Make This Better: Drouillard Road
Here is some good news: Amidst the biased newspaper articles and the rumoured reputations, Drouillard Road is actually in an okay place. A year or two ago, I was irked by a few things I had read in a familiar news source, depicting residents as downtrodden and troublesome, crimes and drug deals treated as the [...]
![Leesa Bringas’ Postcards to Indian Road project is coming along nicely; some postcards with messages have been returned to her in the mail. Jodi is wrapping up her Sweater Factory with a few completed sweater vests and more to come. BCL Research Fellows Josh and Rosina have been helping the Department of Unusual Certainties with [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0761-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 14: Field Research, Sweater Vests and Postcards")
![We made a lot of progress tonight, not only getting a considerable way through the first coat of red paint, but also testing a variety of techniques for applying the retroreflective glass beads! We also got to spend some time talking through how we’ll be temporarily installing the letters in a variety of spaces. We [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_4441-150x150.jpg "Red Paint & Testing Glass Beads")
![Now that Intersession is done, we’ve finally been able to put that downtown space to some use. Cristina and I spent the better part of the day in the space, using it basically as an office, but we’ll be there at least one more day this week and potentially one day on the weekend picking [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/IMG_0583-150x150.jpg "Being Productive Again: Day 1")
![The panels for Text In-Transit have been sent off to the printers. We should be able to install these on Transit Windsor buses in the next couple of weeks!!! We settled on 90 unique panels + 10 title card panels. Again, we can’t thank everyone enough for the support and participation—I’m hugely excited to see [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/textintransit-folder-150x150.jpg "Text In-Transit Panels off to the Printers")
![We’ll give you a place to stay and resources for 72 hours. You’ll help us fix the city. For the last year, we’ve been working away on a number of initiatives that have come out of our very specific examinations of Windsor, Ontario. The ways in which we see, experience, and move through the city [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/BCL_microresidency3-150x150.jpg "Broken City Lab: Micro-Residencies")
![Part of our research for How to Forget the Border Completely is going to come from a lot of video. We’re not sure how many interviews we’ll do or exactly where we’ll be shooting, but we wanted to be prepared. I’ve had a Canon T2i for over a year now and it’s a very solid [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_8438-150x150.jpg "Tools in Forgetting the Border")
![Day 2 of SRSI went awesome! We are almost all settled into 406, 410 and 424 Pelissier. I started off the day by cleaning and organizing my desk in the entrance of 410. I’ll be stationed here throughout the residency so come and say hi! Over at The Breakroom in 406, Jolie had some fresh [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0714-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 2 : The People’s Museum, The Breakroom and More Painting")
![The weekend brought all of the artists together to collaborate on each other’s projects. The Imagination Lab engaged lots of young creative minds, and Thom Provost began work on his installation. Imagination Lab had open workshops for kids today. The amazing array of supplies and ingredients made for a fun and yummy smelling time in [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_07201-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 16 & 17 : Collaboration")
![Danielle first wrote about the Gmail ad phenomenon a while ago — that is, how Google tries to place relevant ads by reading your emails and the curiosities that can arise from that technique. So, the screenshot above is what Google thinks about an email regarding Broken City Lab, Bruce Mau, a revisited idea, and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/google-ad-150x150.jpg "What is Google trying to tell us?")
![I sat down with a couple of different people over the last few weeks to discuss the possibility to rethink how we collectively address youth retention in Windsor. It’s an incredibly pressing (and yet somehow invisible) emergency. As a faculty member and collaborator with many recent graduates, it’s a professional and personal challenge to see [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_5190-150x150.jpg "A Proposal for Making It Easier to Stay Here: On Economic Development, Tax Policy, and Youth Retention")
![Last night was the second iteration of Cross-Border Communication where we sent a variety of messages from Windsor to Detroit. We started with “We’ve Missed You.” We’ll be doing the final iteration of this suite of Cross-Border Communication tonight (Wednesday) around the usual time (8pm). Some other folks stopped by on our side to see [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_4629-150x150.jpg "Cross-Border Communication: We’ve Missed You (and other things worth saying)")
![We’re playing catchup. Between vacations, short hiatuses, and our summer schedules, we’ve been busy. However, getting back together, working together again on a more regular basis, and starting up on these projects again has been so great and incredibly rewarding. Our to-do list above is a small start to all of the projects we have on [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_0359-150x150.jpg "A Look at Process: building for CAFKA & designing for HFBC")
![Paul writes with great news that the Max patch he’s been working on for our window installation project can now capture audio, upload it to a server and tweet a notification. We’re meeting on Wednesday to discuss the next steps and to plan workshops for the winter! Also, with Twitter, I spent a bus and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-12-08_00-12-49-150x150.png "Tech Update: Drift & Window Install + Twitter")
![Starting on October 1st at 7pm, we’ll be running biweekly Design Nights focused on creative problem solving All Tomorrow’s Problems. Namely, we’re going to kick things off looking at the issues of youth retention in the city and gradually move on to other future-focused issues. BCL’s Research Director, Justin, and a rotating co-host will guide [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ATP-web-150x150.jpg "All Tomorrow’s Problems: the Biweekly Design Night for Future-Focused People")
![We met to do another round of projection tests, this time outside. While we still only had two projectors to work with for the test, we definitely verified an increase in brightness on outdoor surfaces (both with ambient light and without), though this increase is not equal to the amount of light we’re throwing at [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_9933-150x150.jpg "Projector Tests: Day 2 of 2")
![Be it resolved that we’ll be a lot more active on here starting now. We’ve been overly involved in communicating on Google Wave while trying to keep our brains together for Save the City. With that project winding down, we’ll be shifting more of our research and communications back on here. We’ve missed it. And [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/howToPostOnBCL-sm-150x150.jpg "Expect More Activity + How Do You Collaborate Online?")
![Monday night at BCL HQ, going over plans for moving forward on our recently OAC funded project starting in January 2010, Broken City Lab: Save the City (details to follow), using good ol’ fashioned lists and future technologies—it was amazing, in every sense of the word. Not sure how many more times we’ll be meeting [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_13821-150x150.jpg "Planning (in and) For the Future")
![The details: Sunday, February 28, 2010 (1pm) at 362 California Ave, Windsor As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will host an open community event on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1pm to map and invent two [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/BCL-STC-FEB-1024-150x150.jpg "Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope")