This is too much fun, I worried on the second night of  The Pause.

Intro from Hidden City Diaries - Essays from Life by Gabriela Denise Frank.  A few weeks ago, I spoke with Maggie Kaplan, founder of Invoking the Pause, the environmental small grants program that funded my CityLab7 partners and I in the ideation and development of our urban mushroom farm.

It's been a year since our installation closed, marking the end of a long-term project fed by buckets of sweat equity and three grants. » Read More

The CityLab7 [storefront] Mushroom Farm opened on February 20th with a “healthy dose of surprises and delights” including an amusing wish granted by ITP founder Maggie Kaplan.

 Invoking The Pause Grant Partner CityLab7 is featured in an article in the New York Times T Magazine.  Please join us in congratulating the team on 3 years of work culminating in the project design and unveiling of the storefront Mushroom Farm.  Visitors to Seattle can view the display on the ground floor of the Olson Kundig Architects building through March 8th.

READ THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE HERE

ITP grant partner CityLab7 documents the creation of their storefront Mushroom Farm. To read more and see photos chronicling the building of the greenhouse, click here.

Beginning in January 2012, CityLab7 will design and build their Fertile Grounds pop-up in collaboration with Olson Kundig Architects and Schuchart/Dow in an installation called [storefront] Mushroom Farm.

Invoking the Pause Grant Partners Gary Nabhan of Taco Diplomacy and Stephen Antupit, Chris Saleeba and Critter Thompson of CityLab7 reach across interstate borders to unite the Northwest and Southwest at Tucson’s Meet Yourself festival. Both teams reminisce separately about their cross-collaborative work and the birth of the Taco Diplomacy Food Wagon.

Gary Nabhan/Taco Diplomacy/Sabores Sin Fronteras:

City 7 Lab meets Sabores Sin Fronteras and Celebrates

When Stephen, Critter and Chris of City7Lab parachuted into Tucson for the Tucson Meet Yourself mega-festival in mid-October, the Taco Diplomacy Food Wagon had just had only come out of the womb at Dust Design studio of Jesus Robles and Cade Hayes a few hours before. It was still learning how to walk on it own four tires, let alone talk to the 100,000 people already arriving for the Southwest’s largest homegrown food-and-music fest. Stephen, Critter and Chris quickly became the nannies and voice coaches for Taco Diplomacy’s newest baby, helping the Sabores Sin Fronteras Foodways Alliance imagine how to nourish its identity and broaden its impact.

CityLab7 further expanded its repertoire of participatory engagement techniques with their recent Cross-Pollination collaboration with the Taco Diplomacy Truck at Tucson’s Meet Yourself Festival in October. Visit CityLab7′s multimedia blog to get a “taste” of what dozens of Taco Diplomats had to say. Coming up next in the collaboration will be the Tucson team’s border-to-border participation in the Seattle-based Fertile Grounds Urban Food Utility Pop-Up.

Thanks from Chris, Critter and Stephen to Maggie Kaplan and her generous support through ITP’s Blossoming Possibilities Fund for making this collaboration possible.

Stephen Antupit and Chris Saleeba, of CityLab7 and the Fertile Grounds project, were brimming with enthusiasm and creativity after their recent trip to the 2011 BALLE Conference in Bellingham, WA.

“What’s in it for WE vs. what’s in it for ME?,” “Locavesting,” “The age of Pro-creativity,” and gaining new skills to navigate the Donor – NonProfit relationship were the key themes of the conference.

Pause. Seed. Blossom. Or, in this case: Roast, Grow, Repair.

Fertile Grounds is the connective tissue that unites key components of existing businesses – coffee suppliers, retailers, farmers markets, city utilities – to develop and brand an urban food system process that is less wasteful, less carbon intensive, profitable and replicable. In this way, we hope to reduce the carbon impact of daily lifestyle choices related to food while promoting a sense of community and repairing the natural environment.