Community Community Community Festival, Art Sparks and Earth Day at Gateway
05/22/08 • Posted in: Activism, Art, Events, Music, Springfield by Joey Marchy 32 Comments »
If you don’t have fun this weekend, it’s not our fault. Don’t forget Friday! Buffalo Tears at TSI. Correction!! Poster show in Springfield is NEXT WEEKEND. Silly Joey.
Sunday May 25th is the Community Community Community Festival at the Springfield Community Garden and The Pearl.
Community Community Community Festival releases lineup
From 12 to 6 at the Springfield Garden and the lot next to it, we’ll be hanging out, eating food and listening to some awesome music. Really, Khalid and his crew will be playing some ancient afghan music, the Naughty Pines String band will be plucking some beautiful Bluegrass. The Homesteaders will also be jamming out.
Ultimate Picnic is a Community Garden program that plans to share food all day, so bring a dish to share. Even if you don’t want to eat, you can still bring food in the form of a non perishable food type to donate to future ultimate picnic gatherings. There will also be workshops in the garden and Seed Bombs.
Seed bombing, also known as “Seed Grenades” is a technique of introducing vegetation to arid soils or otherwise inhospitable terrains. A seed bomb is a compressed clod of soil containing live vegetation that may be thrown or dropped onto a terrain to be modified.
The term “seed grenade” was first used by Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the “Green Guerillas”. The first seed grenades were made from balloons filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer. The seed grenades were tossed over fences onto empty lots in New York City in order to make the neighborhoods look better. It was the start of the Guerrilla Gardening movement.
Art Sparks Saturday Night at Eclipse
Featuring: Miwa K. Fiore, Ali Isabelle, Sarah Colado, Crash The Satellites, Chris Estes, Our Name is Legion, Jonah Whalebelly & many more!
Not only is ART SPARKS! an event featuring art local to its respective city, ART SPARKS! showcases art of ALL mediums including visual, photography, live music, deejays, dance, comedy, culinary, gaming and film from those artists who, typically, may not garner the recognition they deserve.
More details on Art Sparks
Art Sparks on ExperienceJax
Art Sparks MySpace
Earth Day at Gateway Saturday during the day
The local non-profit, War on Poverty-Florida is having an Earth Day at Gateway Celebration on Saturday May 24, 2008 from 10am-3pm at The Gateway Town Centre 5000 Norwood Avenue Jacksonville, Fl 32208.
The event is packed with great events for the community- including- urban gardening, environmental educational sessions, free weekend give-away for the Wyndham Hotel, Eco-Friendly craft Making Contests for the Kids, Step Shows, Story Telling and much more.
A big component is the Open Air Market. We are inviting local artists, churches and schools to bring their art or crafts and sell it as a way to increase community building and the regional economy.
Just wanted to clarify that the community^3 festival is Sunday the 25th. Also, Ultimate Picnic (formerly, Food Not Bombs) works with and shares the same values of the community garden, but is not a program developed by it.
If you can’t make it out this Sunday or you do. Come by every Sunday at 2pm because Ultimate Picnic hosts a potluck at the garden and then head over to Zombie Bikes, Royal Treatment Records, and Burro Bags to hang out and have some fun.
@Danilo - good call. The I updated the post to reflect the correct day for the festival, Sunday.
art sparks is actually sunday as well!
Wait, wait, wait. Is this gonna be those hippies who actually have th audacity to give away food to homeless people? If only they would stop, and then there’d totally be no more homeless people in Springfield anymore.
Nope…Coming into neighborhoods, kicking residents out by raising rent, and then revonating the house to fit some mold of white society. “Gentrification.” Creates and always will create homeless.
What a crock!
Cast your stones elsewhere. The homeless people that are being fed by FNB, and other churches and fly-by-night homeless organizations, weren’t created from gentrification, they were created from drugs, alcohol, and mental illness. Some of them are criminals, some just need help. Either way, Springfield should not be expected to bear the burden of Jacksonville homelessness on its own. Public feedings, while making you feel all warm and fuzzy about yourself does nothing more than enable the homeless individual to continue being homeless. Nice work helping the issue perpetuate itself.
I never said it was the only factor creating homeless. I was merely responding to what Adam said. Even if we stop having potlucks is that going to make homeless leave? I know homeless were in Springfield way before the hype. But until the city does develop a plan that successfully helps out homeless, what’s wrong with a free meal. We’re not just feeding anyways. It’s a potluck. Come on by and share a meal and get somethings off your chest.
