The .Seed
A think tank design center collaborative to reinvest in education.
Education is not credentials, not degrees, not the counting of hours in class, not passing exams, but it is about transformation.
The issues facing Flint:
- Former company town
- No investment
- Steady deterioration of community
- Jobs available are small, poorly paid and not productive and not creative
Transformation, and generating creativity begins with a design thinking center: a space to link community groups to academics to students to community members, all to transform Flint
.Seed would begin the transformation by linking Mott CC to UM Flint to Kettering University focused om the departments of urban planning, health sciences, engineering, arts and humanities; the end goal is to re-create entrepreneurship:
- Micro vineyards
- Urban gardens
- Circular fashion stores
- E-bikes
- Renovated houses and buildings
The goal is to move as far away from GM and auto manufacturing. Look 10 or 15 years ahead. What would be the impact of climate breakdown on Michigan. More people relocating. Opportunities to reinvent residential and urban living. Reinvest by rethinking Flint’s past as a native landscape, and refresh the landscape through carefully planned urban forest agriculture, with urban gardens, both individual and community, within designed neighborhoods. Just a fifteen minutes walk from stores, health care, parks, schools, work- maybe work is within one’s home. Its a change to reuse past urban planning by rehabbing current buildings, converting old factories into residences. Turning old factories into spaces to practice curricular economies.
Creation, not credentials as the goal.
Amy in Mostar 