the presenters and those who made a commitment to connect with one another to fulfill the commitment. Neither the Loeb Fellowship office, GSD office, nor the Loeb Collaboratory co-chairs will be responsible for follow-up.
Mixed into the program, we’ll include short updates on projects from a couple past presenters.
At the end, we’ll open the floor for anyone to share mini pitches (under a minute each) on initiatives they’re working on that could use support.
We had the first-ever Loeb Collaboratory on June 11, 2021. The response was overwhelming – 92 people attended the 90-minute session, and more than 84 offers of mutual aid for the three projects featured! The enthusiasm was invigorating – someone compared it to an auction-like atmosphere of offers.
See the June pitch presentations below
Matthew Mazzota '18
Kathleen Fox '02
Arif Kahn '16