| Your Name | Daniela Mekler |
|---|---|
| Email Address | danimeklerl@gmail.com |
| Cohort Assignment | Hybrid In-Person/Online with Intensive in Costa Rica, Winter-Spring 2024/2025 |
| 1. What do you see as your primary work at this stage of your life? | My primary work at the moment, professionally speaking, is with Porvenir Design. As a team, we consult on land based projects, seeking to guide clients in Latin America through a more holistic planning and decision making process that enables lasting, positive effects on the ecology and people of a place. Personally, I feel like my primary 'work' at this stage of my life is to stay open, be curious and creative, as well as reflective on how I show up in the world. |
| 2. What role do you see as yours to play? | I see my role as one that is of support or in service. |
| 3. What goals or aims do you have in regard to the above? | The goals or aims that I have in order to embody the role of being a support and in service, is to listen carefully and care deeply, as well as continuing to grow into myself as a person. |
| 4. Where do you feel your next arenas for personal growth are? | In terms of personal growth, I feel that it is important to continue to grow into myself as a person (continuing the same goal from above). I'd love to keep finding ways to live, work and learn through art, education and land-based projects; I feel committed to exploring the potential and intersection between art, nature, education, and community based work. I strongly hope that a future area for personal growth comes from taking care of or stewarding land. |
| 5. And for professional growth? | Professionally, I hope to continue to develop a stronger practice of being able to work from a place that connects and creates by centering people and place, as well as having more confidence in myself to do so. Aside from growing in regenerative development frameworks, I would also love to continue to grow professionally in honing in my map making processes and design processes, as well as working on and with land (agriculture). I'd also love for artistic practices to expand into my professional growth. |
| 6. What have you invested in to get you where you are? | Time, energy and financial investments in formal and informal education endeavors. |
| 7. What fields of learning and which thinkers have been important in your life? | Education reform and artistic practices. Art based education initiatives at cultural institutions have been a very important part of my personal and professional life (museums, non-profits, parks). I feel very connected to bell hooks and Robin Wall Kimmerer's writings and teachings, as well as artists such as Alfredo Jaar, Tania Bruguera, Suzanne Lacey, and Theaster Gates. The Center for Urban Pedagogy and Downtown Art are organizations that have been influencial to me as well. More recently, permaculture has been a very important field I've been exploring and learning from. |
| 8. Can you frame your philosophy or cosmology of life? What role(s) do humans play in it? | I am still working on this... |
| Date Created | November 5, 2024 |