Inside the Overton Square

Memphis Heritage is hosting a meeting about Overton Square from 4-6 p.m. this Wednesday, May 20th, at their headquarters, 2282 Madison (at Edgewood).

Like the last public Overton Square meeting, this one also and unfortunately takes place during business hours. Memphis Heritage has told me that this was designed several weeks ago as a educational/informational meeting and has morphed into an advocacy meeting because of the recent contract on Overton Square. From here out, advocacy meetings will take place after normal business hours so members and concerned citizens can participate.

Term of the Week: Irrational Paralysis

Irrational Paralysis: a malady turning the otherwise creative and active of Memphis into the hesitant and passive. Perhaps caused by fear of failure.

Spoken by a stranger (no longer strange) during a conversation at Otherlands a few nights ago.

Creative Cluetrain

Wow!

Artist Chandler Pritchett's ArtMemphis 2.0 is a digital native's spitball, targeted at Memphis' tired (and expensive -- spend the money on art!) PR and advertising strategies for arts advocacy.

It's a great piece, and any arts leader in Memphis who doesn't read it tomorrow should be fired the day after tomorrow (announced by their successor in a tweet).

Memphis' Creative Conversation

Update: one of the panelists, entrepeneur Eric Mathews, has posted his answers to the Creative Conversation questions on his blog. As some of this great stuff didn't make it into the talk on Wednesday, it's a web extra, and a good example of the creativity of the discussion and the panelists.

Last Wednesday, Memphis held a fascinating Creative Conversation, Working Creatively, at the Memphis College of Art.

The panelists (and audience) discussed:

• empty buildings and creativity
• micro-finance
• muni wifi
• talent attraction vs talent growth
• creativity and poverty
• official Memphis' part in creativity (including a critical and balanced recap of that history by an audience member)
• models for best creative practices

It was a great mixture of the honest and the hopeful, the critical and the creative.

For your listening pleasure and our future creativity, here's the complete audio.

The entire conversation, including introduction.

Or if you want to take it a piece at a time, the conversation separated into 3 relatively equal pieces, plus the intro:

The conversation, part 1.

The conversation, part 2.

The conversation, part 3.

The conversation, introduction.

Quote of the Week: Always

When introducing new ideas and new creative thoughts, I so often heard the words, "No, we can't do that."

That is the most frustrating thing to creative people.

Because there is always a way to do something, there is always a way to figure it out.

Chris Reyes
Founder, NinjaCat and Live from Memphis
at Memphis' Creative Conversation

Belvedere Block Party 2008

A new festival in the cool unique location of the pocket park on the corner of Belvedere and Madison.

Sustaining Sustainable Shelby

With these 2 upcoming efforts.

Sustainable Tennessee Regional Opportunity Forum

If you want to have a voice in promoting environmental and green issues affecting the future of Greater Memphis and West Tennessee, this is your chance. This event will kick off an ongoing process of building sustainability networks covering multiple issues through the upcoming year. If you are a invested change agent or wish to connect with some, this is the one event for the foreseeable future that you can't afford to miss!

Download a registration form or call 901-569-4423

For more details visit www.sustainablewesttn.org.

The Saturday session is the more interactive and more environmental in tone, however if you are also interested in sustainable development, check out the Friday session as well.

IF YOU HAVE THE TIME, PLEASE ATTEND:
Friday, September 19 – Sustainable Urbanism: Metrics & Techniques with Doug Farr ($95)

An interactive seminar on the emerging pattern of development called Sustainable Urbanism. Primary sub-topics will include an overview of sustainable urbanism, the tools and techniques necessary to implement it, the thresholds and metrics that define it, and the global case studies that exemplify it. Participants will evaluate regional projects including Hernando West, Legends Park, Downtown Bolivar and the Midsouth Fairgrounds. Approved for 7.5 hours AICP-CM and AIA CEU.

PRIMARY EVENT:
Saturday, September 20 – Sustainability: Exploring Initiatives and Regional Issues ($45)

Learn about current regional, state and national initiatives from Sustainable Shelby, the Mississippi River Corridor, Sustainable Tennessee and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Explore the process of developing sustainability initiatives focused on conservation and preservation of natural resources, healthy communities, clean and renewable energy and sustainable development. Participate in roundtable discussions to identify those sustainability issues unique to West Tennessee and the Midsouth region. Approved for 5.5 hours ISA CEU and 0.75 hours General CEU.

