Friday, September 15th

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE
PARK(ing) Day is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens
transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks or “parklets”.

To all 11th grade Global Studies Students:

The ACE Mentor program (Architecture, Construction Engineering), would like to invite you to participate
in this year’s “parklet” design, as a public exhibition that represents and voices an issue affecting our local
community. It will be your opportunity to show local Angelenos how to design for social change in the
community simply by creating a park for a day. We’d like Global Studies students to contribute your design
ideas for our park(ing) space, build it and exhibit on Friday, September 15th to boldly state the need for
more park and public spaces in our urban city.

Typically, the best way to participate in PARK(ing) Day is to design and build a PARK. It’s easy – you don’t
need to be an artist, community activist or have any special training to do a PARK, but you do need to be
aware of your local regulations and do your best to stay within the law. We’ve provided resources here to
help like-minded people connect and get started building PARKs in their neighborhoods. You can find
more information of the international event at our website (http://parkingday.org/). We ask you to begin
by reading the Parking Day Manual posted on their website and be inspired by other parklets that are
posted.

This year, we thought the “parklet” could serve as a “Speakers' Corner”, similar to the one located in
London, UK, an area where open-air public speaking, debate and discussion are allowed. We will invite the
public to open discussions with your team. It will require much research that includes designing a 3D art
representation on a current relevant issue affecting your community and engages your audience into a
discussion . You will prepare your own speech, include your designed installation art representing your
your message on your issue, and create an informational 2D graphic serving as your artist statement for
your art during the event. We will name the LASGS park, “PEACE PARK for a day”.

The Design Thinking process will be your guide to brainstorm, create and test ideas before we actually
build our life size work of art. Your part in the “space” will function as an installation art piece created with
only recycled products that will engage pedestrians to participate in your park. Each team will create one
part of the overall design of the park space (7 teams: 7 pieces = 1 park). You can design anything your
team believes should be included in your ideal parklet-anything that would engage participants to use your
park space and feel welcomed into your discussions. We will have weekly benchmarks to meet our
deadlines. How will you design a park for Parking Day LA, and use it as a platform to voice issues affecting
our community? How can you represent your issue as a public installation art that engages participants in
a public dialogue? What issues will you educate your community about and how can your team represent it
3 dimensionally as your public installation art?

It will take much team collaboration, research, creative building and group planning that will lead you up to
the day of the event. We believe you, as community Global Leaders, can pave the way for others to
participate in future events and change the way Angelinos think about their own community! We highly
encourage you to motivate other teens to participate!

Good Luck and we hope to see you on Friday, September 15th!

Parking Day LA – ACE Mentor – Downtown LA-LASGS