Latest news with #communityresilience
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
How libraries are becoming launchpads for music careers
In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and smartphones, one of the most overlooked engines of economic growth sits quietly at the heart of every neighborhood: the public library. Gone are the days when libraries were sanctuaries reserved for only reading and research. Today, they are being reimagined as dynamic hubs for workforce development, creative sector support, and cultural exchange. Across the country, these reservoirs of knowledge are evolving into digital and physical beacons of community resilience. Local access, global reach: A case study in artist empowerment In Huntsville, where I serve as the city's first music officer, we've partnered with our public library system to develop a multifunctional creative hub—with music at its core. A primary pillar of our collaboration is Blast Music, a digital streaming platform designed to showcase local talent. It's a model other cities can and should replicate. Through the Blast program, artists are paid, promoted, and added to a curated library collection—offering not only exposure, but bona fide industry credentials. Over 100 local artists are currently featured on the platform, and we will welcome up to 50 additional artists into the program annually. The ripple effect of Blast is real. The free service empowers local listeners to discover homegrown talent while giving musicians tools to grow their fan base and attract industry attention. Perhaps most importantly, Blast provides emerging artists with resume-worthy recognition—essential for building sustainable careers in a tough industry. But Blast isn't just about digital reach—it's embedded in Huntsville's cultural DNA. From artist showcases like the Ladies of Blast event at the Orion Amphitheater, to community events like Hear to Be Seen (a portrait exhibition of Blast musicians), to stages designated exclusively for Blast artist performances at Camp to Amp, PorchFest, and more, Blast is bringing music into public spaces and cultivating civic pride. That's the kind of community infrastructure that libraries are uniquely equipped to deliver. There's no such thing as too much visibility, and even artists with international acclaim see value in the platform. Huntsville native Kim Tibbs, a vocalist, songwriter, Alabama Music Hall of Fame honoree and UK chart-topper, submitted her album The Science of Completion Volume I to Blast—not only for more exposure, but to mentor and support the next generation of artists in her hometown. Libraries as talent incubators Huntsville is part of a broader national trend. In cities like Chicago, Nashville, and Austin, libraries are integrating creative labs, media production studios, and music education into their core services—functioning as public-sector incubators for the creative economy. As technology continues to reshape traditional jobs, libraries are well-positioned to bridge skill gaps and fuel the rise of creative economies, including the vital but often overlooked non-performance roles in the music industry. Huntsville is doubling down on this approach. We're investing millions into programs that bring interactive music technology workshops to teens at the local library—focusing on hands-on training in production, recording, and audio engineering. With professional equipment, studio spaces, and expert instruction, we're preparing the next generation for careers both onstage and behind the scenes. Local industry is stepping up too. Hear Technologies, a global leader in sound and AV production, has been designing cutting-edge audio devices for years. They're now part of a dynamic team collaborating with city leaders to help develop the library's music maker space, nurture new talent and accelerate our region's creative growth. This matters now, more than ever Libraries have always been entry points for education, employment, and exploration. But today, they're more than just information access points—they are gateways to opportunity and launchpads for industries that define the future. By utilizing public space and collaborating with local talent, libraries can become platforms for economic mobility and cultural innovation. This investment isn't a feel-good gesture. It's a smart, strategic move for any city building a future that works—for everyone. The playlist is simple: Invest in creative ecosystems, embed them in trusted community institutions like public libraries, and treat music as critical infrastructure.
CBC
14-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Meet Alberta's only federal cabinet minister
Some leaders in Alberta are applauding Prime Minister Mark Carney's choice to appoint Edmonton Centre Liberal MP Eleanor Olszewski to federal cabinet. The lawyer, business owner and former army reservist will be the new minister of emergency management and community resilience. She will also be the minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada. Jasper's mayor, Richard Ireland, said he will be keeping a close watch on ministerial developments as his town continues to recover from the devastating 2024 wildfire that destroyed a third of all buildings in the community. He said part of his excitement comes from the "community resilience" part of Olszewski's new title. It's something that he and his town have taken to heart in the wake of last year's disaster. "I think it's a great choice and really relevant for us here in Jasper, and relevant for Alberta," Ireland said. "Recognition at the federal level of the importance of community resilience is fundamental." He said extreme weather is becoming more common and more intense, from floods and atmospheric rivers to drought and wildfires. "Designating a minister as the Minister for Emergency Management and Community Resilience, I think is a display that the federal government recognizes the importance of making our communities more resilient to the impacts of climate and severe weather." 'No stranger to disaster' Olszewski is one of several rookie members announced to cabinet, and is also the only Alberta MP appointed to cabinet, which Rural Municipalities of Alberta said is a good first step in working with the federal government. "As Albertans, we are no stranger to disaster in this province," said president Kara Westerlund. "We know that she has first-hand experience of the pain and the suffering that comes from our communities that have been affected in the past. Unfortunately, we know just going forward that it's going to be a continued issue." Westerlund said she is hopeful that a meaningful partnership between the province and Ottawa will help municipalities across the province prepare for emergencies in the future. "I know a lot of the plans that need to be put in place to protect against wildfire and floods obviously come with a pretty hefty price tag, one that is far exceeding what municipalities are able to contribute on their own," she said.
