My buddy Ward Joyce, by day a gifted architect, is working on something with his jewelry-making pal that I never thought would work: bicycle sculpture. In their inimitable way though they’ve brought a great conceptual edge to an otherwise whimsical public art project. Here’s an excerpt from coverage in our local paper:

MONTPELIER – Moving at a slow, deliberate speed, the metal crusher evoked groans and high-pitched squeals from the bicycles being tortured and crushed within its jaws.

“This is how bikes sound when they’re screaming,” said Carrie Baker, an employee of Onion River Sports, photographing the carnage.

She was on hand to capture the “sculptcycle” creation of artists Lochlin Smith and Ward Joyce as it came together – literally. Early Wednesday morning approximately 30 decrepit bikes were crushed into a 600-pound cube at Bolduc Auto Salvage in Middlesex.

Although it sounds like a new flavor of Hood’s frozen treats, SculptCycle is a project hosted by the Montpelier Downtown Community Association. Smith and Joyce are two of 20 artists selected to create sculptures using recycled bicycle parts. Read more…

One of the areas Peace Tiles will be developing curriculum and initiatives around in 2007 is Children and Waste.  I am beginning to pull together some resources, facts and figures.  I’d love your support and involvement!  Please help me understand this issue better from various perspectives and fields.

Sometime in 2007, according to U.N. estimates, more than 50 percent of the population of the planet will live in cities for the first time.  200 years ago, the urbanized population was around 3 percent.  Each week, approximately 1.3 million people leave small towns and the countryside for a life in the city. A billion of these people, most of them children, will end up in the world’s fast-growing slums. Many of them will grow up earning a living on dumps.

In 1995 I spent 3 weeks in and around Dakar’s municipal dump, a landfill occupying what used to be a 2.5km sq. lake at Mbeubeuss.  The experience opened my eyes to several important findings.

First, depending on your perspective, the dump is either your entry or your exit into the urban economy if you are poor.  In Senegal, many youths — particularly those from the rural Baol region in the south — come to Dakar looking for work.  Finding none, and not wishing to return to the arid farms of their childhood, they occupy a niche at the dump.

A second discovery is that dump workers — often considered part of the informal economy in many countries — are almost always part of a network.  The entire life at the Mbeubeuss dump is organized into stratified networks around specific activities, principally ragpicking of various items (ie glass jars, cloth scraps, and metal parts), the cleaning and preparation of items for repair and reuse, craft workers, and those who sell items at market.

Third, there is a stunning variety of activity and livelihoods being made at the dump, producing significant value for the urban poor.  Items sold at market that are produced from materials reclaimed at the dump will sell for 1/5 of the price of “new” items in a market.  This makes everything from footwear to paint to luggage much more accessible to those who need them.

More soon… I’ll also be blogging about this topic at CraftCycle.net with my friend Darlene Charneco…