ITP recently interviewed Grant Partner Heidi Quante of HighWaterLine.  In 2012, Heidi joined forces with artist and HighWaterLine New York creator Eve Mosher in hopes that by amplifying the original New York project concept they will help communities realize how climate change will personally impact their local area.

ITP:  You've been an activist on several different issues throughout your career. What sparked you to become involved with the HighWaterLine project, and how did your collaboration with Eve Mosher come about?

Heidi:  I had been working on environmental issues for over 14 years in different capacities. I'd done everything from lobbying in Washington, D.C. to working with grassroots environmental organizations overseas and domestically. What I heard constantly from all of these groups was their desire to go "beyond the choir". There was a shared recognition that it wasn't enough to have support from the people already on board, that reaching out to the general public was necessary for real social change to occur. Even though the groups had this recognition, I found that they kept using the same tactics.   » Read More



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Invoking the Pause recently had the chance to talk with 2012 ITP Grant Partner and "Seeding Possibilities" grant recipient, Trathen Heckman.  Trathen is the founder and Executive Director of Daily Acts, the Board President of Transition U.S., and a backyard farmer. To register for Daily Acts 350 Home & Garden Challenge please click here.
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Eileen Thorsos is the Sustainability Education Program Coordinator for the Duke University Environmental Leadership Program & Duke University Superfund Research Center.  Her work includes integrating sustainability into Duke curricula and communicating with professional and general audiences about environmental health and toxicology.  She is interested in implementing effective communications approaches for shifting people's attitudes and behaviors related to climate change. 

Eileen 'invoked the pause' in the hills of North Carolina last fall with the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment team.  She recently spoke to us about this experience and the ensuing 'collateral delights'.

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Invoking The Pause (ITP) had the chance to speak with Joshua Fouts of  Science House Foundation regarding his recent ‘pause’ in Brazil: “Science, Imagination and the Art of Adaption: Understanding Climate Change Awareness Through the Prism of Brazil”.  Joshua and his team, consisting of biochemist Dr. Ana Carolina Zeri and documentarian Andre Blas, traveled to the westernmost area of the Brazilian Amazon.  » Read More

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From her earliest memories, Nicole Heller has been attuned to the relationships we share with our environment and other living things. Professionally, she became an ecologist, and in the last five years  has focused on climate change and how best to communicate its complexities to a global audience.  Her interest and advocacy began at a young age with a spider. As a girl she recalls creating a stir in the neighborhood, protecting spiders from mistreatment by one of the local children. » Read More

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In 2008, Britta Riley incubated the idea of growing fresh and nutritious food in her small, urban apartment in Brooklyn. By 2009, Windowfarms was born. Britta, an artist, designer, and entrepreneur, expanded her idea of a hydroponic garden to source knowledge and improve her design from a community of likeminded “do-it-yourselfers.” Fast-forward three years: an Invoking the Pause grant, an astounding $257,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign, and 32,000 world-wide Windowfarmers later; now, the first “fully manufactured in the USA” Windowfarm kits are about to make their way to homes and apartments around the world.

We spoke with Britta about her new project, the risks she took in bringing her latest design to market, and her 18-foot Windowfarm installation/public garden in Louisville, Kentucky.

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“As I traveled on, the air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses.

Before sunset I reached Louisville, Kentucky. The pigeons passed in undiminished number, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which flew lower as they passed over the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or more, the population fed on no flesh other that of pigeons, and talked of nothing but pigeons.”

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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.

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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.

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From the initial migration of the Council of Pronghorn to the Big Apple, to the experience of meeting over a thousand visitors on opening day of the Value of Water exhibit, Felicia Resor and Ben Roth describe the joy of bringing their brainchild to Manhattan.

We at ITP celebrate the successful collaboration of the Pronghorn project created by Terry Tempest Williams, Felicia Resor and Ben Roth and the Value of Water Exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Council of Pronghorn was designed to bear witness to the environmental harm of the Natural Gas Fracking operation in Wyoming.

While no one– including the artists themselves– anticipated the project’s migration to New York, these collaborations and the project’s proliferation is aligned with the mission of Invoking the Pause. And so far it has been a huge success: opening day saw 1,500 visitors to the Value of Water Exhibit, and an expected 1 million visitors are expected before the exhibit’s close on March 25th.

These are the summaries and excerpts from our interview with Ben and Felicia after the opening exhibit.

Photo Courtesy of Helen Kubicka

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