SCARP Mini Jam – ‘Beyond Downtown & Outside The Box’

This presentation and hyper-rapid Jam (10mins Presentation/10mins Jam) took place at the SCARP Student Symposium at UBC on Feb 8th. The topic of SCARP was ‘Beyond Downtown & Outside the Box’ and the Jam topic centred on brainstorming low-tech interventions that can close the gap between rural, suburban and urban communities.

This topic took place in the context that the recent growth of Canadian suburbs and subsequent shrinking of rural communities has lead to a growing physical and social distance between the economically disadvantaged and the more affluent sectors of society. The Jam centred on finding fun ways to get passers-by to think of a place that they were currently not in (Suburban > Rural or Rural > Urban etc.).

The Jam was done with SCARP participants in ten minutes and generated ideas such as to have a cow being milked in an inner-city parking lot and serve the milk!!! Another: to have farm tractors parked near grocery stores in suburban areas! Good stuff.