See brief descriptions of each opportunity and links to application materials below.

Communications & Outreach

The Communications & Outreach Intern will contribute to outreach efforts designed to heighten awareness of the people, projects, organizations, and ideas Sprout serves through its programs. The intern will help to enhance internal and external communications, produce multimedia documentation coverage, and conduct promotional efforts to raise awareness of the impact of Sprout’s work.

Download the Communications & Outreach internship description.

Catalytic Funding

The Catalytic Funding Intern will  assist in the operation of Sprout’s catalytic funding programs including the Seed Award, Spark Award, and Social Innovation Exchange programs.  The intern will provide assistance with Sprout’s decisionmaking processes and with management of funded projects, including Sprout’s internal processes for documentation and archive management.  

Download the Catalytic Funding internship description.

Engagement & Collaboration

The Engagement & Collaboration Intern will contribute to outreach efforts designed to serve the people, projects, organizations, and ideas Sprout serves through its programs. The intern will help build Sprout’s broad network of constituents, those working to transform the Pittsburgh region into a better place to live, work, play, and raise a family.

Download the Engagement & Collaboration internship description.

Kids+Creativity has long been a resource for Pittsburghers whose work is at the intersection of technology, learning and play. Now, with the Kids+Creativity network newly placed under the direction of Spark — the Sprout Fund’s effort to foster new ideas for learning using digital media and the arts — the enthusiasm among K+C members is obvious…

Pittsburgh is now “uniquely poised to excel” at the juncture of high-tech and children’s educational needs, “given the history of innovation and the size of the market,” noted Sprout Executive Director Cathy Lewis Long when she and her staff spoke in a quieter moment about the changes at Kids+Creativity. Spark will be an intermediary between early childhood learning experts, with a hope “to spur conversations and try to connect these things in a strategic fashion, [remaining] broad enough that it would reach out to as many organizations and educational institutions as possible,” said Sprout’s deputy director, Matt Hannigan.

The network has had approximately 100 active members and another 200 on the periphery, up to now. Spark expects to add hundreds more and bring them all to the fore — and to each other — thanks to the breadth and variety of companies, agencies, start-ups and other organizations they’ve been working with over the past three years. In relaunching Kids+Creativity, “we want to open the gates and get a better sense to folks about how to engage,” said Hannigan.

Stay tuned for more great news from Spark in the weeks and months to come. Keep up to date by visiting sparkpgh.org.

Only offered to former Seed Award winners, the Root Award builds on a project’s previous successes and enhance the sustainability of the project.  The Root Award has been offered only twice before: in 2007 to the Zany Umbrella Circus for their Zany Tent, and in 2008 to Bike Pittsburgh for their Bike Friendly Employer program.

Conflict Kitchen, a restaurant that serves food from the national cuisine of countries with whom the United States is in conflict, will use its Root Award to relocate from their current location on Baum Boulevard in East Liberty to a more permanent and prominent location in downtown Pittsburgh. Conflict Kitchen received a Seed Award of $7,000 in late 2009 and opened for business in 2010.

Conflict Kitchen is intended to provoke the public into greater inquiry and discourse about America’s foreign policy. The Root Award will help Conflict Kitchen nurture this public discourse by providing the project with an indoor space in which to host events and programming, as well the greater flexibility needed to change-out their menu and identity to keep pace with rapidly developing world affairs.

With more kitchen space, the downtown lunch crowd can add another exciting menu to the diversity of downtown dining options. And with former Salt of the Earth general manager Robert Sayre at the helm, Conflict’s kitchen may find itself on the “must-eat” list of foodies everywhere.

Stay tuned for more updates as the new location anticipates to open in late 2012!

The latest funding opportunity from the Social Innovation Exchange (SiX) is here! The Sprout Fund has issued a Request for Proposals to support a Creative Placemaking Event that would catalyze community action around the many gateways and corridors that connect Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods.

During the month of February, the Gateways & Corridors Working Group met to continue a conversation about civic design solutions related to gateways and corridors that began at January’s Social Innovation Exchange (SiX) and workshop opportunities to enhance regional gateways and neighborhood corridors through actionable, grassroots projects that could be catalyzed for $10,000.

Through an iterative review process and facilitated dialogue, the designers, architects, and developers who made up the Gateways & Corridors Working Group explored six opportunities ranging from design competitions to awareness campaigns. The working group identified Events & Festivals as the most feasible opportunity and the one most likely to galvanize community support and civic engagement at the neighborhood level.

Making Places Happen

So what is Creative Placemaking? It’s a collaborative community process that enables people to enhance the unique sense of identity that is found in distinct common spaces. Gateways and corridors help define these spaces by communicating the sense of place visually and physically.

