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Just an summary of things I've been up to in the last few months. Thought you might be interested. This has been Tim Devin, reporting live.
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art, typewriters, community & economics...

top of the 2015 to you, friend

art?

I was part of two awesome shows recently. The first was at Franklin Street Works, which is a nonprofit space in Connecticut (pictured above). It was called "It narratives: the movement of objects as information," and was put together by the very excellent Brian Droitcour and Zanna Gilbert. Work in the show "engaged the postal system and its intersections with digital communications media." You can read the catalog here, which has a nice description of my project. The show ran from September to November.

The other show was at 13 Forest in Arlington MA, and was called "Broadsides." It focused on posters as a way of communicating, and had a whole raft of awesome people involved. It was great to see a show all about one of my favorite things in the world, and I was excited to be part of it.

then there's this stuff

There's a page or two about my posters in Nicholas Ganz's Street Messages book, which is coming out soon from Dokument Press. It also features people like Banksy and Candy Chang, which is pretty crazy. You can pre-order a copy from Amazon here.

A Chinese economics journal called Jing ji xue jia cha zuo : jing hua ben ran an article about my Somerville Stock Exchange project recently. (The journal's name translates to "Teahouse for economists," which I think is great). The article was picked up by the China Economics Education and Research Network (CENET); here's Google's attempt at translating it into English.

My old band, the Boston Typewriter Orchestra (pictured above), celebrated its 10th anniversary this past October. I started the group back in 2004 and left a few years later—but they’re still going on strong, performing everywhere from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to Fox Morning News. You can buy some of their music here, and here's a nice NPR story about the group from 2008. Happy 10 years, BTO!

"blah blah blah"

2014 was one of my most talkingest years so far; I think I gave about 5 or 6 talks. Here are my two most recent ones. Get in touch if you want me to show up somewhere and drone on for a while.

On September 23rd, I was part of a panel discussion on artists and gentrification at the New England School of Law in Boston. The other panelists were Mary Therese O’Sullivan, a New York lawyer who handles zoning, land use and real estate law; Marc Dohan, the executive director of the Twin Cities Community Development Corporation; and the Honorable Leslie E. Harris, a retired Associate Justice of the Suffolk County Juvenile Court, and a life-long resident of Roxbury. The discussion focused on artist-led gentrification in Boston’s South End and Roxbury, and race relations in the city. It was fascinating.

On September 18th, I gave a talk as part of the Earthos Institute's event on where individual people fit in with sustainability. I talked about Space Equals Work, Getting By In Boston, and my crazy notion that you should be able to make your community a better place without running the risk of pricing yourself out, or seeing your friends and neighbors get priced out. The other two speakers were Mashael Majid and Peter Marquez. Mashael talked about what her organization, the Somerville Community Corporation, has been doing to keep Somerville affordable for everyone. Peter told us about the city's proposed Artfarm, which will be a multi-use creative and community space just outside of Union Square.

and for all you locals out there...

Since January 2013, I've helped run the Somerville Arts Council's Artist of the Month program. (I'm the chair of the Arts Council's advisory board.) The program has featured a different creative Villen each month; you can read some of the interviews here. Anyway, we had our annual celebration in the middle of December; Rachel Pittari and I mc'd the event, and each artist of the month received a specially-selected grand prize. Here’s some photos that fellow board member Michael J. Epstein took. Stay tuned to hear who will be the January 2015 artist of the month!

Between the Arts Council and Space Equals Work, I've read through the city's zoning code a bunch the past couple years. It's pretty dry stuff, so I set it to music. You can download all 15.5 hours of the fun here. It call it "Let's get zoning."

Speaking of zoning, the City of Somerville is in the process of rewriting its zoning code. Here's the latest draft. According to the planning department, there will be some public meetings towards the end of January, so stay tuned. As our fair city gets more and more expensive, zoning can become our friend—a way to keep the things we like, and provide incentives for developers to produce more of what we need.
Copyright © 2015 Tim Devin, All rights reserved.


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