Heat 👋 🌊
Eric De Feo at the beautiful Made x Hudson in Leeds, NY during Place Corps' visit this past week.
Hello Friends,
As June comes to a close amidst a heatwave and thunderstorms, we reflect on the incredible energy that surrounded us this past month (along with those flashes of heat lightning!).
This month brought with it the longest day of the year and community coming together in safe ways to celebrate reopenings and rememberings. We continue to make connections with new and old friends as we build relationships throughout the Hudson Valley that will help our participants learn to build sustainable livelihoods while serving their communities. Also! In regards to serving community, we continue to update our calendar with volunteer opportunities. If you have a community event or call for volunteers, feel free to share them with Rebecca at info@placecorps.org. We'll add it to our calendar!
We recently met up with innovator and entrepreneur Eric De Feo over at Made x Hudson in Leeds, NY. We learned more about the Hudson Community Incubator as we consider cool entrepreneurship and start-up support in the Hudson Valley for post-Place Corps opportunities for our fellows. Also, in line with incredible visits, we met up with artist and activist Joe Concora of O+ Positive to learn more about his newest project BLUEprint which represents a consortium of Kingston-area artists and businesses including The Farm Bridge, the Farm Hub, NoVo Foundation, and multiple artists/musicians, to create an agriculture and arts center in what was known as Tech City and was the former IBM campus. BLUEprint will be hosting a series of summer events including concerts, dances, and outdoor movies this summer. To learn more and also to apply to host an event visit www.blueprinthv.com.
“BLUEprint is about mapping the future without knowing the result – it is a living map,” said BLUEprint team member Saidee Sonnenberg. “BLUEprint seeks to be a destination that champions the creativity of makers and artists who are the backbone of Ulster County. We are an inclusive, people-first organization that respects the diverse landscape of our community and welcomes all event proposals for the Enterprise West campus.”
It's always a blessing to explore our place in the summer, and this year feels particularly special with so many opportunities for re-connection. We are practicing active re-connection to our place through research that we would like to share with you. A few of our current questions: what do we mean by re-matriation? What does queer ecology mean to you? Can you name eight types of fungi, five types of trees, and three types of stone that live within a ten-mile radius of your home? What are things to consider when you answer "Where are we?"
And as we navigate re-entry to the social world we have one other question for you: are you experiencing a rekindling of FOMO (fear of missing out)? With so many reunions and reconnections, we find ourselves uplifting the reminder to be a good friend to ourselves. Let's treat ourselves and those around us gently. Rest, celebrate, take care, be safe, and find ways to show up that are sustainable so we can keep showing up for each other. A lesson we learned this year is less can be more and unscheduled space is valuable space for surprise delight. More lessons from the garden, from fungi, and from thunderstorms to carry with us.
Lastly, one of our inaugural Place Corps residents, Lila Glenn is facilitating a special workshop this Friday that offers an understanding and application of permaculture principles to social systems to help design and build resilient, diverse, and harmonious practices for oneself, organizations or businesses. These were key learnings offered by Regenerate Change in our Place Corps program and we are so thrilled Lila is sharing this learning forward.
Warmly,
The Place Corps Team
We all need each other.
This type of interdependence is the greatest challenge
to the maturity of individual and group functioning."
― Kurt Lewin