As architect and planner Paul Tellers puts it:

Pittsburgh is known as a city with distinct neighborhoods.  The uniqueness and diversity of city neighborhoods enriches city living.  A neighborhood’s character can be enhanced by a well-defined gateway, signaling to the visitor that they have arrived at a welcome destination.  Some Pittsburgh neighborhoods have marked their gateways with signage, public art, or landscaping—

• The gateways to Deutschtown on E. Ohio Street and to Bloomfield on Liberty Avenue are celebrated with wall murals.
• The eagle sculptures on the abutments of the Boulevard of the Allies Bridge over Forbes Avenue enhance the gateway entrance to Oakland.
• Heroic horse sculptures on Stanton Avenue mark the entrance to Highland Park…

Gateways in the city mark the boundaries or limits of urban corridors, which are the clusters of uses centered on a main street.  A city corridor has a single identity defined by its primary activity, such as a retail corridor, a manufacturing corridor, or an arts corridor…A corridor can be the centerpiece of a neighborhood, and the gateway to the neighborhood occurs on the corridor.  *

While Pittsburgh is home to some 90 neighborhoods, the gaps that exist between these communities can sometimes appear more like barriers than connections. Pittsburgh’s iconic bridges often span communities that have shared issues and concerns. Thus, they present an opportunity to inspire collaboration between neighborhoods and celebrate the connections that exist in our city.

This grant offers a chance to bring neighborhoods closer together through celebration. Proposals are invited for events or festivals and begin community conversations about two or more communities’ current infrastructure and future aspirations for the bridges, gateways, and corridors that connect them.

Request for Proposals: Creative Placemaking

Proposals are requested from multiple partnering neighborhood groups and/or interdisciplinary teams for a creative placemaking event that is not limited to but may include programmatic elements such as:

• Promoting bridges and connections between neighborhoods
• Celebrating neighborhood / city pride
• Showcasing neighborhood assets
• Catalyzing new partnerships / collaborations
• Raising awareness of bridges
• Public art
• Health and wellness activities
• Soliciting community feedback about plans and priorities
• Collecting information / data / stories about bridges
• Concerts and performances

SiX is an initiative of The Pittsburgh Foundation in partnership with Pop City Media, the Luma Institute, and The Sprout Fund with additional support from The Buhl Foundation.

* Adapted from Notes on Civic Design, an introduction by Paul Tellers commissioned by The Sprout Fund.

Civic Design is a term that we hear frequently, but what does it really mean?

The word “design” in its broadest sense is envisioning something in the future that does not yet exist.  Design has a positive connotation in that the designer is planning a future that is better than today.

The word “civic” is derived from the Greek words civis—citizen, or civitas—citizenship.

So civic design is planning the future, by the people, for the common good.  Civic design is in the public realm.  It is for the benefit of the community, not of private individuals.  Civic design implies a public process where stakeholders, those that have a stake in design outcomes, have a say in what is designed.  A successful civic design process engages the community that will benefit from the implementation of the consensus design.

Gateways and Corridors

Gateways are entrances to something new.  At a gateway we depart from where we were and arrive at where we are going.  A gateway is a point of simultaneous departure and arrival.

Where a gateway is a point, a corridor is linear.  In a building the front door is a gateway.  The visitor departs from the outdoors and enters the interior.  In a building a corridor is the pathway that provides access to all the functional spaces within.  In terms of time, a gateway is a moment; a corridor implies movement through time.

There are gateways and corridors in the city.  Some are readily apparent.  Others are go unrecognized.

A city gateway has a distant view of the city center.  A gateway to the city of Pittsburgh can be defined by a distant view of the cluster of downtown towers at the convergence of rivers and hills.  There are gateways to the city itself that are widely celebrated—

• Emerging from the Fort Pitt Tunnel with the sudden up-close view of the city framed by the bridge structure
• Rounding a bend on the Parkway East with Monongahela River valley drawing the eye to the cluster of towers at the Point
• Similarly, arriving at a high point heading south on Route 279  with the East Street Valley framing the city view

Pittsburgh is known as a city with distinct neighborhoods.  The uniqueness and diversity of city neighborhoods enriches city living.  A neighborhood’s character can be enhanced by a well-defined gateway, signaling to the visitor that they have arrived at a welcome destination.  Some Pittsburgh neighborhoods have marked their gateways with signage, public art, or landscaping—

• The gateways to Deutschtown on E. Ohio Street and to Bloomfield on Liberty Avenue are celebrated with wall murals.
• The eagle sculptures on the abutments of the Boulevard of the Allies Bridge over Forbes Avenue enhance the gateway entrance to Oakland.
• Heroic horse sculptures on Stanton Avenue mark the entrance to Highland Park.

Often district gateways are less purposeful.  Rivers, valleys, tunnels, and bridges define the edges of districts and are the often unrecognized gateways of Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

Gateways in the city mark the boundaries or limits of urban corridors, which are the clusters of uses centered on a main street.  A city corridor has a single identity defined by its primary activity, such as a retail corridor, a manufacturing corridor, or an arts corridor.  A corridor, with its unified identity, can still be an area of mixed uses and could overlap zoning districts.  A corridor can be the centerpiece of a neighborhood, and the gateway to the neighborhood occurs on the corridor.  So a neighborhood or district gateway can be at a boundary between neighborhoods, along an urban corridor.

Gateways and corridors that are distinct and memorable enhancements to the urban experience.

The website demonstrates the deep connections that have emerged organically over the last 5 years to yield dozens of projects that improve the lives and learning of children and youth.

The site was launched in conjunction with a strong Pittsburgh presence at the MacArthur Foundation‘s Digital Media & Learning 2012 conference in San Francisco. More than 30 Pittsburghers are representing the creativity and ingenuity of our region in panels and sessions at the conference, which is the premier event in the burgeoning world of digital media and connected learning.

