Ted Talk: “How Kids Can Help Design Cities” by Maria Mintzer
Ted Talk: “How to Revive a Neighborhood: with Imagination, Beauty, and Art” by Theaster Gates
Ted Talk: “You Don’t Have to be an Expert to Solve Big Problems” by Tapiwa Chiwewe

The main idea of the Ted Talks is to use problem solving skills and surrounding resources to make their cities better. Minzter utilizes the creativity and growing imagination of children to achieve a goal: to make their community siutable and inclusive for everyone. Children are more prone to be empathetic and thoughtful as they are described as an “indicator species.” On the contrary, usually city builders and architects forget to consider the voices of children despite the fact that these cities directly affect the children. Minzter and her team begin to initaite a plan to have children engage within the issues of the community. These children began to “combine their original ideas” that sprung from the inspiration of the issues that they thought were a problem. With these new ideas, several projects sprang such as the “Growing Up Boulder” where children redesigned a downtown park.

Gates uses a different method to impose change in his community. He ganers inspiration from his pottery ocupation and, like pottery, wanted to shape the world. He began to look outside of his studio, into his community, and noticed abandoned buildings. Gates bought the building and transformed it into the Archive House, which brought about the Dorchester Projects, a series of projects that were meant to tranform buildings into centers of gathering and vaious activities. These buildings were revived through “culture” and regrew cities as “people kind of reinvested” with their neighborhoods. With his neighborhood he inspired others to do the same. He gave advice to other states to rebuild and with all of these ideas combined, Gates began to shape the world.

Chiwewe went through different means to create change in his community. Chiwewe lived in South Africa and worked as a computer engineer and spotted a polution problen within is community but he didn’t know how to combat it. Instead he decided use what he knew, computer engineering, to solve this issue. He did his own research collaborated with other organizations and created a software and artificial intellegence to that could do recorded trends of the pollution. This showed that you can use your own unique perspecive to address issues “in your own way” and that you should explore the unconventional means to achieve a goal. “You may be pleasantly surprised.”

With these ideas of inspiration, imagination, and action combined you can accomplish any goal you put your mind to. Personally, I believe that all of these aspects are needed in order to create small instances of change. The more you can change the bigger you can impact your environment. I am currrently trying to change my school environment. I was inspired to make change after I learned the significance of how people’s action, like mircoaggressions, can affect a person’s psyche. One of the ways I can do this is by confronting people about problematic acts, more specifically, their rhetoric. This then pushed us to create a podcast that addresses the issues at my school, providing a variety of opinions on controversial topics. Creating change within your community doesn’t have to be material instead it can be through exchanging words and ideas.

Achieving your goals, step by step, can tranform your environment – thus, let’s get this bread!