Candy Chang is a pioneer in the innovative use of public spaces that promote sharing. She lives in New Orleans that has the highest number of abandoned properties in the US. She has championed the cause of turning this liability into an asset. She does this by turning these abandoned properties into shared spaces that brings the community together.
In 2009, a loved one passed away suddenly and this made Candy think more about death. She feels that thinking about death provides perspective to life. But faced with increasing number of daily distractions we tend to lose this perspective. So she decided, with a group of friends, to turn an abandoned property into a giant chalk board with stenciled sentences: “Before I die I want to…”. The wall was quickly filled out and kept growing. An abandoned property soon turned into a thriving community space where neighbors shared their deepest hopes and aspirations. The space became a place for contemplation and reflection. It became a place to learn and grow.
The success of this project has had a snowballing effect. There are now similar walls around the world, from Kazakhstan, to Argentina, to South Africa. Candy provides a toolkit if you want to start a wall of your own: http://beforeidie.cc/site/build-your-own-before-i-die-wall/
Don’t have a wall around you? You can now express your wish on this wall on the internet: http://beforeidie.cc/site/blog/category/responses/. This space keeps changing as people sumbit their entries. Here is one that has been posted recently: “Before I die I want to make a profound difference in somenone’s life with my art”.
Credits: This is a TED talk released on You-tube by TED.
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