The Third Spaces Lab
I helped create and lead the City of Boston’s Third Spaces Lab, an incubator of 18 distinct projects aimed at making Boston’s public spaces more welcoming, connective, and creative. We defined "Third Spaces" as places that contribute to our collective well-being, including everything from parks to barbershops to coffee shops. As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ i-teams Program, the City embarked on these diverse initiatives aimed at sparking community-driven enhancements to vital spaces.
Engagement Lab
I helped develop and run the Engagement Lab, an applied research lab at Emerson College that designs and studies civic technology, engagement, and play. The Lab’s work has ranged from the design and development of engagement games, to the organization of civic technology researchers and practitioners from around the world, to the dissemination and teaching of playful user experience design in both digital and analog contexts. During my time as managing director, the Lab grew from a partnership of two working out of a faculty offce and cubicle, to a staff of over 20 designers, developers, project managers, faculty, and students, working collaboratively in a dedicated lab space that served as both a center for academic research and an independent, self-funding design studio.
See You In The Future
The SYITF collective formed in 2021 following a big “sweep” of Boston’s largest tent encampment for unhoused people. Our team members came to the project with varied backgrounds including peer support, health justice advocacy, and community co-design.
As stories stigmatizing and disempowering unhoused people made headlines, we looked for creative ways to support members of the tent encampment in sharing their more nuanced and on-the-ground stories.
Civic Brookline
Civic Brookline is a new, experimental local multimedia platform developed in Brookline, MA. With the disappearance of local newspapers, Civic Brookline aims to be one piece of the puzzle for engaging local residents in the news and culture that hits home the most. I led the design and development of platform, which aims to expand to other cities under the Civic [Your Town] brand.
New Urban Mechanics Labs
Designing in the cracks, fissures, and in-betweens of civic life: where jurisdiction is unclear, struggles and taboo subjects abound, and the unexpected is a building block for beginning something New. The is the place the New Urban Mechanics work.
The New Urban Mechanics Labs is a new, emerging place where these mechanics, these civic innovators, these caregivers standing alone on limbs trying something new, can call a living room. A place to share, to be seen, to rest, to refuel, to be inspired, to experiment, to find the next right thing to do in building a more peaceful, equitable, and curious world.
UNDP Games For Development Workshops + Fellowship
I helped launch a multiyear partnership between the United Nations Development Programme and the Engagement Lab and grew interest UN-wide over the power of serious games for issues related to international development, human rights, and sustainability. This started with co-designing and leading a series of game design for social change workshops in Cairo, Moldova, and Bhutan, where a number of projects, both big and small, were born, some of which are still going strong today, 10 years later. Watch a video!
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