Rewilding Philadelphia

Creative Producer Pete Angevine will catalyze and organize a collaboration with New Kensington Community Development Corporation, Mural Arts Philadelphia, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, ArtPhilly and the Philadelphia community to establish a pocket-forest on a vacant lot in Kensington. The Miyawaki Method is a scalable, replicable methodology of establishing the conditions that we see in the wild and then getting out of the way while nature does its thing, leading to numerous ecological and social benefits: cooling, increased biodiversity, stormwater remediation, carbon sequestration, soil remediation, and community resilience, among many others.

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This multifaceted, long-term public project will feature a Tree Planting Festival; artist-in-residence Pedro Ospina; ongoing creative and educational programming; job opportunities for neighbors to be trained and paid to maintain the space and work with Academy scientists to monitor and study the ecological impacts of their new pocket forest.

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Ten years after planting, this space on a formerly vacant lot will have matured into a cool, shady, dense, biodiverse public green space teeming with life and activity - birds, bugs, bats and all manner of biotic beings, and also human community gathering, healing, creating, learning, music-ing, listening, reflecting, resting, and representing the universal truth that with (bio)diversity comes abundance.