DYK [Did You Know?] New Urban Downtown > Mesa's 21st Century Café Society

Mesa's 21st Century Café Society will reposition the Mesa Arts Center campus as an inspiring “third space” for the city by creating a welcoming and interesting environment and gathering place through interactive public art in a setting featuring café tables, food/beverage service, and live performances.

LEARN MORE  >> http://www.artplaceamerica.org/grantee/21st-century-caf%C3%A9-society

Spark!! Mesa's Festival of Creativity > Entice Your Senses

SIGHTS & SOUNDS
spark! Mesa's Festival of Creativity, will provide an immersive environment to celebrate the work of amazing, creative people and to discover the creative thinker inside every visitor!  The event will take place at the Mesa Arts Center Friday, March 18th and Saturday, March 19th from 12N - 10PM
 
Each day and every night there will be a variety of Musical Performances featuring popular local and regional artists in Country, Rock, Latin, Blues and Jazz. The festival will offer food, fun and creative activities for the whole family! 
 


With the exception of ticketed performances in the MAC's theaters all festival activities and outdoor performances are free of charge.
https://www.mesaartscenter.com/index.php/events/spark-mesas-festival-of-creativity

YARN BOMBING: Shaking Up The Way We See The World //Things We Hadn't Seen Before

Textile artist Magda Sayeg transforms urban landscapes into her own playground by decorating everyday objects with colorful knit and crochet works. These warm, fuzzy "yarn bombs" started small, with stop sign poles and fire hydrants in Sayeg's hometown, but soon people found a connection to the craft and spread it across the world. "We all live in this fast-paced, digital world, but we still crave and desire something that's relatable," Sayeg says. "Hidden power can be found in the most unassuming places, and we all possess skills that are just waiting to be discovered."
This talk was presented at an official TED conference November 2015, uploaded yesterday. 132,075 views.
Running time: 5:35
You might have seen some yarn bombing around downtown last year on trees @ MAC

Yours truly likes this Bull near Wall Street in New York City . . .
Watch the video using the link below -  go see where Magda Syeg started and why this turned into a worldwide phenomenon in ten years.
Enjoy + Have fun!
http://www.ted.com/talks/magda_sayeg_how_yarn_bombing_grew_into_a_worldwide_movement

Encryption Debate: Tech Companies Take on The FBI

Here's Why 35 Tech Firms Are Backing Apple in Encryption Debate
4:47 PM MST Wed 02 March 2016
Discussion by Michael Beckerman, Internet Association's CEO with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Business

4:51
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-03-02/why-35-tech-firms-are-backing-apple-in-encryption-debate

Keeping You Informed > BIG AGENDA @ City Council Study Session Tomorrow



City Council Study Session Thu 03 March 2016
7:30 AM Mesa Council Chambers
57 East First Street
Mayor John Giles
Vice Mayor Dennis Kavanaugh - District 3
Councilmember Dave Richins - District 1
Councilmember Alex Finter - District 2
Councilmember Chris Glover - District 4
Councilmember David Luna - District 5
Councilmember Kevin Thompson - District 6
Watch it live on Mesa Channel11 if you can't be there >> http://mesa11.com/ondemand/
 
Presentations/Action Items: 16-0143 16-0224 16-0242 16-0199 16-0265
16-0143 Hear a presentation and discuss an update on the Police Department's Forensic Services Division.
16-0224 Hear a presentation and discuss an update of Falcon Field Airport and provide direction on its future development.
16-0242 Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide direction on a proposed Tech Center to be located on property immediately west of Falcon Field Airport.
16-0199 Hear a presentation and discuss the City's FY 2016/17 financial forecast.
16-0265 Information pertaining to the current Job Order Contracting projects

Link to City Council Meetings and Agenda Calendar >> http://mesa.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx

New Interactive Public Art @ Mesa Arts Center > Under-Wraps For Now in Daylight

No, this is not just another noisy construction site for Creative Place Making here in the New Urban DTMesa, starting just days after the local highly-acclaimed installment of the international Pop-Up event Play Me, I'm Yours! with 23 of those of  wildly-imagined pianos now getting moved to satellite locations all over the city.
What's Next? [thinking way ahead to April, dear readers]
Musical Shadows





