Abstract
A new, participatory project, Urban Pastorals brings together Somerville, MA (USA)-area residents in small acts of attending to, and tending to, our shared ecosystems. Urban Pastorals aims to facilitate conversations among diverse Somerville residents by building awareness of our shared built and natural environments, reengaging the commons by joining together in community, and contributing responses – reflections, poetry, photography, sound, and other media – to an interactive online map of the city.
“Urban Pastorals” asks: How can practices of care help us imagine and build justice, inclusion, and belonging in Somerville, among the diverse humans and heritages of our city, and between human and nonhuman life forms? What future relations to our built and natural environments can we imagine and then begin building together? How can we use the arts and creativity to facilitate this process of imagining together?
Imagining a just future together is the first step to building it together.
“Urban Pastorals” is co-sponsored by the Racial Justice Collaborative (Diane Wong, founder and leader) and the Somerville Community Growing Center. This project is supported in part by a Public Humanities/Community Engagement Grant from the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.