OrlandoScene

artwork commissioned by the Urban Art Museum is funded by the local community, which means this is your chance to create something out of nothing!!! Few of us will acquire the wealth necessary to commission a public art installation or have a building named after you. Using the crowdsourcing format is an opportunity for members of the community to take ownership of their environment and the art that is created in it, and say “that piece of public art, I helped create that!”

Urban ReThink was a collaborative effort between the foundation and downtown developer Craig Ustler to turn the former Urban Think! Bookstore into a cool space for budding creative entrepreneurs and local community events. The space opened in 2011 and has hosted events including those featuring famed author/activist Gloria Steinem, PBS Newshour host Ray Suarez and Bitly former chief scientist Hilary Mason, not to mention gatherings with local big names. It also has become a workspace for burgeoning entrepreneurs, including Kyle Christian Steele of local tech startup Doccaster Inc.

“Orlando is my context,” he says. “But it’s all subconscious. With the cardboard art festival, for instance. Just seeing what we did this year compared to the direction it’s taking as we plan for next year is very cool. And that progress happens just from opening it up to more and more people and their submissions. I didn’t seek to make those changes, they happened naturally. Same thing with the SIT project. Someone just donated a bunch of beach chairs, how Florida is that?” He is referring to his best known and longest running endeavor, the SIT project.

Just the description alone – “an experimental performance by Jessica Earley featuring hyperbole, puppetry, dance, awkwardness, honesty and video projections to tell a story about heartbreak and healing” – was enough to conjure images of the kind of experimental performance art that was all the rage 40-plus years ago, but too often earns eye-rolls from today’s cynical audiences. “Hyperbolic” seems like the last adjective one might apply to the demure Earley, who I previously knew mostly through her visual art and past collaborations with performance artist Brian Feldman.

Jason Helvenston, with his wife, Jennifer, has told the authorities, “You’ll take my house before you take my vegetable garden.”

Our CoLab Orlando members have likely seen a new face in the hallways. It’s Brian Wilson, CoLab’s new community director. Brian has experience in coworking, having spent time at a coworking space in Portland, Ore., and he already plans to help grow our community.

Dyer worked alongside the construction team of ESA Renewables LLC to mount solar panels on the roof of the city's Fleet Management Division building. The project, financed by ESA, is estimated to save the city $800,000 worth of energy expenses over its 25-year life

Taizhou is about 190 miles south of Shanghai, China, and is dubbed China’s “medical city,” known for hosting major international corporations in pharmaceutical, biomedical and biotech enterprises, according to a news release.

In addition to Taizhou, Orange County has collaboration agreements with the Las Heras region in Argentina; Quindio and Medellin in Colombia; and the Hart van Brabant region in the Netherlands.

FTA has also donated thousands of tickets to charities, underprivileged children and theater students, as well as more than $1.5 million in scholarships to theater students in the State of Florida. Most recently FTA has invested in a community spaces downtown called The Abbey and The Mezz, donating its use to charities and local arts groups, resulting in these groups raising more than $2 million for their respective organizations.

EIGHTY PERCENT OF ALL PROCEEDS GENERATED BY FTA STAYED WITHIN AND HELPED THE ORLANDO COMMUNITY.

North of Livingston is the corporate campus, where digital commerce will fly through the air like invisible Frisbees, carried on the high-tech hopes of the community and kept aloft by investors with capital, catering to young, fast-growing tech companies.
Pipe dream? Perhaps.