New BostonAPP/Lab Workshop

New BostonAPP/Lab Workshop: Art+Design for Accessibility in Public Spaces
The planning now underway to restore the Charlesgate Park as the critical link in Frederick Law Olmsted’s single park system.The Charlesgate park includes the Esplanade, the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and the Emerald Necklace — provides a special opportunity to incorporate new ideas and new opportunities for art and design leading to increased accessibility and inclusivity — to expand a real-time, working definition of “the public” for the Park, for the neighborhood, for the system itself, and for the city as a whole.

This brainstorming Workshop will invite you and all participants to come up with your own ideas — your own responses to these and other questions:

  • What kinds of initiatives could/will contribute to accessibility at Charlesgate — from park bench to pathway? In what ways?
  • What role(s) can art — however defined and in whatever medium! — play as an element of inclusive design in public spaces?
  • What role can you play in meeting the challenges of accessibility and inclusivity?

Framing the discussion will be Charles Baldwin, of Mass Cultural Council’s Universal Participation Initiative; Dan Adams and Marie Law Adams, of Landing Studio; Parker James and Randall Albright, of the Charlesgate Alliance. They’ll provide a set of frames — historic, art, design, and community engagement — within which to consider issues of accessibility. Participants will then break into small groups to brainstorm their own responses to these frames.

As we go through the Workshop, we’ll keep in mind one of the major goals stressed in the Boston Creates Cultural Plan: to inspire citizens “to value, practice, and reap the benefits of creativity in their individual lives and in their communities.”

We invite you to add to the value and practice of creativity in your life and in your community and on behalf of all who will make and are making use of Charlesgate Park.

DCR Charlesgate: A Template for Creative and Accessible Space-making

Brainstorming prompts

  1. What does public mean? What does accessible mean?
  2. What are physical and non-physical barriers to access that you have experienced?
  3. What does an accessible and public Charlesgate look like?
  4. What is the role of art in developing accessible public spaces?
  5. What are some actions that could be taken to enhance accessibility moving forward?

WHEN:

November 5, 2018, 6:30 – 9 pm

WHERE:

Fenway Community Center, 1282 Boylston Street.

The entrance is on Jersey Street around the corner from Blaze Pizza.

Click here to register for the event.