Today the website includes both projects funded directly by The Sprout Fund through its Spark program and those of members of the Pittsburgh delegation to DML 2012. Throughout the next month, more people, projects, and organizations will be added, as well as enhanced listings for upcoming events and opportunities to support people leading activities in these fields in Pittsburgh.

Stay tuned for more info in March and April about the re-launch of the Spark program and its new role serving all the “Modern Day Fred Rogers” of the Pittsburgh Kids+Creativity Network.

Read more about the project and see the designs at sproutfund.org/publicart.

Leave comments and let us know what you think!

This history is told in Building a Better Robot, a new book offering a retrospective on Roboto’s first ten years in words and pictures, analyzing the successes and failures, and providing inspiration and insight to a new generation of activists and artists looking to create their own spaces. The book was supported in part by a Seed Award.

Read O’Driscoll’s full review at the Pittsburgh City Paper.

Sprout has committed at least $50,000 to help turn the ideas that emerge from these four sessions into innovative community solutions with tangible results and immediate outcomes.

From the many creative ideas that emerged last night, we’re excited to announce the first two projects that will move forward from SiX: a request for proposals for a specific project idea and the convening of working group about gateway & corridors!

Request for Proposals: Pittsburgh Steps Project

A project idea all about our city steps!

The Sprout Fund offers catalytic support for a project that will highlight one of our most unique neighborhood assets and celebrate Pittsburgh’s historic built environment.

Pittsburgh is home to miles upon miles of city steps that connect commuters to workplaces, hilltops to riverfronts, and neighbors to main street commercial districts. However, many of these critical linkages are in various states of disrepair and neglect, or are otherwise hidden and unknown to many.

Proposals requesting support of up to $10,000 are sought from interdisciplinary teams for activities that are not limited to but may include programmatic elements such as:

Gateways & Corridors Working Group

Join Sprout, participants from SiX, and other interested community members for a series of conversations to help further refine ideas developed about gateways and corridors. This working group will develop the criteria for a grassroots solution or actionable project that could be catalyzed by an award of up to $10,000 to enhance regional gateways, further define neighborhood corridors, and contribute to community vitality.

Other Ideas that Emerged

Ideation at SiX, led by Luma Institute, began with creative idea generation, followed by envisioning possibilities, and concluded with group presentations of the top twelve collaborative concepts. The final posters, as drawn by the groups, appear below.

Gathering Places

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 1 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 2 concept poster

Getting Around

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 3 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 4 concept poster

Vacant Buildings & Vacant Lots

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 5 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 6 concept poster

The Great Outdoors

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 7 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 8 concept poster

Street Life & Streetscapes

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 9 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 10 concept poster

Gateways & Corridors

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 11 concept poster

January 2012 Social Innovation Exchange Team 12 concept poster

On the edge of the parking lot, Marianne Hunnell nudges the last table into place. Local farmers have already filled the rest with yellow corn and purple eggplant, striped squash and cabbages the size of bowling balls. Over the chatter of the early birds catching up with friends under the nearby gazebo, Hunnell hears the slow churn of the Monongahela pushing north to Pittsburgh. Mingo Native Americans once called the flat, rich farmlands around this elbow in the river “Delight.” Greensboro is still aptly named—this borough on the western edge of Greene County has long been known for its produce, some of which is piled atop the tables of the Greensboro Farmer’s Market and Fair.

For such a bounty, the market had meager beginnings. When Hunnell started planning it in January 2011, the market’s modest vendor fees weren’t enough to purchase advertisement, and local businesses were too tapped out to invest. “When you live in a small community, it’s the same businesses getting hit up all the time for money,” Hunnell explains.

Bettie Stammerjohn, executive director of the Community Foundation of Greene County, agrees. The Foundation typically supports ongoing community projects, but now Stammerjohn can tell new applicants about the Seed Award. She says that since the 2008 economic downturn, community foundations have been wary of risk. “It’s difficult to find funding for startup projects and pilot projects,” she says, “and to have the Seed Award here to provide that opportunity is phenomenal.”

The Sprout Fund first got involved in the area in 2008 when it partnered with regional funders including the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Community Foundation of Fayette County to bring Pittsburgh 250 Community Connections grants to 14 counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania including Greene and Fayette counties in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Pittsburgh’s founding.

Three years later the Sprout Fund was seeking to sow its Seed Awards outside Pittsburgh, and Greene and Fayette counties seemed the natural choice. One of the first six Seed Awards there energized Hunnell’s farmer’s market. “That got the ball rolling. That’s when we went straight out and got our signs,” says Hunnell. She estimates the big banner hung at the gazebo—not to mention the local musicians—helped draw a crowd of about a hundred every Saturday morning in late summer and early fall.

The Greensboro Farmer’s Fair and Market is about more than local products or good music. The market gives out-of-towners the occasion to discover Greensboro’s local grocery, restaurants, and bed and breakfast.