Local Co-Hosts: ULI Memphis, University of Memphis Ecological Research Center and Sierra Club.

Sponsored by: Memphis-Shelby County Office of Planning & Development, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, University of Memphis, Fisher & Arnold, Shelby Farms Park, Belz Enterprises, Tetra Tech, Southeast Recycling, Inc., Boyle Investment Company, LeMoyne-Owen Community Development Corporation in conjunction with the Tennessee Environmental Council and Tennessee Conservation Voters

Call for Sustainable Photos
For The Best of Memphis
And Shelby County!

Mayor A C Wharton’s Sustainable Shelby is looking for digital photographs to advance the Sustainable Shelby initiative and be used in our upcoming Implementation Plan and website. We need your help to capture images that will help us illustrate the importance of sustainability for the future of our community - the things and places that you love about Memphis and Shelby County. We are especially interested in "active" photographs that include not only local places but local people as well.

If you’re an amateur or professional photographer, this is a great way to get your photography published and contribute to this important initiative at the same time. We will of course credit your photo in the Sustainable Shelby plan and on the website.

We'd prefer higher resolution digital color photos, but we will gladly accept any original digital image that you would like to contribute.

Please send digital photographs to photos@sustainableshelby.com and include a brief written description of the photo and let us know where and when it was taken. Please submit your photos anytime between now and October 8, 2008. There is no limit to the number of photographs that can be submitted per person. Thank you in advance for your help with this exciting project!

Photographs could include:
- Local example of natural features or scenic beauty
- Photographs of parks and recreational activities
- “Old Growth” forest in Overton Park
- Photographs of a great public place or urban environment
- Active downtown streetscape
- Downtown Trolley
- Your favorite place to walk, run, or ride your bike
- Neighborhood park with people
- Beale Street
- Memphis Riverfront and Riverboats
- Mud Island
- Harbor Town
- People using the Wolf River Greenway or VECA Greenline
- Community Gardens or neighborhood association activities
- Neighborhood commercial districts
- Historic districts or significant buildings
- Neighborhood clean up activities
- Examples of Public Art
- Local Farmers Market
- Favorite neighborhoods
- Or anything else that you love about Memphis and Shelby County!

So instead of this, they could use this, which might be good.

Memphis can teach, if we don't ignore.

SkateLife Memphis Meetings and Fundraisers

A couple of notes from Skatelife Memphis.

1. They're having a couple of fundraisers to help build wooden ramps at community centers in Memphis:
   

   Skatelife Memphis founder, Aaron Shafer, is holding a recycling fundraiser. He needs as many people to get involved as possible. Aaron is collecting aluminum cans and will use the proceeds to buy materials for constructing wooden skate board ramps. These ramps will be given and used by inner-city Memphis kids at various community centers and in lower-income locations. To get involved, simply save your cans between now and October 18. Wash and Crush them. Aaron and other youth who skateboard will collect the cans at a central location that will be announced as the date draw near. For more information please email him at skatelifememphis@gmail.com or call him at 901 481 5615. "
   

   And,
   

   Join the Cork Brigade!!
   
   For all those who want to shrink our landfills for a great cause, here is your chance! No one recycles corks in Memphis until now.....
   
   We have partnered with Terracycle- a New Jersey Plant fertilizer company that makes plant fertilizer out of worm poop! We will serve as the Memphis depot for wine corks. We will receive 2 cents for each cork in return for supplying them the corks. Terracycle has a great story so check them out sometime!
   
   Even though Parks and Recreation will be building our first concrete park, it won't be open until sometime in 2010 so in the meantime there's a lot to be done!
   
   We will be using the cork funds to help build wooden ramps and even some concrete structures in inner city areas of Memphis where Memphis kids have never had an opportunity to skate.
   
   Specifically, funds from the Cork Brigade will go towards our current project that we are working on in South Memphis.
   



2. If you'd like to get involved in Skatelife Memphis, they're having a meeting next week
   

   Meeting this Wednesday (August 27)
   
   August We need your artistic talents to design our T-shirts. Winner takes home a new skate board deck and accessories. We will also be launching a major recycling fundraising drive soon so come for the details and for developing a strategy.
   
