Lyle isn’t just the Walmart greeter of Vancouver’s English Bay, but that’s how he first strikes you.    At the biggest crosswalk entrance at the middle of English Bay where pedestrians intersect with the bike path and Beach intersects with Davie, Lyle works most mornings for three hours, as he has for the past three years.  He thought someone should be here in this busy tourist area, helping people, providing information to any who ask, and making the city seem like a welcoming place – he calls himself the unofficial ambassador for English Bay.   He wishes good morning to everyone leaving the street to head down to the beach, and to everyone leaving.  He helps Mike the hot dog guy unload, or watches his equipment.  When anyone has a map or looks confused, Lyle is off to provide assistance.  He loads his cart with maps and tourist materials to help when he can.

In the afternoons, Lyle is usually down at the West End Community Centre, where his activities include spending an hour a day helping a 70 year-old Iranian immigrant learn English.

He’s intelligent, clean-cut in his baseball cap, Gore-tex jacket and grey beard, loves helping tourists, and spends his waking hours contributing to our community.  Yes he does live in the West End as well as volunteer here, he says -  in Stanley Park.  Near the farm in the park, by the playground, there is a sheltered area with picnic tables, and that’s where Lyle sleeps.  Everything he owns – a travel bag and garbage bag-wrapped sleeping bag – fits on a carry-on luggage vertical cart.

Lyle reshapes my image of homelessness.

In what other ways I have not seen, I wonder,  do homeless people make contributions to the communities they live in?

Diversity in Place: Documentaries on the Multicultural City

As I’ve written before, one of the things I’m really interested in is the possibilities for evidence-based communications, including media, to effect change in multicultural acceptance and racial tolerance.

I’m excited about the possibilities in the announcement below. Wheels are turning. Stay tuned in the next couple of months…

‘Diversity in Place’ isn’t just a video and photography contest. It seems it could have enormous potential in engaging youth citizenship; in exploring multiculturalism and racial

l tensions in a solutions-oriented way. It seems so extra-important given current situations in Gaza in particular, but also in other fragile states.

[post below is from http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/]

More than half of the population in the world now lives in cities, and the urban share of the globe will continue to increase dramatically to reach 70 percent by 2050. Migration, both from within and among societies, is a major source of urbanization, with multicultural cities on the rise everywhere.

Call for Documentary Film/Video Entries

In an innovative way toward mutual learning, we invite the submission of video and photo documentaries whose emphasis is on exploring multicultural cities and processes of place-making. Scholars, teachers, students and practitioners alike are searching for alternative methods to conventional data analysis and academic writing to be able to capture ethnic diversity and multicultural interactions in real world settings. The use of documentaries to show the daily practices of multiculturalism in the city can make several key contributions to research, teaching and action.

Videos not in excess of 15 minutes are requested for submission to screenings which will be held at the conference

venue at the University of Hawai’i Manoa Campus on April 24th, 2009. Selections of videos to be included in the seminar will be made by a committee of students and faculty who are organizing the event. Artists, video- and filmmakers, researchers, writers and others interested in the relation between people and places and the making of multicultural cities are invited to join the project, participate to the seminar to discuss their ideas and work.

Questions, themes, topics and issues to be addressed in the documentaries can include, but are not limited to:

* How documentaries by recording the presence of people of different origins over time can reveal ‘invisible’ minority cultures in a way that no other media can.
* The efforts at historic preservation of elements of the city that might otherwise have been overlooked but are of high cultural value to members of a community.
* How multiculturalism can work well in practice and thus contribute to a more positive attitude about and pride in the multicultural city, and thereby assist in fostering mutual accommodation and tolerance.
* In an age of global migration in which significant segments of multicultural cities do not have citizenship or are otherwise marginalized in the city, how documentaries can help identify issues of social justice.
* How multiculturalism inscribes itself into the city by everyday uses of urban space and lead us to a greater appreciation of the many different identities that make up the multicultural Cosmopolis of contemporary times.

By combining the reflections and findings emerging around the objectives of the conference, and understanding the inevitability of increasing diversity in urban places, this conference aims at drawing lessons and recommendations as to what makes the creation of ethnic spaces possible, and further what helps to form and shape livable cities with healthy intercultural relations, namely, cities as multicultural places where migrants’ place-making is understood and acknowledged as an inherent human right to the city.

This conference is sponsored by the Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Initiative (SEED), University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Submission Deadline and Guidelines

The purpose of the call is a selection of a maximum of eight documentaries to be screened in a one-day conference on April 24th, 2009 at the University of Hawai’i.

Submission deadline: March 1st, 2009

Guidelines

Videos should be short — no longer than 15.00 minutes. International and domestic submissions are encouraged.
The formats accepted are: DVD
Please include: Synopsis, Bio, CV and Contact Information.

All submissions will be added to the Diversity in Place Video Library for possible inclusion in future projects. If included in other projects, artists will be contacted for permission.

Send submissions to:

Vera Zambonelli, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Saunders
Hall, 2424 Maile Way, 96822 Honolulu HI

Travel and lodging aid:
Pending application, the Project will cover part of travel expenses and lodging in a Youth Hostel for participants residing outside of Honolulu. If traveling to Honolulu is not an option, we will arrange videoconferencing through skype.

For more information: diversityinplace@gmail.com

http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/

Photo credits:
Untouchables Cameraman by Eco-Photographer
Immigration Is Not a Crime by daveknapik
Multiculturalism by TaleyehS