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
How memories of clean water, frogs and fresh air could help save Rio's favelas from future climate disaster
Leticia Pinheiro grew up hearing stories about the Acari River. Her grandmother bathed in its clean waters; her father caught frogs on its margins; and many in the community made a living from fishing there. Now, Pinheiro, 28, and her peers do not even call it a river; it's become known as a valão – an open canal for sewage and rubbish. It borders the Acari favela, which spread over swampy terrain in northern Rio de Janeiro from the 1920s. Floods after heavy tropical rains are historically a problem for this community. But as extreme weather makes them worse and more frequent, the river is increasingly seen as the culprit. In January last year, there was an unprecedented flood, when its waters invaded the homes of 20,000 people. 'When it floods, the whole Acari complex is affected. Rain brings huge anxiety, and people see the river as something extremely negative,' says Pinheiro, a member of the Fala Akari Collective, a community group. The repeated tragedies have led residents to build their homes higher so they can live on upper floors and use brick or concrete to build bed bases and wardrobes to avoid losing furniture to the next floods. The experiences of the Pinheiro family, past and present, are part of the myriad memories revived by an exhibition in a community museum in the Maré favela. Favela Climate Memory brings together testimonials and historical data looking at how residents from 10 favelas in Rio relate to climate and nature, based on stories told by more than 400 people of all ages in conversation circles held over recent years, and discussing how they view and are responding to the climate crisis. Organisers see documenting these memories as an instrument for climate justice in Rio's favelas. Here and around the world, informal settlements such as Akari are disproportionately affected by global heating and extreme weather events due to compounding challenges such as poverty, overcrowded and poor-quality housing, disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and pollution, gang and police violence, and restricted access to basic services. Theresa Williamson, a Rio-based town planner and environmentalist, says: 'Memory is essential to solving the climate crisis because belonging gives people a sense of identity and connection to their territory. 'When you know the environment where you live – the soil, the trees, the shared history – you care about that place. You have a sense of commitment.' Williamson, who is half-Brazilian, has spoken up for favelas in Rio for more than 25 years. In 2000, she founded Catalytic Communities to promote the development of favelas. In 2018 the organisation launched the Sustainable Favela Network, which is behind the exhibition and includes members from more than 300 favelas fighting for climate justice. 'Favelas are not temporary slums,' she says. 'They are consolidated communities that have been around for generations and where much of the culture associated with Rio was born, like the carnival, the city's informality, the passinho dance. 'These communities are here to stay. When will we give them the infrastructure guarantees and the basic rights they are entitled to and address the historic inequalities that become so visible in this exhibition?' The exhibition's timeline portrays how the climate and environment are interwoven with these communities' histories, showing how people have transformed their surroundings, how their precariousness made them prone to climate disasters, and how the authorities repeatedly used these events as an argument to push the favelas' residents to the city's margins. Banners, pictures and news headlines in the show will remind visitors of historic tragedies in Rio, like the 'flood of the century' in 1966 and another the following year, which killed hundreds of people and left 50,000 people without shelter. They also portray how the city's development has relied on the working poor without providing proper living conditions for them. Acari and Maré grew in the 1940s, when workers arrived from across Brazil to build Avenida Brasil, the city's most important highway, and settled around the construction sites. Informal settlements started to grow on Rio's hilltops after slavery was abolished in 1888, and formerly enslaved people had nowhere to go. In the decades thereafter, waves of immigrants across Brazil arrived in the then-capital looking for work and opportunity, leading to these working-class communities multiplying. Today, favelas are home to almost one in five residents in Rio. Nationwide, they account for 8% of Brazil's population – about 17 million people. Most of the favelas are in cities, with 84% having a water supply and three-quarters having some form of sanitation, according to the 2022 census, compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IGBE). These communities were referred to as 'subnormal agglomerations' by the IGBE until only last year. Despite the official view of favelas, the exhibition has showcased the strength and potency of these areas, with residents and community leaders travelling from across Rio to gather for the openingat the Maré Museum. Representatives of each community gave moving accounts of hardships and resilience, revealing a shared history that many from communities spread far apart had not yet grasped. Marli Damascena, 64, recalled the fishing community that used to thrive in Maré, where she was born and bred. When she was a little girl in the 1960s, she had a view of the immense Guanabara Bay from the window of her home – built by her father, a migrant from the north-eastern state of Ceará. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion One day, the sea disappeared when landfill was used in the bay to push back the waters. This allowed social housing to be built in order to relocate residents of the precarious shacks on stilts built over the muddy mangrove margins of the bay. 'I saw that sea being filled in as a child, but it seemed normal. Looking back allows us to realise the drastic changes we went through and how strongly we were affected,' says Damascena, who co-founded the Maré Museum. Maré means tide, and the venue includes a real-size replica of one of its palafitas, the houses on stilts that for years shouted poverty and inequality to those driving past on the way from Rio's international airport. Leonardo Souza's mother lived in one of those houses. But she was not lucky enough to be relocated within Maré itself. Along with about 400 families, she was moved nearly 40 miles (60km) across Rio to Antares, where Souza grew up, in the western Santa Cruz neighbourhood. In the project's memory circles, Souza was touched to hear other residents recounting that period, which was traumatic for his parents, who were migrants from north-eastern Brazil. His father went from a five-minute journey to work to a two-hour commute each way every day. 'These policies were motivated by social cleansing – authorities wanted to show visitors a beautiful city and to hide poverty,' Souza says. Antares first began to be occupied in 1975, although many of the promised brick and concrete houses were still unfinished. As residents from other favelas were relocated there and families multiplied, the community grew in a disorderly manner. Wooded areas became deforested as it expanded, riverbanks were built on and became more prone to flooding. As the growing favelas cleared Santa Cruz's wooded areas, the neighbourhood became one of Rio's warmest districts. 'Santa Cruz is known to have Rio's highest temperatures, but the memory circles reminded us of days when it was fresher,' says Souza, who recently planted 1,000 trees in the community with government funding in an effort to ease the stifling heat. Today, he is a history undergraduate striving to reconstruct the community's past. The exhibition involved partnerships with residents like him, as well as community museums, to revive 'climate memories'. Environmental devastation and risks are part of the history of informal settlements. Deforestation has historically accompanied the growth of favelas, as has the pollution of watercourses due to a lack of sanitation, proper waste disposal and tragedies caused by floods and landslides. Organisers note that these issues have long demanded public investment in response. 'It's counterproductive to criminalise a huge portion of humanity because they are addressing their basic need for shelter by living informally,' says Williamson. 'There is no reason these communities couldn't be upgraded and integrated into the city – not investing in them is policy,' she says. 'Neglect is policy.' According to the UN, nearly a quarter of people in cities around the world are living in informal settlements, and this urban population is expected to reach 3 billion people by 2050. Williamson hopes that the historical data in the exhibition may fill a critical gap in a context where climate policies tend to focus on biomes such as the Amazon rainforest or the Pantanal wetlands – but can rarely rely on data from poor urban settlements. Memory is also a form of resistance. 'It's a way to denounce the systematic erasure of our history as part of our commitment with what comes next,' says Pinheiro. This is especially important now, with her community facing another form of erasure because of the climate crisis. 'Successive floods are leading our families to lose their photographs, documents and belongings,' she says. 'Climate change imposes many losses, not just the material ones.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Yahoo
Cedar Key named one of America's 11 most endangered historic places
CEDAR KEY, Fla. (WFLA) — The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Cedar Key on this year's list of America's 11 most endangered historic places, recognizing it as one of the country's greatest treasures facing an even greater threat. Cedar Key is an archipelago of small islands off Florida's west coast. The area serves as a unique historical representation of Old Florida, with its small coastal communities integrating fishing and local businesses that make it attractive for small-scale tourism. This historic Florida staple continues to recover from the hurricanes that have ravaged it over the last three years, especially Helene in 2024. Inclusion on this year's list may help bring a spotlight to the risks small, isolated coastal communities such as Cedar Key face when up against severe storms. 'We hope for Cedar Key to be a story of community resilience instead of endangerment,' said National Trust President Carol Quillen. 'With the increasing threats of severe weather events and rising sea levels, we must turn our attention to the small, historic, often isolated coastalcommunities that need our support.' Cedar Key Mayor Jeff Webb spoke at an event honoring the city's inclusion and shared his vision for recovery and the future of Cedar Key. 'The people of Cedar Key are working hard to keep heritage going into the future,' Webb said. 'We remember the past but are not staying in it. We want to move forward not by losing the heritage and charm but finding a new evolution for Old Florida. Finding how we keep Old Florida but not stay still.' The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a nonprofit organization working to save America's historic places. To view the full list, visit the National Trust's website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
