Light bulb, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from zetson’s photostream

Luminari is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to connect like-minded visionaries to bring ideas to life. It’s a place where designers, artists and creatives can work with entrepreneurs and professionals. Scientists and teachers can connect with event planners and connection makers to create a plan and put it into action. Their ultimate goal is to “broaden minds and inspire innovation.”

An example of one of their projects is a program called “I Want to be an Ambassador.” Last year, they conducted an 8-day camp for teens organized with the University of Pittsburgh Honors College which concentrated on building negotiation, analysis and communication skills culminating in a two-day trip to Washington, D.C. where students met with actual diplomats. Councilman Bill Peduto has also worked with Luminari founding member Hilda Pang Fu to help mentor young Pittsburghers to become civic-minded individuals.

Luminari is always looking for new ideas and innovators from many disciplines to become part of their “inspiration lab.” You can find out more about their work at luminari.org.

Child Holding Green Plant, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from Pink Sherbet Photography’s photostream

What would our world look like if instead of our best and brightest college grads needing to take whatever job they could find right out of school, they could focus their energies and passions on building a sustainable society?

TerraShift is a Pittsburgh-based social venture which offers fellowships to recent college graduates and young professionals that include hands-on work experience, skill-building workshops, networking, and independent study time. It also gives them the time, space and support to do this by covering all their living expenses for one year. TerraShift’s focus is on giving these young people the skills and experience to go on to meaningful careers in the fields of sustainability, social justice, and societal progress. TerraShift then helps to place their fellows in effective change-making organizations (entrepreneurial, organizational, and institutional).

Here’s where your involvement is key. The Unreasonable Institute is a mentor-intensive program for startup entrepreneurs hungry to tackle the world’s greatest social and environmental problems. They’ve launched a competition in which the public votes with their wallets to decide who will be accepted into their institute. Forty-five finalists were chosen from across the globe and TerraShift is one of them. In order to win, they need to be one of the first twenty-five finalists to raise $8,000. To prove their entrepreneurial mettle, they must achieve this goal with the broadest support possible — meaning for this first week of the competition, supporters may not donate more than $10 (contribution caps increase incrementally each week). The competition aims to reach one million people worldwide.

You can view TerraShift’s video entry below. Once you have, you can tell the world that Pittsburgh is a city that supports social entrepreneurs by heading over to the Finalist Marketplace and making a contribution to TerraShift.

Paintbrushes, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from John-Morgan’s photostream

The Art Out of the Box project sets up artist studios in modified trailer boxes in five neighborhoods (Friendship, Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, South Side, and Central Northside). Pittsburgh City artists chosen to participate in each of these “Art Boxes” will have one week (40 hours) to create an original piece of visual art. The Art Boxes will be open to the public so that residents can see the artistic experience firsthand and interact with the artists. The goal is to demystify the creative process, create conversation about the value and importance of local art and to connect artists with community development groups and community residents. The entire process will be filmed by artist Chris Ivey and the resulting works of art — along with the documentaries — will be shown at a public art exhibit as part of the Downtown Gallery Crawl. The artworks will ultimately be donated to community development centers in the neighborhoods where they were created.

The concept was created by artist Samantha McDonough who has a longtime interest in community-based art initiatives and who will be the project manager. Art Out of the Box has the support of the following groups: The Sprout Fund, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Friendship Development Associates, South Side Local Development Company, Polish Hill Civic Association, Central Northside Neighborhood Council and The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Those professional artists — new or established — interested in participating in an Art Box residency can find out more information at the Art Out of the Box website and can download an application here. They’re looking for artists who have “outgoing personalities” and who can engage with the public while working. Applications will be accepted between January 17 and 5 p.m. on February 18, 2011. Chosen artists will receive a fee of $720 and an additional $250 materials stipend.

Good Luck!

World in Your Hand, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from biblicone’s photostream

Bruce Katz is the vice president and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program for the Brookings Institution. He’s also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and has served under the Obama administration (full bio here). In the following video, he details how “everything is about to change and, frankly, everything is changing” regarding the energy we use.

The migration from carbon fuels to a more sustainable mix will change our infrastructure, the products we buy, and the homes and buildings we inhabit. Katz likens the change to the transformation brought about by the Information Revolution in its far-reaching effects. He notes that “this is a competition” on a global level and questions how the United States will fare when countries like China and Germany are already ahead of us and determined to stay out in front.

