A Toolkit for Saving a City

Though we have a lot more to say about Save the City than I’ll attempt right now, you should know that we put together a toolkit that describes the processes we figured out throughout the last five months. We put together a nice one-page fold up list of instructions, so to speak, for how one might take on similar tactics in (re)discovering their city, neighbourhood, block, or apartment building.

Cristina wrote about the process a while back, and the toolkits turned out really, really, really well. Soon, we’ll be posting a downloadable PDF.
The event last Friday was awesome. We had a really good turn out, we got to talk about and see (really for the first time) everything we’ve been doing so far this year all lined up together. Have we come to any conclusions? I’m not sure, but I know that we’ve begun to articulate some of the questions we’ve had for a long time, a little bit better.
We’re hoping to put together a book by the end of the summer about all of this (and by all of this, I mean Save the City). We need to devote some time to really digging into discussing what the project has been and how it unfolded. In the meantime, we still have some billboard space to fill, expect to see some photos of those in the coming weeks. As well, we still need to put together a map for Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope. So, lots to do, and all while we prepare for the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation!!!
Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.


![SRSI Call for Submissions Closes Today! TODAY is the last day to submit to the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation. If you’ve already submitted, rest-assured that we have received your proposal. We’ll be sending out one big email to acknowledge all submissions sometime tomorrow and then we’ll proceed to go through all of them and narrow them down hopefully within a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/SRSI-11x17-3-520px-rgb-150x150.jpg)

![New Exhibition: AS OF 2012 WE ARE ALIVE & WELL: FOUR YEARS IN WINDSOR & BEYOND FRIDAY, SEPT.14th, 2012 @ WAHC 7:30PM -10PM OPENING RECEPTION: BROKEN CITY LAB AS OF 2012 WE ARE ALIVE & WELL: FOUR YEARS IN WINDSOR & BEYOND WAHC’s year- long exploration of growing up in working class cities or families concludes with the first ever career survey of art and urban research collective Broken City Lab. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/BCLflyer-150x150.jpg)
![Anxious to Explore the Border Bookmobile’s Winter Reading Room I stopped by the Ecohouse today (where our collective studio is housed) to check out one of our new neighbours — The Border Bookmobile Winter Reading Room. Collected and curated by Border Bookmobile founder, Lee Rodney, the books assembled as part of the winter reading room are going to be incredible helpful for our upcoming [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5136-150x150.jpg)
![Monday Night Research: Lightbulbs & Lists We spent another Monday night at BCL HQ planning out this Windsor-Detroit hyper-local tourism idea and doing some basic research for another upcoming project. We all have some homework to do, but things are moving along nicely on a number of projects, and with the semester winding down, things should be able to push ahead [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5412-150x150.jpg)
![Group Work This week’s Office Hours were busy, hectic, and (I think) productive. There we some new faces around the table, which is always great, and lots to do in terms of planning and organizing. Breaking into groups made sense and we pushed forward on a bunch of things in parallel, but I’m looking forward to the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/3308590586_1efbff37ed_o-150x150.jpg)
![Single-Use Camera Tests: Captioning the City Kevin and Josh ventured out with a single-use camera to test what the temporary installations would look like, as we continue to prep for Thursday’s launch of the Letter Library here at CIVIC SPACE. Also, film is fun. The letters look great and the photos aren’t too bad either. They definitely have a colder tone [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/43390001-150x150.jpg)
![Micro-Residency #1: CreateHere.org “CreateHere works with one guiding principle in mind: we love our city for what it is, has been and could become.” The non-profit organization started in 2007 and does things like provide over $300,000 in artists grants to area creatives, connecting talented artists to homes in Chattanooga, and asking everyone in their city what they [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/web_oct5-createhere-150x150.jpg)
![Phone Calls and Budgets – Tuesday Morning Productivity Extravaganza Tuesday felt like the first day back from the holidays should. We were tired, well Josh and I were tired, we were motivated and anxious to get to work, and we got a lot done. It was a very great way to start the new year! We spent the better part of the morning and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_62542-150x150.jpg)
![Public 41: Gardens Sorry — it’s late, this documentation is rushed, but I just received a few copies of Public, issue 41, Gardens, edited by Erin Despard and Monika Kin Gagnon, which features our Removable Garden project on the cover, and as a nice spread inside! We wrote the text, which outlines some of process and ideas behind the research developing [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/public1-150x150.jpg)
![Interactive Window Installation, progressing beyond the Max/MSP solution After our post a few weeks ago about a new interactive window installation, we had some interesting and helpful suggestions, but one email in particular stood out. Paul Anderson wrote to us briefly with an offer to help and after a quick introduction of his incredible depth of knowledge of all things electronic shortly thereafter, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wpid20203-IMG_1503-150x150.jpg)
![All Tomorrow’s Preserves: It’s about thyme! Well, our strawberry-thyme-apple jam slow cooked overnight, but it’s now ready, and we’ve jarred it and added the labels from last night’s All Tomorrow’s Preserves workshop. Special thanks to Jen Delos Reyes for walking us through the wonders of jam making and Fallen Fruit for the tasty idea. Next week, All Tomorrow’s Problems returns as [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/wpid22625-IMG_2936-150x150.jpg)

![BCL Report: May 5, 2011 (Big Books & Small Letters) We met twice on Thursday, and those meetings were after Michelle and I headed over to SB Contemporary Art to finally check out “On Your Mark” (a great exhibition featuring work by many of our friends) and talk about how we could partner in some way on Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices. Back [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_9710-150x150.jpg)
![Smorgasborder 02: Rewriting Windsor Last night’s Noiseborder event was a success. A number of people came down to Studio A in Lambton tower and helped us collaboratively rewrite Windsor’s history using maps, time lines, and story boards. All content was digitally remixed and projected on the screen with old photos and videos of Windsor. Justin started off the night by explaining [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/michellegc1-150x150.jpg)