This small borough, whose industrial-age prosperity waned after World War I, welcomes any economic boost. The steamers that once plied the Monongahela no longer stop in Greensboro to pick up produce, glass, and pottery. A hundred years ago, those products may have been boated across the Fayette County line to Point Marion, just a few miles south where the Cheat River joins the Monongahela. Next to Greensboro corn, dock workers might have packed straw-filled crates of glass automobile gear-shift knobs, decorative trays, mugs, window glass, and dozens of other products made by the Houze glass factories.

Starting in 1899, Leon Houze (rhymes with “whose”) built a glass manufacturing juggernaut in Point Marion. Over the decades, Houze glass ended up everywhere, even outer space. It would be used in NASA vehicles, sunglasses, taxi cab signs, car engines, tumblers, military goggles, and the windows of the White House when it was renovated in the early 1950s. Houze’s methods for screen printing on glass were so innovative, pop artist Peter Max studied there in the 1960s.

Public Art Transforms Point Marion

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the steel, coal, and glass industries that had fueled Southwestern Pennsylvania shriveled up, leaving many industrial river towns bereft of their biggest employers. In 2004, the Houze Glass Corporation, Point Marion’s economic engine for more than a century, closed its doors.

Catherine McCollom, founder and principal of McCollom Development Strategies in Confluence, Somerset County, thinks it’s time that Point Marion and other distressed river towns fire up the new economic engine of ecology tourism and heritage tourism. In April 2011, McCollom Development Strategies created the Upper Mon River Towns Public Art Program, which will help five river communities in Southwestern Pennsylvania produce public art installations. They will be the focal points of a broad effort to improve signage directing river users to local businesses, build and improve boat launches, and organize boating trips.

A Seed Award will fund the public art installation at Point Marion. McCollom says that art is a vital part of the plan. “We can tell the press, we can tell visitors, ‘Don’t forget to check this out.’ And in telling them about the art project, we can tell them about Point Marion,” she says. The installation will incorporate pottery and glass to reflect the borough’s manufacturing heritage. This summer’s call for committee members drew out local craftspeople and artists who had never previously participated in community development.

Planting New Seeds in Fayette & Greene Counties

The Sprout Fund’s ability to kick-start young, creative people into civic engagement through creative projects is a big reason the Benedum Foundation funded the new Seed Awards in Fayette and Greene counties, according to Benedum Vice President James Denova. He hopes that the Seed Awards will spark economic growth in places that are outside of Pittsburgh’s foundation community. “Now it can happen in places like Point Marion or Greensboro,” says Denova, “in the same way it can happen in East Liberty or Lawrenceville.”

It’s happening in three other Greene and Fayette county communities, too. Seed Awards are supporting Snow, Ice, and Art, an environmental project in Ohiopyle State Park, Building Interest in Buildings, a photography project to reintroduce the historic buildings of Brownsville to its residents, and Green Arc Green Art, a recycled art project for developmentally disabled adults in Ruff Creek. The fall and winter round of Seed Awards promises to nourish yet another new crop of vital projects.

Even a dilapidated caboose can be revitalized by a Seed Award. Point Marion’s glass and Greensboro’s produce might have reached Connellsville, Fayette County, on the old Baltimore and Ohio railroad, or B&O, now part of CSX Transportation. When the coal-fueled industries in Southwestern Pennsylvania neared the end of the line, B&O abandoned one of its cabooses in Connellsville. The city eventually moved the rusty car to Yough Park, near where the 141-mile Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) trail enters Connellsville along the Youghiogheny River. There the caboose sat, decaying slowly into history.

When Emma strong heard about the caboose, she sensed an opportunity. Strong is part of the SCA Trail Town Outreach Corps, a collaboration that promotes sustainable development in communities along the GAP. All the Trail Towns—except Connellsville—had a place where curious GAP hikers and bikers could get maps and other information. Strong thought the caboose would make the perfect trail welcome center. But looking at the rust-streaked paint and rotting wooden interior, she could see it would take a lot of hands.

Completing an application for a Seed Award helped Strong engage community members in the Connellsville Caboose Welcome Center project. Local vocational students would refinish the metal exterior and build stairs and a wheelchair ramp. The city road painter agreed to repaint the caboose B&O red. A scale train modeling club would provide a historical write-up of the city’s history with the railroad.

In September, the Seed Award paid for Welcome Center signs and for local artists to adorn the caboose with a mural of kayakers and bikers. A local father-and-son carpentry team refinished the interior. CSX recently donated ties, spikes, and plates to mount the caboose on rails. Eventually, the Welcome Center will beckon hikers and bikers of the GAP with maps of the trail, brochures about local businesses, and a guest book.
Strong says that the Trail Towns program will assess the Welcome Center’s impact on the Connellsville economy. “The Seed Award is perfect for a beginning project,” she says of the caboose’s rehabilitation. “It will lead to bigger things in the town.”

But it’s important to remember that at the heart of Seed Award projects are the small stories of one person connecting with another. Marianne Hunnell sees that at the Greensboro Farmer’s Fair and Market. “It’s bringing the community together,” she says.

After setting up the last vendor’s table next to the gazebo, Hunnell waves to an elderly man whose face is still flushed from his morning walk. He asks her where he can find fresh jam for his toast. Hunnell smiles. And just like that, they’re neighbors.

Upcoming Seed Award Funding Opportunities

Brainstorm with The Sprout Fund!

To learn how you or your organization can take part in this exciting funding opportunity, The Sprout Fund invites you to join us for our graphically-facilitated community brainstorming sessions. These sessions are your opportunity to think creatively about your communities and explore ideas that might be a good fit for the Seed Award program.

• Sprout will be in Fayette County on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 from 5:30-7:30pm at the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce, 65 West Main Street in Uniontown.
• Sprout staff will also be available to answer questions and discuss project ideas on Friday, February 17, from 10am – 12 noon at the Panera Bread Co. in Uniontown (Fayette County), and on Friday, February 24, from 10am – 12 noon at Rising Creek Bakery in Mount Morris (Greene County).  RSVP is required.

To attend, please RSVP via email to gro.dnuftuorpsnull@drawadees or call (412) 325-0646.

After a national search for highly qualified artists with Pittsburgh roots, four teams of finalists were selected by Sprout’s Public Art Committee to create design proposals. On December 5, the finalists were revealed at the 2011 Public Art Forum.

The artists’ final proposals were debuted in installations at 941 Penn Ave and 805 Liberty Ave during First Night Pittsburgh on New Year’s Eve.

After a national search for highly qualified artists with Pittsburgh roots, four teams of finalists were selected by Sprout’s Public Art Committee to create design proposals. On December 5, the finalists were revealed at the 2011 Public Art Forum. The event was held at the Cabaret at Theater Square and provided Downtown stakeholders with the chance to meet the competing artists and learn about public art in the city. Renee Piechocki of the Office of Public Art and Steve Glassman of the CDCP presented at the Forum.

The video above captures the sentiments of those in attendance and gives and overview of the project.

Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. According to a report released in 2008 by Harvard University, mankind builds the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver every week. And invariably, as the number of humans living in any given area increases, the number of other living species, flora and fauna both, declines to the detriment of all.

In the winter of 2010, The Sprout Fund Spring Program granted $190,000 to 20 new biodiversity projects in Southwestern Pennsylvania, to preserve its rich natural resources and encourage creative attempts to enhance biodiversity.

Garfield Farms BioShelter and Food Systems Center

In 2008, when The Open Door church decided to start an urban farm in Garfield, a Pittsburgh neighborhood blotted with blight, they knew it would be easy to find a parcel or two of vacant property. What they didn’t expect was to find almost three acres, approximately 25 lots, of empty land near the water tower. Formerly, the space held row homes and other housing, the last of which was torn down the year the team started planting.

“The whole project is really based on reclamation of abandoned, neglected land,” says Rev. John Creasy, who spearheaded the effort.

The group promptly leased the land through the City’s “Green Up” program, and got started.

“We’re not growing on the entire three acres yet. We’re on about half of it now, and each year we’re expanding,” Creasy says.

With a small staff and a group of volunteers, the Garfield Community Farm maintains an orchard and three garden spaces, which grow herbs, greens and a variety of vegetables. Most of the farm’s crops are either donated to a local food bank or divided among the 15 families participating in its small 20-week CSA, membership to which is available at a discount for low-income individuals.

Since it began, the farm has been gradually expanding space-wise, seeping outward as volunteers rehabilitate soil in new areas of its 3-acre plot. Now, the group is interested in expanding its operation time-wise, too. Its newest project, funded through the Spring Program, entails construction of the Garfield Farms BioShelter and Food Systems Center, which will allow the farm to grow many of the same crops it already produces, but to do so almost year round.

“The difference between a bioshelter and a greenhouse is that it’s designed and managed with ecological principles at its foundation,” Creasy says.

For instance, a bioshelter is heated naturally by things like direct sunlight, compost piles warmed during daytime hours or perhaps a wood burning stove. Inside, plants will be grown according to a school of design called permaculture, which aims to replicate food systems as they naturally occur, creating biodiversity and harnessing mutually beneficial relationships between plants, animals and insects.

“It doesn’t necessarily look like a place where food is growing. It looks more like a jungle, even though pretty much everything is edible. There’s always some insect that is eating another kind of insect; there’s a biological balance,” Creasy explains.

The bioshelter, measuring 30 feet by 20 feet, will be constructed in spring 2012, once land titles are officially transferred, and will be fully operational by the following fall.

The farm has always been a learning space for local grade-schoolers who hike a short way over from a nearby elementary school. Creasy expects the bioshelter will help expand the farm’s educational mission. He is currently talking with several other public and private schools to arrange class trips, during which students will tour the shelter, learn about food systems and perhaps, have a bite of something green.

Borland Green Ecological Garden

In East Liberty, permaculture techniques have been used to rehabilitate a once vacant lot into a garden space alongside the Borland Green Ecovillage, a cooperative housing group.

Pittsburgh Permaculture carefully integrated over 100 different species to mimic a natural system in a space that now includes two food forests growing edible fruits and nuts.

“In a forest, for example, there would be canopy species, shrub species and an understory,” says Michelle Czolba, a co-director of Pittsburgh Permaculture.

The food forests in the garden are intentionally designed in this way to enhance their natural productivity. When leaves fall from the trees, they’ll form a layer of mulch and the nutrients will return to the soil. In the same way, understory species draw nutrients from deep in the ground and bring them to the surface. To a large extent, the system will become self-sustaining.

“We’re trying to utilize the energy of the earth, which is going to happen regardless of what we do, but we’re sort of manipulating it to grow plants that are useful for humans,” Czolba says.

The space will be maintained by volunteers in the Borland Green Garden Group, which includes residents and other interested community members.

Green Roofs for Bus Shelters

A new green roof bus shelter in East Liberty is one of the first of its kind. It was inspired by a simple fact: When you look at a multi-story office building from street level, it’s hard to tell what the roof looks like. When you look at a bus shelter, it’s pretty obvious.

East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI) wanted to build a green roof at eye level, to show passersby how the technology works and what it can do for their communities.

“The first step is just letting people know that these things exist and that big-picture environmental issues can be solved with green roofs,” says Loralyn Fabian, ELDI sustainable design coordinator.

For one, green roofs are a huge source of energy savings. Plants and soil mediums serve as insulation, soaking up heat in the summer and preventing its escape in the winter. They clean the air, reduce urban heat island effect and act as sponges, mitigating storm water runoff.

The shelter in East Liberty, built at the corner of Penn and Highland Avenues, takes it one step further. It’s the first green roof bus shelter in the country to foster biodiversity, in both plants and animals.

Often the “green” in green roof is represented solely by plants like sedums, a group of succulents great for ground cover. The East Liberty roof, however, will incorporate over a dozen plant varieties, most of them native, to foster an aesthetic appeal and create a microhabitat that will attract local fauna, including butterflies and birds.

Its design is atypical, too. Foam core will be inserted under the soil medium, to create a cascading, mountainous effect.

“This gives it depth and a more natural feel and will force water to collect in one little area briefly, so that there will be standing water for, say, a bird bath,” Fabian says.

This water, however, will quickly be absorbed into the soil medium. Excess water from heavy rain will flow into a gutter, down through a downspout and into a cistern, located under the seating bench. A solar panel on the roof will harness energy to pump this water back up to the roof during dry weather. If the cistern is full, excess water will escape into a channel carved in the sidewalk that leads to a nearby tree pit.

Educational signage on the shelter explains the technology further. Several panels detail each component in the system, discuss the plant species chosen, and list the benefits of green roof infrastructure.

Knotweed Knockout

In Polish Hill, maintaining natural biodiversity is more about battling its enemies. Invasive Japanese knotweed, a hearty, bamboo-like shrub, has overtaken entire hillsides, growing tall and choking out most other species.

As part of Knotweed Knockout, a two-year effort by the Polish Hill Civic Association (PHCA), groups of volunteers have cleared a one-acre space, once dense with commanding, 12-foot-high knotweed, near the Bloomfield Bridge.

“We physically ripped the knotweed out by the roots. We broke shovels and used picks and steel digging bars,” says PHCA president Terry Doloughty.

The space also served as a laboratory where a variety of natural treatments, like cinnamon oil, have been tested. Sections of the fast-growing plant continue to be removed by hand, at least once a month, but Doloughty is optimistic that in several years’ time, this will no longer be necessary.

“Eventually, the knotweed will be worn down to the point where our effort will outpace the reserve stored in its roots,” he says.

Year two of the project, to begin in spring of 2012, will be focused on repopulating the area with native species to prevent the knotweed from easily returning.

“It’s not just here. It’s everywhere,” Doloughty says.

Knotweed has been reported as invasive throughout most of the United States and more than half of Canada. PHCA is creating a guidebook so other communities can replicate their work.

On a sunny morning in mid-September, Carnegie Science Center Early Childhood Coordinator Wendy Brenneman leads a circle of preschoolers at Carmalt Elementary School. Staying cross-legged proves challenging in all of the excitement that Brenneman’s visit brings. A plastic see-through Hexbug scoots across the carpet and responds to a roadblock by changing direction, which it does as little hands meet his antennae. This Hexbug is slow, just a mechanical fzzt, fzzt, and the preschoolers’ reactions match his pace, but when Brenneman releases his hyper-speed cousin into the circle, the group goes nuts, batting after – and, in some cases, jumping away from, the robot – as they might an actual, albeit rather big, bug.

This morning is the second day of classroom visits for Hello Robo!, one of three recipients of a 2010 Super Spark grant from The Sprout Fund.  During the classroom visits, representatives from the Carnegie Science Center arrive with plastic bins full of preschool-appropriate robotics: an interactive picture book, the Hexbugs, colorful plastic gears, and the next big hit, Bee-Bots. The kits are designed to be used throughout the school year in 131 Head Start classrooms around Allegheny and Westmoreland counties.

“Preschoolers are natural scientists,” Brenneman says. Above all else, they’re curious about everything, a litany of why, why, why that lends itself to days filled with discovery. Science need not be complicated, either. Baking cookies is science. Mixing paints is science. Watching clouds in the sky is science. And, as preschoolers become more cognizant of what their minds and bodies can and cannot do (science!), they are increasingly able to understand parallels between themselves and robots.

Classroom visits begin with such a discussion. We have joints; robots have gears. We can choose to follow a series of directions; robots are programmed to follow a series of directions. To prove the point, Brenneman herds the group into a line. They follow a series of plastic mats laid out on the floor: walk forward, walk sideways, jump, walk forward, walk forward, touch your toes. They mostly get the point, but, being preschoolers, some wander off course. Back in the circle, though, the big-eyed bumblebee follows all the directions programmed via buttons on his back. Brenneman asks the children what they would have to tell Bee-Bot to do to get from point A to point B on Bee-Bot’s plastic grid mat. He has to go forward twice. He needs to turn to the right. He needs to go forward again. Which he does with a precision that results in squeals from the audience. He did it!

Brenneman’s hope is that the early exposure to robotics technology could be the spark that will someday turn the preschool scientist into an adult scientist. As the school year goes on, students will have the opportunity to experience even more in the way of robotics during Family Science Nights at the Science Center, which will be filled with interactive table displays (not to mention the museum’s already extensive robot exhibits) and the chance to share all of the excitement and learning with their parents.

The connection between child, adult, and technology is paramount among all three Super Spark programs.

The Digital Discovery Room extends opportunities for exploration of nature

For the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Digital Discovery Room, another 2010 Super Spark award winner, children ages 3-8 are invited to expand upon what they’re already doing anyway: exploring nature. As many adults know, walking in the park with a child often means more stopping and looking than actual walking. Long lines of ants, squirrels racing up trees, flowers as they bloom, leaves as they fall – all of these take priority over putting one foot in front of the other. Together with their parents/caregivers, children can take pictures of what they see in those moments and upload them to the Digital Discovery Room, where the photos can be tagged and commented on by Museum staff, teen docents, and other nature explorers. This allows for children to learn about what they’re seeing without the sometimes impossible task of consulting insect and plant identification books. It also gives them the opportunity to talk about the experience of being in nature. What did it look like, feel like, smell like, sound like (though hopefully not taste like)?

The website for the Digital Discovery Room also features panoramic photos of the city’s parks and other green spaces taken by GigaPan from Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab. Children can use the highly detailed photographs to learn the names of flora and fauna as well as play “I Spy” games, which focus on pattern recognition. Additional games will grow from the picture collection, which will help carry the program through the long winter months, when outside play can be rather limited.

In addition to the CREATE Lab, Digital Discovery Room connects with the Children’s Library in the Oakland branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh as well as the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Exploring natural science isn’t just about playing in nature or learning to identify what’s happening in nature. Project coordinator Chelsey Pucka says that, in addition to learning and exploring, Digital Discovery Room hopes to foster a greater connection to the city’s parks and natural resources. When children know what’s in their green spaces, when they enjoy being in green spaces, they’ll be more likely to later protect those green spaces. She also hopes that the project will expand to include all age groups and green spaces outside of Pittsburgh.

Baby Promise commits to preparing young learners for their first day of school

Another Super Spark project that hopes to foster long-term results is the Kingsley Association’s Baby Promise, which guides under-served children (primarily in Pittsburgh’s East End) in multi-modal literacy and school preparedness. The program began with summer camp. One of the cornerstones of Baby Promise is parental/caretaker involvement, so each camp morning began with adults and children setting out the day’s goals, with adults writing and children illustrating. This allowed for better communication at the end of the day beyond “What did you do at camp today?” “I don’t know.”

Three times a week for the camp’s eight weeks, twenty-nine children ages 3-6 were given access to traditional books, computers, Android-based tablets, as well as other technologies by companies such as LeapFrog, all of which are monitored for both security and usage. Not surprisingly, the tablets fair best. Although children easily adapt to technology, the tactile engagement of tablet devices coincides with pre-kindergarten development.

The tablets are loaded with apps directed toward literacy – letter recognition, dexterity, cognition, and sound recognition – as well as apps centered on coloring and music, and contribute to a growing movement to encourage children and parents to use technology intentionally. The goals of Baby Promise align with the Spark-supported Ready Freddy Virtual Welcome to Kindergarten program and other kindergarten transition/readiness programs.

Kingsley’s former Assistant Director of Program Development, Maria Graziani, says that efforts to support literacy need to happen before teenagers are floundering and frustrated in high school or junior high. Even as early as elementary school, delayed development can have a lasting impact on a student’s education. A large part of the kindergarten transition/readiness programs is how integral a positive first day of kindergarten can be.

Denise Hill, site director of The Kingsley Association, also notes that as technology becomes increasingly important to education, lack of access to/comfort with technology can further the socioeconomic divide already present in the education system.

Prior to the start of the program, the Kingsley Association surveyed more than 130 families who use its services, seeing what technologies were present in the home and how they were used. Now that camp is over, the technology comes to the families during home visits, where parents/caretakers can learn how to guide children toward literacy. Adults are also made aware of the wealth of free and inexpensive early learner apps for the now-ubiquitous smartphones. Baby Promise also reaches children younger than the camp-targeted 3-6 range with the idea that traditional forms of learning can never start too soon, so why should technological learning be any different?

As Hill says, “They get so excited when they see what they can do with their hands.”

What They’re Saying About TENACITY

Jennifer Baron picks TENACITY as this week’s Pop Filter Hot Pick and previews the performances that will be featured:

How to mark 10 massively successful years supporting game-changing artistic, entrepreneurial and community-based projects in Pittsburgh? What began as a “10 artists, 10 minutes each” presentation has evolved into a one-night-only festival-style powerhouse featuring the city’s most compelling and cutting-edge performances. Move over Hothouse, TENACITY is in (down)town.