Councilman Bill Peduto has worked closely with Katz and the Brookings Institution over the years. He was part of the “Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania” project and was one of only a handful of Pennsylvania elected officials asked to be involved with “Renew PA” in order to help steer recommendations to actions.

The city of Pittsburgh, 1907

“Who would not wish to be proud of his city; to boast of the honesty and efficiency of its government; to point to its civic advancement and betterment; to speak with pride of the public officers’ devotion to the public service; to believe that the public moneys were applied for the public’s good; to know that the city’s property was conserved for the city’s use; to realize that the people’s rights were safe with the people; to be assured that the people’s will was obeyed by the people’s choice; to feel a civic consciousness of love and pride and confidence in the greatness and goodness and accomplishment of his city . . . . ?”
- A. Leo Weil, 1908

First, on behalf of everyone at Bill Peduto for Pittsburgh: Happy New Year, Pittsburgh!

At this time of year, we look forward with great hope for a New Pittsburgh and we also reflect on how far we’ve come. One hundred years ago, Pittsburgh was the eighth largest city in the United States. It was also a city rife with graft and corruption. One man was instrumental in changing that and his name is A. Leo Weil.

A. Leo Weil was born in Virginia in 1858. He started his education in a log cabin schoolhouse in Virginia and attended high school in Titusville after his parents moved to Pennsylvania. He went on to study law at the University of Virginia and was an attorney in Bradford, PA for seven years before he moved to Pittsburgh in 1887. In 1898, he built a house at the corner of Howe Street and Highland Avenue. Mr. Weil was one of the founding members of Rodef Shalom Temple and his grandmother served as president of the Columbia Council (now the National Council of Jewish Women). Weil was also a prominent member of the executive committee of the Voters’ Civic League — which is where our story really begins.

Back in the early 1900′s, Pittsburgh had a bicameral City Council — “Select” and “Common” — with 100 members in total. Council members were unpaid and apparently many were quite willing to supplement their non-salary by doing the bidding of any and all industrialists. At the time, the city was ruled by machine politics — only then it was Republicans in power. From historian George Swetnam (via the Post-Gazette’s Brian O’Neil):

“For two full generations, almost without a break, the city was in the grip of one or another faction of the most cold-blooded and vicious political ring that ever ruled an American city.”

At one point, City Council was set to turn then Grant Street (now Bigelow Boulevard) into a railway. Weil wrote on that issue:

“In the City of Pittsburgh, immediately upon the grant of a franchise to build a street railway on Grant Boulevard, the value of the franchise was appraised by street railway experts at $3,000,000. The city received not one cent for this grant. The value of the franchises in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, granted without compensation to the city, would . . . far exceed the public debt of those cities; probably would amount to more than double such public debts…”

Yes, that would be licensing a public asset to a private entity — with enormous profits for them — and it would have necessarily changed the character of the city of Pittsburgh had it gone through. Weil and the Voters’ Civic League put a halt to it.

A few years later, Weil “was a moving force behind the cleanup of the City depositories bank scandal (with help he personally entreated from President Theodore Roosevelt).” In 1910, Weil helped set up a sting operation as part of his investigation of corruption in City Council. Again, from O’Neil:

“Mr. Weil also brought in a Scranton private eye who posed as a lumber baron who wanted to pave the city streets with blocks of wood. He invited council members into his hotel room at the Fort Pitt Hotel (then at the corner of 10th and Penn). He bored holes in doors of his room so witnesses could listen to every bribe he received for the scheme to pave Fourth Avenue from Grant to Market Street.”

[snip]

“[S]ome 41 Pittsburghers — council members, bankers and industrialists — were indicted for corruption.”

The scandal led to a new city charter act in 1911, which replaced the Select and Common Councils with a single Council of nine members. It was signed into law by Governor John K. Tener.

This week — 100 years since the inception of the nine member council — our current City Council has unanimously declared 2011 to be “The Year of A. Leo Weil” in the City of Pittsburgh. You can read their proclamation here: 2011-1277.

And, you can thank A. Leo Weil for his tremendous contribution to the ideal of Good Government.