How can we change our thinking and actions to acknowledge and work with ecological life cycles?
The Ecologies of Transition Roundtable is a series of workshops for discussing how ecological long-term thinking can be applied to design and daily life. The series is grounded in sharing and reflecting on methods for noticing how humans and natural matter shape urban ecology. Sessions feature activists, designers, and artists engaging in regenerative ecological practices: capturing carbon in soil, turning organic waste into compost, and maintaining waterways to accommodate rising tides.
Urban Carbon Farming with Brooke Singer
September 26, 2019 at Pioneer Works
How can we cultivate soil to be a sink for carbon and, in turn, a source to fight the climate crisis? Initiated by artist Brooke Singer, Carbon Sponge is a multisite series of gardens built to measure carbon sequestration, a process where carbon accumulates in soil instead of being released into the atmosphere. Join us for this hands-on roundtable to discuss and discover practical steps we can take to help sequester carbon.
We are All Compost with Earth Matter
October 6, 2019 at Governors Island
Human bodies, a cantaloupe, grass clippings. All share important functions—they live, die, and can turn into compost. With new legislation passed in Washington State, human bodies can now be composted in aboveground facilities. What can we learn from a world where relationships between fungus and fruit are happily encouraged? A world where a half-eaten head of lettuce becomes food for chickens, rather than spending the rest of its days off-gassing in a landfill? Join us on Governors Island to explore tactics for recycling organic waste—food scraps from the island—into rich compost with Marisa DeDominicis of Earth Matter. This roundtable session will be part discussion and part hands-on compost-sifting and seed starting at Soil Start Farm and the Compost Learning Center.
Hydrological Ties that Bind—Gowanus and Red Hook with Gowanus Canal Conservancy and Resilient Red Hook
November 12, 2019 at Pioneer Works
In the low-lying coastal region of New York City, we are never more than a few miles away from the waterfront. Along the edges of Brooklyn’s coastlines, neighborhoods are being rezoned, flooded, and dredged. Red Hook and Gowanus share a water source, a sewershed, and gaps in policy that should protect the land and its inhabitants. Working together as civic, cultural, and ecological bodies who live, work, and play near the Gowanus Canal and on the Red Hook waterfront, can we recreate an integrated neighborhood plan? Can we build resilience in times of sea level rise, erratic precipitation, and overflowing sewer systems? Join us in this roundtable to hear from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and Resilient Red Hook about current issues and planning in each neighborhood, and to collaborate on identifying advocacy issues that will help shape a Green New Deal that includes us all.