   The meeting will be Wednesday August 27 at Cafe Eclectic (603 N McLean Blvd Memphis, TN 38107
   (901) 725-1718).
   
   Please RSVP (if you can come) so I can copy enough hand-outs for everyone attending.
   
   Hope to see you soon!

Meeting Wednesday about the C&I Bank Building

From Memphis Heritage:

Important Meeting Regarding the Future of The C & I Bank Building 200 Madison Francis Gassner, Architect Built 1974

There will be a meeting for all those concerned about the future of the Gassner Building, 200 Madison Ave., at Memphis Heritage's Headquarters, Howard Hall at 2282 Madison Ave. at Edgewood on Wednesday, August 13 @ 12 noon. Please feel free to bring a sack lunch we will provide beverages. The meeting should be over by 1:30.

The building is presently owned by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and is for sale. To date all of the parties interested in buying the property have plans to demolish the mid century modern Memphis Landmark (in one case to build a surface parking lot). This meeting will be to assist everyone in knowing the latest plans for the property and to discuss alternatives to it's demolition. Please email June West at jwest@memphisheritage.org if you can attend this meeting or if you are interested in getting follow up information on our plans. Thank you for your support of historic Memphis.

The C&I Bank Building was completed in 1974, designed by Francis Gassner, FAIA (1927-1977) of Gassner, Nathan, and Browne Architects. The innovative design used tubular truss framing and butt glazing to shape the building and enclose its atrium. When completed, the C&I Bank was applauded for its geometry and light-filled atrium. The C&I Bank was recognized by both state and local AIA Awards, and, in 1979, the Museum of Modern Art included the building in its exhibit of the 400 buildings that "have had a significant influence in the recent directions of architecture." In 2000, the C&I Bank building was recognized by the Memphis Chapter of the AIA as the Design of the Decade (1971-1980). The C&I Bank building was purchased in 2004 by the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce Foundation for use as its headquarters.

June Waddell West
Executive Director
Memphis Heritage
www.memphisheritage.org
901.272.2727
fax 901.272.0149

More background on the threat.

Rise Up Memphis Art! Rise Up Memphis Nature!

Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the Citizens to Preserve Overton Park are holding a hike through the Old Forest. Come show your support for this threatened natural beauty, and learn something. Something I learned: don't touch the furry vines.

Also, the artbutcher reported yesterday that operating funds and the Percent-for-Art programs for the very efficient Urban Art Commission were under threat in the present Memphis budget cycle. The latest word is the crisis has passed, but stay tuned to the artbutcher, always.

Why We Need A Public Skatepark

Memphis skaters need a skatepark and Memphis needs a skatepark.

Skaters need a challenging, fun, accessible, legal, and public place to skate. This city needs the energy, enthusiasm, youth, diversity, cameraderie, visual dynamism, creativity, numbers and fun that the skaters bring.

We need a public skatepark.

Opera and Go Go in Memphis

25 years ago today, Memphis strippers and their supporters executed one of the strange and great protests in Memphis' history. During the performance of the Metropolitan Opera's Macbeth at the late Dixon-Myers Hall, they stripped.

The protestors were part of a group called MASH, Memphians Against Social Harassment that had formed after the Memphis City Council passed an anti-nudity ordinance aimed at the city's topless nightclubs. When the Memphis Police Chief, John Holt, announced that he wouldn't enforce the ordinance against the Met, whose production featured a topless Cheryllyn Ross as the witch Hecate, because the "ordinance is not directed to the arts", MASH hatched the topless protest directed at the Met's performance.


Memphis cultural and business mavens, afraid of the embarrassment that the protest would bring to Memphis (although apparently not bothered by ordinance embarrassment) negotiated with MASH to call off the protest. MASH asked for a repeal of the ordinance. The City Council refused, and MASH put its plan into action, apparently with the support of the visiting Met singers.

When the topless singing witch appeared on stage, 20 topless club dancers and supporters, scattered through the audience, bared and illuminated their breasts with flashlights, lighters and candles.

No one was arrested.

There were photos taken of the protest by photographers from Newsweek and Time, but I don't know if they've ever been released.

