2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellows Recap
On Thursday, August 17, the 2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellows delivered their capstone presentation to a global audience of more than 50 Values-Based Partners, community members, academics, and family members. The fellows’ presentation offered an in-depth overview of their hands-on experience over the 10-week fellowship and an analysis and critique of city planning and policy documents, including an examination of Chicago’s new mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition report. Their analysis juxtaposed the “wastes” of the City’s planning process with the shared fruits of the Fellows’ real work to re-create a half-acre space, known as the Healing Garden, at SWF’s The Commonwealth. Read more about the fellows’ 10-week immersion at The Commonwealth and view their final presentation below.
The Summer 2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellowship program welcomed 7 graduate, undergraduate, and recent graduate students representing 5 universities -- Cornell University, Kenyon College, Lake Forest College, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and Illinois Institute of Technology -- and 7 disciplines -- Architecture, City and Regional Planning, American Studies, Landscape Architecture, Biology, Environmental Studies, and Studio Art. This cohort of fellows came from different life paths, disciplines, and skill sets, yet they shared a yearning for a rooted think-do experience, different from what they had experienced in their colleges and universities.
It’s More than a Fellowship…It’s Human Development
Sweet Water Foundation cultivates spaces for humanity – the physical spaces, programs, resources, connections, and relationships – that heal and nurture people across cultures, geographies, and generations. Fostering these spaces requires new forms of education that are intergenerational, regenerative, community-based, and connected. SWF’s Communiversity utilizes the Commonwealth as a bio-dynamic campus where we teach, translate, and transfer the practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) through hands-on experiences. Through these experiences, participants and community members engage in new forms of human development through which they learn, labor, and build genuine connections so that they can, in turn, apply SWF practices to their home communities.
This summer, the fellows’ experience reflected Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development through which humans progress through four stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Fellows learned by doing and engaged in a summer of “firsts” as they explored RND through carpentry, farming, culinary arts, and civic arts, and contributed to the stewardship of The Commonwealth by engaging in a capstone project to re-create The Healing Garden. Throughout the 10 weeks, fellows conducted re-search focused on analyzing and comparing their experience of RND at The Commonwealth with traditional city planning, with a special focus on the new mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson’s transition report.
Summer 2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellows’ Final Presentation
In the final presentation, Fellows conveyed the magnitude of the impact of their fellowship experience on their lives -- their actions, perspectives, and future academic and career pursuits. As a cohort, the fellows became part of the larger network of humans committed to and equipped with the necessary experience, skills, and relationships to do Solutionary work. We invite you to watch their final presentation by clicking the image below.