LongGreenHouse
Indigenous Culture, Permaculture, Digital Culture LongGreenHouse, UMaine’s first Wabanaki/Permaculture Center operated a “communiversity” linking Wabanaki LongHouse Elders gkisedtanamoogk and Miigam’agan, UMaine’s Still Water Lab and Permaculture courses, the Wassokeag K-12 school, and community workshops. Formed in 2004 as a cross-cultural partnership for regeneration of cultural and ecological networks, LongGreenHouse wove together indigenous culture, permaculture, and digital culture exploring synergies and cross cultural collaboration in the spirit of gratitude and reparation to local Indigenous people upon whose lands we live and thrive. Together we developed a Living/Learning model for thriving cultures in the Gulf of Maine bioregion based on the intersection of evolutionary wisdom, natural patterns, and social networking. LongGreenHouse housed and supported the Wassookeag School, based on an experiential and ecological curriculum; operated a Permaculture research lab for UMaine graduate and undergrads; developed and implemented protocols for Longhouse living in partnership with Wabanaki elders; and developed global social networks with state-of-the-art network technologies. In partnership with MOFGA, we also created the Still Water Permaculture Guild to support a Permaculture Journeyperson program inviting UMaine grads and undergrads to live on site and participate in the permaculture “communiversity”. Founders of the project include StillWater co-directors Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, gkisedtanamoogk and Miigam’agan, and Debbie […]
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Wild Blueberry Museum
The Maine Wild Blueberry Museum is one of the main projects that grew out of three years (2017-2020) of community engaged teaching and research in collaboration with Maine Wild Blueberry growers. To address small farmer’s concerns, the Wild Difference Project linked community partners with students from 5 university classes with the following outcomes: Launch of this online Maine Wild Blueberry Museum, Designs for the inaugural issue of Spire: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability, illustrations by student Colby Fogg Grant writing for NEH, NBRG, NextGen, with funding provided by NextGen A parallel social media/Facebook campaign, including creation of wild blueberry “emoji” in iTunes Funding for and development of a physical museum in Jonesboro, Maine Planning for a National Heritage Area in Downeast Maine Collaboration with local Washington County High schools in a mentor program to teach digital story skills and collect community blueberry raking stories for the museum I presented this material at two national community engagement conferences and planned to present “The Wild Difference: Hearing voices of small farmers and endangered plants in Downeast Maine” at the Compact20 Conference in Seattle, Washington April 2020, until it was cancelled due to COVID19. Democracy, Opportunity, and Voice (conference themes) in the […]
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Tributaries
Students in my New Media Digital Storytelling classes produce a variety of different types of stories. Tributaries, and online story magazine hosts some of their text/image based stories. Some have audio as well as video embedded, though they often begin with a text framing. Past projects also include Twine hypertext game/stories and iBook stories.
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