PS - I like the warm and fuzzy feeling. I’d rather help a man continue to LIVE homeless then cast him off and hope he leaves or dies.
does - i like helping others, i like the warm and fuzzy feeling.
don’ts - judge others, i don’t know why someone is the way they are.
do’s/ don’t’s sorry.
Listen, I am cool with everything else going on, but I believe that by feeding our brand of homeless, you are enabling them to go longer without help.
I think the garden, the activism (Even if I don’t always agree with the ideals) and the bike culture are all great and hope to see it expand into people moving to the community because we foster these types of things. More to the point, I personally am more than willing to take the good with the bad, but don’t fool yourselves as to the impact of what you are doing. The only way to recover from homelessness is to seek help. The odds are, most of the time you aren’t feeding the mom and three kids who live in their car and would actually benefit from a simple hand up, you are feeding the hardened former inmate who has found a life of copper theft and petty larceny more to his liking and convenience, and by feeding him that meal you are in essence allowing him to spend more money on crack rock or cheap beer.
Um, just as an aside, I totally think the community garden is a great idea, and I think what you do is commendable, as well as the future of America as food and gas prices soar.
I was just joking.
* i was just joking in the first post, that is.
DP- Having not been to a potluck at the site and admittingly not knowing what the people are like I am distressed to see a couple things in your post.
I want to let you know that it sounds like you are saying there are only two types of homeless. I agree that one who is homeless could, in this city, get the help they need to remedy. I am sure it is difficult, but I am sure it is true. Its the “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are probably right” deal. I also think there are humans who turn against one another because they feel like they’ve been judged already and there is nothing they can do to change what people think of them.
I need to go to a potluck to see for myself, if your opinion is from personal experience then I will admit you know more about it than I do. I just know you well enough that you are not saying that all non mom and children homeless are hardened excons. We all know people who were at one time homeless, whether they tell you or not. Its a struggle and when you have people in the neighborhood trying to help others less fortunate then it says a lot about where you live. If the potluck is more like “feedings” with styrofoam boxes and chicken wing bones littering the streets then it won’t last anyway, because its not doing any good.
Perhaps I am naive but I’d like to think that the potlucks and the garden itself are about lifting people up.
I think colt 45 and crack and those who deal it are much more deserving of our scorn.
Anyway, I’m probably missing something so don’t get ancy I just don’t think the stakeholders in the neighborhood are always able to get their passion for the neighborhood across without sounding compassion-less.
On a side note, gentrification is not a dirty word. Studies show that gentrification actually lessen the causes of homelessness and lengthen leases and lengths of stays of renters. It also has the obvious benefit of improving the value of homes owners. The only folks who really lose in gentrification are those who had nothing to begin (who are homeless or living in substandard housing) with but one could argue that Springfield is no less comfortable for those folks. Anyhoo.
I think the garden, and even the meaning behind the FNB potluck are cool, I just got a little tweaked at the couple of shots that were taken at Springfielders.
As I said before, I am personally willing take the good with the bad, It just bothers me that those of us who view homeless feedings as bad (for any number of reasons) are vilified out of hand, when the issue is so much more complicated than that.
Just to throw in a couple pennies:
I don’t think feeding someone who is hungry is EVER a bad thing.
Even though it won’t help the homeless problem, I still can not find fault in people who have ideals and ACTUALLY TAKE SOME ACTION, whether it meets their ultimate goal or not. It is all about the journey, right?
I can’t even say that i agree with most of the ideals of alot of the people at this event.
Before the bashing starts, I am not an ultra-left wing type person. I don’t feel i should be forced to provide social programs through a huge tax burden. I think i should volunteer my time and money, because I WANT to not because I am FORCED to. Hell, if most the people at this event knew who i worked for they probably wouldn’t like me much. But, I also feel that through COMMUNITIES helping out thier own we won’t need big, wasteful government oversite. People doing these things can steer us away from the socialist spector that is haunting America, right now.
Just my opinion, of course.
Yours may differ. That is the cool thing about America.
But, I also feel that through COMMUNITIES helping out thier own we won’t need big, wasteful government oversite. People doing these things can steer us away from the socialist spector that is haunting America, right now.
The socialist specter, huh?
I must have missed that that somehow.
Either way, I’ll take that any day over what prevails right now: greedy self-interested assholes who wouldn’t know charity if if gave them a free kick in the ass.
Ah, community. Foment. Debate. Compassion…FOOD!
We’ll figure it all out eventually folks. Just keep talking, keep planting, keep celebrating.
Thank you, all of you, for your support, and your thoughts.
McCharen for Mayor. Think about it.
Adam your welcome to your opinion and obviously our views differ. I don’t think wanting the government out of my pay check makes me a “greedy, self-interested, asshole”. I am not greedy or self-interested, but I am kind of an asshole. It is genetic, I come from a long line of assholes. Socialism doesn’t work. The government can’t run health care for our vets, let alone for the whole country. My friends on the far left can call it by any name they want, but it is socialism at it’s core, in my opinion. Disagree with facts and not name calling and I bet your views will be taken more seriously.
Now back to what a good time and a good cause this event was………………
If I agree to run for mayor will I get the privilege of throwing rotten tomatoes at whoever vandalized the garden last weekend or whoever called code enforcement about our beautiful new wall?
Dear Springfield, you’re harshing my naive optimism. Please stop!
Jennifer, You would have that privilege. I also would hope my fellow Springers would not stoop to vandalism.
how was it vandalized?
Springfielders are very active when it comes to pushing the city to do its job with code and permitting, so its possible someone turned you inl, but vandalism isn’t how we roll.
As far as the wall, its been under construction for ages, if you are just now getting cited on it, is it possible someone from the city just drove by and saw it and looked into it? We do have monthly meetings with Code, and other city agencies at the SPAR building (a few feet up the street), so my guess would be that nobody turned you in, or it would have happened back when you first started building it.
@biggie tea,
Sounds like, on more than one occasion, someone has snuck in and uprooted plants and vegetables.
This is where is gets weird and seems to go beyond random vandalism. The vandals poured paint all over the beds.
So all homeless are hardened crack heads and no one in Springfield would do this.
This is More than vandalism. That’s so messed up. I wonder if there are more serious charges for poisoning food supplies. At some point someone is going to ask these people why they poured poison into the earth on a community garden. It may not be while they are alive but they will be asked.
What color was it?
I can tell you that nobody I know in Springfield would do such an act. In fact, two of my good friends and neighbors helped build a planter for the garden, and tried to organize a group of neighbors to attend the pot luck to better understand the whole FNB concept. I am also pretty sure nobody said everyone who is homeless is a crackhead, but nice inference St Pete.
I cant vouch for all of humanity, but the people I know in this community, even the ones who are against the feedings, wouldn’t do something so vile. We are a vociferous bunch who will make use of the legal channels available to us, but we are not the type to do this sort of outrageous act.
All of that said, I think karma will be kicking some sorry SOB in the butt in the near future. What a crappy thing to do.
Good points.agree on karma.
What color?
Nate-
Please forgive me, that ‘asshole’ was generalized, in no way directed personally to you as i do not know you and do not believe in internet insulting.
Ah, we can’t make assumptions about who vandalized us. It doesn’t help us to do so. I just voiced my frustration at “Springfield”. All we know is that a potentially homeless fellow saw the vandadl enter the space, and told me he thought it was one of us. That says to me it was probably a white person. Feel free to let your various prejudices and proclivities play with all those facts. It’s nothing conclusive. I’ll never know who did it. It isn’t all that important.
We just have to pick up after it and keep on gardening. Life is resilient. Some of the plants that were ripped out have regenerated already. Some won’t recover…but I’m happy to read all your kind words about it all. What we really need now is adopt-a-bed gardeners to start planting in the fall. Once the space is more connected to the community this stuff won’t happen anymore, I imagine. So get in touch with us if you want to garden. We’ll be doing education programs for newbies.
St. Peter: Not sure it matters…but the first time the vandalism occurred it was black paint (in my three sisters bed!), the second time it was tan. Basically whatever was lying around.
Folks…thank you again for supporting us. It means a lot.
Jenn - I met you the other day when Derek & I built the planter bed. Is fencing off the rear portion feasible? I might be able to scrounge lots of chain link. email me…
Ditto the comment on karma. And I will be looking for black and tan colored trim work in the neighborhood. Asshole(s).
@Adam- I spoke to Philip a couple of days ago, and he told me you were most likely joking, so I apologize.
@DowntownParks-We got off on the wrong foot, but it sparked a very nice conversation. Hopefully it will continue as Springfield, as well as the rest of Jacksonville, grows.
Despite all our differences I got that “warm and fuzzy” feeling reading all the posts. Would it be a good idea to get all the organizations within Jacksonville to attain some monthly meeting to work things out, hear different perspectives, and plan future collaborative projects? We all just want to do the right thing, but our definitions of right are splitting us up and halting progress.
attain^attend…sorry…