Bill O’Driscoll has TENACITY on his City Paper Short List:

More, and more varied, performances in one place you won’t find than at Tenacity. The Sprout Fund’s 10th-anniversary benefit celebration is a retrospective of more than a dozen original performances for which the group provided seed grants during its first decade. Tonight, on the August Wilson Center stage, see spoken-word artist Vanessa German; theater by barebones productions and Bricolage Productions; an all-accordion musical revue by Accordion Pool Party; original music by David Bernabo and Barrett Black; and film screenings, dance and more.

Kymbo Slice has the whole evening’s agenda laid out on Nakturnal’s NakYouOut event listing:

Move over Hothouse, TENACITY is the hottest ticket in town this Friday night. TENACITY promises to elevate the annual performance showcase offered at Hothouse to a new level of energy and experience with the highest quality production, stage settings, sound, and light, on a world-class stage in Downtown’s Cultural District.

Diana Nelson Jones highlights TENACITY in the Post-Gazette City Walkabout:

There was no “Hothouse” this August; something completely different instead. The Sprout Fund switched gears this year to celebrate a decade of projects it has supported in a one-night extravanagza that “will showcase artists who define the daring, the diverse, and the delightful in Pittsburgh’s performing arts scene… the best Sprout-supported performing arts groups and individuals.”

How to mark 10 massively successful years supporting game-changing artistic, entrepreneurial and community-based projects in Pittsburgh? What began as a “10 artists, 10 minutes each” presentation has evolved into a one-night-only festival-style powerhouse featuring the city’s most compelling and cutting-edge performances. Move over Hothouse, TENACITY is in (down)town.

Bill O’Driscoll has TENACITY on his City Paper Short List:

More, and more varied, performances in one place you won’t find than at Tenacity. The Sprout Fund’s 10th-anniversary benefit celebration is a retrospective of more than a dozen original performances for which the group provided seed grants during its first decade. Tonight, on the August Wilson Center stage, see spoken-word artist Vanessa German; theater by barebones productions and Bricolage Productions; an all-accordion musical revue by Accordion Pool Party; original music by David Bernabo and Barrett Black; and film screenings, dance and more.

Kymbo Slice has the whole evening’s agenda laid out on Nakturnal’s NakYouOut event listing:

Move over Hothouse, TENACITY is the hottest ticket in town this Friday night. TENACITY promises to elevate the annual performance showcase offered at Hothouse to a new level of energy and experience with the highest quality production, stage settings, sound, and light, on a world-class stage in Downtown’s Cultural District.

Diana Nelson Jones highlights TENACITY in the Post-Gazette City Walkabout:

There was no “Hothouse” this August; something completely different instead. The Sprout Fund switched gears this year to celebrate a decade of projects it has supported in a one-night extravanagza that “will showcase artists who define the daring, the diverse, and the delightful in Pittsburgh’s performing arts scene… the best Sprout-supported performing arts groups and individuals.”

Audiences will be treated to a scene from the Tony Award-winning play, Take Me Out, by barebones productions, a classic 1930’s radio drama by Bricolage, a screening of Mombies, a comedic short about zombie parents in Lawrenceville, and a balletic vignette from Gravity+Grace, Frank Ferraro’s opera inspired by early-onset Parkinson’s disease. The Hiawatha Project will stage a scene fromCamino, its mythical story of immigration, detention and identity, while BRICKS for Young Adults will share first-hand stories of young lives impacted by cancer.

Surprise celebrity guests will compete in a live puppet-making contest during Tom Sarver’s Art Olympic Theater, the always charismatic artist Alexi Morrissey will read his “love letter to Sprout” and musicians David Bernabo and Barrett Black will perform original compositions. Also featured will be nationally-acclaimed poet Vanessa German, the rollicking Accordion Pool Party Orchestra, shorts by ambulantic videoworks, and dance by Zafira Studios and HYBRID.

With professional sound and light design provided by South Side-based Clear Story, TENACITY will tell a story of transformative growth and output within Pittsburgh’s cultural landscape. Showcasing both established and emerging artists and performance companies, the unique event will demonstrate The Sprout Fund’s focus on seeding the work of local artistic innovators, which in turn, has helped to cultivate regional talent and make Pittsburgh a vital arts environment.

[Mac] Howison, one of six [Sprout] staff members, says the initial vision was “all about the number 10,” with a loose framework to provide each performer with 10 minutes in the limelight. The show evolved to feature 11 artists and approximately 14 artistic contributors, during what Howison calls a “rapid-fire festival-style” production. When curating acts for the 90-minute showcase, Sprout’s staff took a close look at their impressive 10-year portfolio, selecting performers and performance pieces that date back to the organization’s infancy in 2002, and some that reflect emerging recently funded works.

After a national search for highly qualified artists with Pittsburgh roots, 97 applications were received and a selection panel of art experts and community leaders selected four finalists to create design proposals for a signature work of public art in Downtown Pittsburgh to be located at the Law & Finance Building on 4th Avenue. These proposals will be debuted during First Night Pittsburgh on New Year’s Eve.

The finalists are: