Urban Discoveries Baltimore

In a few weeks, Providence will play host to What We Do, a conference helmed by Rhode Island School of Design students “designed to bridge departmental gaps and create new connections through the sharing of ideas.” Like a lot of other conference-type events we’ve noticed lately, W.W.D. is purposefully diverse and informal, with RISD profs presenting alongside staff, students, and community members, on topics as serious as intellectual property law for artists, and as frivolous as following whims, or creating a zombie army.

The RISD kids seem to have taken a cue from TED, an annual conference that “brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).” (Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk was one of the big hits of last year’s conference.) The idea is to keep things multi-disciplinary, engaging, and collaborative. And though TED has been around since the mid-80s, it’s our suspicion that its recent spike in popularity — and all the imitators — is perhaps because we’re all getting sick of the cold anonymity of the Internet. We want to get out there and hear people talk, gosh darn it! Hence the resurgent retro-charm of the conference.

So where can you find this show-and-tell spirit in Baltimore? We see hints of it in the Wham City Lecture Series, with its bi-weekly talks on subjects as diverse as keeping worms as pets and the history of robots; there were elements in MICA’s We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know teach-in series last year. There’s also the newly-minted School at the Lof/t Theater in Station North (120 W. North Avenue), which advertises itself as a show-and-tell for Baltimore writers and artists; and the Baltimore Design Conversations, which we’ve blogged about before.

But your best bet — this week at least — to see this kind of grassroots learning in action is the City From Below conference, held this weekend (March 27 – 29) at the 2640 Space in Charles Village (2640 St. Paul Street). Drawing participants from all around the country, C.F.B. aims to appeal at the urban activist inside all of us, with sessions on community land trusts, media activism, collective living, and urban farming. CUNY professor David Harvey’s on-site talk (“A View From Federal Hill”) about Inner Harbor redevelopment promises to be a highlight.

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