Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Overview

This workshop explores the potential of media technology and the Internet to enhance communication and transform city design and community development in inner-city neighborhoods. The class introduces a variety of methods for describing or representing a place and its residents, for simulating actions and changes, for presenting visions of the future, and for engaging multiple actors in the process of envisioning change and guiding action. Students will engage one neighborhood, meet real people working on real projects, put theory into practice, and reflect on insights gained in the process.

This year the course will examine what it means to be an urban designer/planner and how to create a digital teaching tool (using digital storytelling) that supports others in learning about the relationship between design and planning professionals, on the one hand, and members of the communities they serve, on the other. What is the nature of the knowledge that resides in a community and how can designers and planners learn about, tap, and use that knowledge? What is the relationship between community organizing and urban design and planning? What are the relationships between you as a professional, the place(s) in which you work, and the values and care you bring to that work?

We will explore these themes in the context of Camfield Estates in Lower Roxbury, MA and its participation in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Demonstration Disposition Project. There have been many stories written about Camfield Estates' participation in the Demonstration Disposition project, for it has been widely regarded as a model of success. There are two stories that have not yet been told, however: the story of the residents who organized the community and the story of the architects and planners who participated in the project. This course will use digital storytelling to reconstruct and connect these two stories.

Course Format

The course meets once a week in workshop sessions at MIT. The three-hour class is normally divided into three parts: reflection (discussion based on journal writing from the previous week), presentation (discussion of material relevant to themes of the class and/or discussion of student work), and lab (skill-building activities).

Work-in-progress will be presented and discussed in class. Completed digital stories will be screened and discussed with invited guests. Also planned are a series of public screenings during the spring semester.

Course Requirements

Work for the semester will be evaluated in four ways: participation in class discsussion (15% of final grade); a journal, to be turned in weekly via email (15%); proposal for digital story on Camfield Estates (10%); digital story on Camfield Estates (30%); personal digital story (30%). There will be no final exam. Ongoing work and final projects will be posted online. It is very important to submit assignments on time, including weekly journals, since class discussion and labs are based on student work. There will be no extensions without prior, written, consent of the instructors. Late submissions will receive a reduction in grade.

Prior experience with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere is not a prerequisite for this class. While labs do include an introduction to the skills needed for the class, you are responsible for preparing for labs beforehand by working through relevant sections of The Digital Storytelling Cookbook (http://www.storycenter.org/) and getting as far as you can on your own. After the first few classes, the labs will serve primarily as trouble-shooting sessions supporting the ongoing work of the class.

Students are responsible for completing the required reading prior to class on the relevant date.

Schedule of Classes and Assignments