Mixplace

Mixplace is a moving conversation where different forms of knowledge are continually exchanged between individuals and institutions. As our process unfolds, we remain committed to the principles articulated in our inaugural social contracts. These principles guide our educational activities and hold us accountable:

• Mixplace wants to enable a space outside of school that talks about the pressures of this world and how to overcome them.
• Mixplace wants to enable a common language across ages, neighborhoods, and institutions.
• Mixplace wants to enable exchanges between individuals and institutions, to negotiate the borders that define Philadelphia.
• Mixplace wants to enable a process through which all individuals and institutional partners will learn from each other, contributing to a renewed sense of trust and the development of a new civic imagination.
• Mixplace wants to enable neighborhood development and political representation by amplifying and archiving community voices, local histories, and everyday experiences.
• Mixplace wants to enable a space and provide tools for this conversation to take place.

Mixplace Studio is an urban education model that responds to the crisis in community participation and political representation. The Studio enables conversations between individuals and institutions within West Philadelphia and circulates different ways of thinking and making, linking the knowledge of communities with the knowledge of institutions.

People's Emergency Center (PEC), Slought, and PennDesign are the primary Philadelphia institutions who are coming together to form this urban education model, in partnership with Teddy Cruz and the Center for Urban Ecologies at the University of California, San Diego. The primary collaborators are neighborhood youth researchers and university design students, who are interacting with a diverse floating faculty of community organizers, designers, researchers, and other professionals. The activities and protocols of the Studio are guided by a steering committee, whose permanent and rotating members represent each constituency involved.

Mixplace.org, the Studio's website, is developing according to the following principles:

• To guide and document the studio's activities.
• To amplify the studio's activities by further bridging neighborhood and institutional knowledge.
• To mobilize the studio's activities and resources within the community.

Mixplace Studio has been made possible through financial support from:

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, National Endowment for the Arts, Slought Foundation, People's Emergency Center (PEC), PennDesign and the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.