Rolling and Staggering Towards a New Memphis

We had the Skatepark Demo at the Fairgrounds on Thursday.

No one in my family is a skater -- yet -- but I still wanted to see it. When I saw all the cars outside the Youth Building, I assumed something else was going on. When I saw the people riding bikes and carrying skateboards, I knew something really exciting was going on. The turnout was incredible!

Here's a very short video of my experience before the batteries in my digital camera ran out.



Luckily amiev was also there, capturing the energy, enthusiasm and capacity of the turnout.

And Aaron, the mastermind of the event and of Skatelife Memphis, has done a post-vitam of the event. Note to activists: use Myspace.

The next day, the Memphis Zombies walked again. And there was no sophomore slump. The Zombie horde was at least equal to last year's, and their audience was significantly larger, imho.

Here's some recaps.

Here's Paul Ryburn's video chronicle of the passing Zombie throng.



Here's a couple of apprentice zombies.


And I heard a great piece of heckling from a Beale Street bouncer:

Look! It's a zombie Gerry Cooney!

SkateLifeMemphis Intro Video

Visit SkateLife Memphis' website and blog for more info.

And visit Cafe Eclectic for the first Skate Life Memphis meeting on Tuesday, April 29th at 8:00 p.m. (hat tip to My Midtown Memphis).

Love and Technology and the Possibilities of Memphis

We have always loved one another. We're human. It's something we're good at. But up until recently, the radius and half-life of that affection have been quite limited.

With love alone, you can get a birthday party together. Add coordinating tools, you can write an operating system.

In the past we would do little things for love, but big things, big things required money.

Now, we can do big things for love.

Clay Shirky
speaking at the 2007 Supernova Conference

Ouch! the benefit

Details at memphis.cool.movies. Highlights:

Who: The Subteens, Perfect Fits, The Billy Worley Band & more!!
What: Rock-n-roll Benefit
When: Saturday, November 17th
Where: Hi-tone

If you can't make it, you can still help. Go to http://www.livefrommemphis.com/donate and make a contribution.

A great opportunity to give back to someone who has given and done and made so much.

Happy OneWebDay!

Today, Saturday, is OneWebDay, a celebration of online life.

For my part of the general merriment, I want to recognize several Memphis events and organizations who've used the web to make something happen, something nearly impossible without the web.

• The Zombie Walk. Brought a huge group of people together for bloody public theater. TheoGeo, one of its principals organizers, wrote soon after:
  

  One of these days maybe I'll write about how MySpace was the driving force behind the huge turnout, as opposed to more traditional means of advertising (we did both, but the vast majority of people came because of MySpace).
  

• Memphis Rock 'n Romp. Recurring huge turnouts made possible by web-savvy organizers using simple/free tools.
  


• Memphis Digital Conversation. Not only did citizens ask the questions, all the Mayoral candidates answered. And everyone can see the results. You don't need a studio audience, or a studio, to make this happen.
  


• Friends for Our Riverfront. They weren't able to stop funding for Beale Street Landing but controlled the conversation (how many times did we hear BSL referred to as a "boat dock") through their blogsite and library. To this day, you can learn more about Beale Street Landing from FfOR's website than you can from its sponsor, the Riverfront Development Corp. Dollar for dollar FfOR is the most effective non-profit in Memphis.
  


• Smart City Memphis. Unique among Memphis' establishment for not only saying publicly what they believe but allowing people to talk back -- to have a conversation. Online. For the world to see and read and sometimes angrily disagree with. Beautiful.
  


• The Memphis Flyer. They've successfully melded their offline and online presence in an almost textbook fashion (as the text is written by my favorite web guru).

Greening Greater Memphis Follow-up

Judging by the throng of people who packed the Botanic Gardens for the birth of this movement, I would say it is a very healthy baby.

Anyway, Gary Bridgman left a comment earlier with a link to pictures of the event. You'll get a good idea of the support this movement is getting when you look at the crowd. As an added bonus, in the flickr set, Gary has some really beautiful pictures of the Wolf River that'll make you curse clear-cutters and other despoilers of this gorgeous place.

If you didn't make it, you can see the movement's manifesto here.

Forever Live Green Greater Memphis!