PHOTO CREDIT: PAUL RAMIREZ


If you were here last year for MAC's Spark! Festival of Creativity - it's taking place this year in about two weeks -  you saw a prototyping of Musical Shadows Interactive work by Daily tous les jours, a studio lab in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
This permanent interactive installation at the North Campus entrance from Main Street is part of many years of support for
Mesa's 21st Century Café Society that is repositioning the Mesa Arts Center campus as an inspiring “third space” for the city by creating a welcoming and interesting environment and gathering place through interactive public art in a setting featuring café tables, food/beverage service, and live performances.

Hey! Sounds great - so, where is all that all the time??
If this is the third place, what is second and first??
See http://www.artplaceamerica.org/grantee/21st-century-caf%C3%A9-society for recent updates, press, and events from this project

Daily tous les jours is an interaction design studio with a focus on participation – empowering people to have a place in the stories that are told around them. They create collective experiences.

http://www.dailytouslesjours.com/
https://twitter.com/dailytlj
https://www.facebook.com/Dailytouslesjours/timeline
  
OK, so Mesa Arts Center is the grantee. . . Who's the grantor? and what - bottom-line, please - is the cost?
According to the interactive map of current Capital Improvement Projects CIPs on the City of Mesa website
CP 0347 was awarded by the City Council 19 Jan 2016
Amount: $443,898
Start Date: 01 Feb 2016
Finish Date: 25 March 2016

The generous organization supporting this ArtPlace America. Readers of this blog have seen a number of posts here before. If you need another introduction here it is
ArtPlace America (ArtPlace) is a ten-year collaboration among a number of foundations, federal agencies, and financial institutions that works to position arts and culture as a core sector of comprehensive community planning and development in order to help strengthen the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities.
ArtPlace focuses its work on Creative PlaceMaking, which describes projects in which art plays an intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development. This brings artists, arts organizations, and artistic activity into the suite of placemaking strategies pioneered by Jane Jacobs and her colleagues, who believed that community development must be locally informed, human-centric, and holistic.
In practice, this means having arts and culture represented alongside sectors like housing and transportation – with each sector recognized as part of any healthy community; as requiring planning and investment from its community; and as having a responsibility to contribute to its community’s overall future.
In scanning the community planning and development field, we found five types of stakeholders working across ten sectors that, while not comprehensive, capture a majority of work taking place in communities:

It is ArtPlace's goal to demonstrate the unique value add that arts and culture can bring to each of the 50 cells of this matrix.
It is ArtPlace's goal to demonstrate the unique value add that arts and culture can bring to each of the 50 cells of this matrix.

What Works To Make Transit-Oriented Development Equitable Here in The New Urban DTMesa?

Transit Transforms Communities. But Not All by Itself.

by Richard Manson, Program Vice President, LISC.

In  a recent story from LISC what makes this work demands

focus, money and determination on the part of communities and their leaders.
Your MesaZona blogger recently sent an email to the Public Information Office of Mayor John Giles asking for a follow-up quote to a couple of lines in an earliest post about a grant from State Farm
"In Arizona, funding will advance a corridor redevelopment plan in Tempe and commercial revitalization work along Main Street in Mesa.

Mesa Mayor John Giles, among other city, state, and national leaders working in public-private partnerships, has been a strong supporter for transit-oriented development to regenerate the New Urban Downtown Mesa.
He was a part of the on-site visit here last summer by SF Fed Reserve Bank President John Williams to encourage investment in Creative Place Making."

Quite surprisingly, this arrived in the inbox quite fast

Hi Tim,

Here is a quote from Mayor Giles.

 “I’m excited for all of the opportunities that transit oriented development can bring to downtown Mesa. From arts and education to housing and nightlife, I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

Thanks,

Melissa Randazzo
Public Information
Office of the Mayor

This blog started out just one year ago writing and publishing about transit-oriented development here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa, having attracted some interest with over 21,000 views.