Westside Communities Alliance

A partnership between Atlanta's westside communities and institutions of higher education.

WCA Launches Data Dashboard

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The Westside Communities Alliance introduced a comprehensive interactive Data Dashboard for Atlanta on February 11th.

The WCA Data Dashboard serves as a one-stop shop for key data that is accessible to community stakeholders, researchers, local government agencies, and relevant foundations interested in sustainable Westside community development.

“We believe that this tool has the potential to encourage greater data-driven decision-making at the neighborhood and Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) level in addition to supporting research and policymaking that addresses significant challenges in areas of education, economic development, transit and mobility, and public safety,” said WCA Associate Director Mackenzie Madden.

In its current form, the dashboard offers resources in seven categories:  1) Community Profiles, 2) Economic Development, 3) Education, 4) Public Safety, 5) All Data, 6) Historical Data, and 7) Resource Library.

Presently, the dashboard displays information for NPU’s K, L, and T – the three NPUs connected to the WCA – as compared to the City of Atlanta.

The dashboard is a user-friendly tool that:  1) draws upon available quantitative and qualitative data, 2) stores data collected for current and future research initiatives, 3) provides metrics for assessing the success of diverse engagement and intervention models, and 4) develops comprehensive reports to identify the impact of “anchor institutions” such as Georgia Tech on neighboring communities to highlight knowledge gaps.

The Data Dashboard project began in 2011 as a static Westside neighborhoods asset map created in conjunction with faculty in the Georgia Tech College of Architecture. Under the leadership of Dean Royster and her WCA leadership team, the first virtual tool was created in Fall 2013 by a group of graduate students in Dr. John Stasko’s Data Visualization class. That iteration mapped transit and walkability in the city. The platform also provided a heat map of census data that has since been transformed into the Big Data tool available today. Graduate Research Assistants in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts continued building the dashboard into its present form.

Katie O’Connell, MCRP 2015, was hired as the Project Manager for the Data Dashboard in Summer 2014. She began by researching similar platforms across the country and collecting relevant data for the city of Atlanta. During an Online Tools session of the WCA’s 2014 Community Studio, O’Connell was able to determine the basic pros and cons of existing resources such as the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Neighborhood Nexus, the U.S. EPA’s Enviromapper, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Several focus groups with Westside residents and stakeholders were held as various portals were designed to garner feedback on the usability of the dashboard.

The WCA staff has presented the dashboard at various conferences and symposia including The Center for Community Progress’ Vacant Properties Conference in 2015, Atlanta Studies Symposium, TEDx Atlanta, and the Georgia Tech Center for Urban Innovation.

The WCA Data Dashboard has been made possible through various stages of development in collaboration with entities at Georgia Tech including College of Architecture, College of Computing, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Center for Geographic Information Systems, and with funding from the Ford Foundation.

Please visit wcadatadashboard.iac.gatech.edu to explore the platform. Please use the hashtag #WCADataDashboard in social media settings, when referencing the tool.

Drug Market Initiative

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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia has implemented a Drug Market Intervention (DMI) for the English Avenue Neighborhood. To date, DMIs have been successfully implemented in 36 other neighborhoods nationwide. With technical assistance from Michigan State University (via funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance), the first steps of the process have already been completed. On June 3rd at Westside Works, the technical assistance team presented to a group of community stakeholders about the DMI and how to move further along in the process.

Upcoming Meetings:

Tuesday June 16th

The Phoenix Partnership: English Avenue Drug Market Initiative

Time: 6:00pm

Location: Lindsay Street Baptist Church – 550 Lindsay Street NW, Atlanta GA 30314

Monday June 22nd

The Phoenix Partnership: English Avenue Drug Market Initiative

Time: 6:00pm

Location: Pilgrim Baptist Church – 498 English Ave NW, Atlanta GA 30318

 

The official Call-In is scheduled for Tuesday June 30th at a location TBA.

See more resources at: http://www.dmimsu.com/PhoenixPartnership

OurGirls @ Tech – Spring 2015 visit

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On a surprisingly cold spring day, 22 Brown Middle School females and their chaperones stepped onto Georgia Tech’s campus for a visit. While the drive only took them 12 minutes, Georgia Tech was a place they had never been before even though the majority of them have lived close by their entire lives. Part of a larger mission the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts has to expose more local Atlanta Public Schools students to the possibility of attending Georgia Tech for college, this was the third time the Westside Communities Alliance has hosted such an OurGirls event. In previous years, Sylvan and Kennedy middle schools also attended.

This year, the girls, escorted by current Georgia Tech students that served as volunteers, got a unique view of the campus. They stopped by the Clough Undergraduate Learning Center (CULC) to see the Urban Honey Bee Project led by Dr. Jennifer Leavey and toured the Invention Studio at the Manufacturing Related Disciplines Complex (MRDC) to see the 3D printer. They also got to see a residence hall for the first time. The photo scavenger hunt took them to the water slide, a dining hall, the radio station, and several popular student hang-out spots on campus.

Catered lunch took place overlooking Historic Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium in the Student Success Center. They heard from current senior and Public Policy major, Katharine Mitchell about self-identity and maneuvering through college as a woman of color. Andre Dickens, Assistant Director of the Office of Minority Educational Development, spoke about the resources available as a minority student at Tech, including unlimited tutoring and new activity and social groups. Jade Sims from the Office of Admissions spoke about what it takes to get into college, particularly Georgia Tech, and how to make changes now that can will prepare you to not only get in, but succeed in college.

The students left with swag to remember their trip and the WCA looks forwards to its next group of girls in 2016.

OurGirls @ Tech - Spring 2015 visit

Washington Park – LCI Meeting

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Washington Park Neighborhood At Work

On Tuesday October 21st, around 30 Washington Park residents gathered at KIPP Ways School on Temple St. to discuss the Livable Centers Initiative grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission. The event was hosted by Christi Jackson, Executive Director of The Conservancy at Historic Washington Park and supported by Allison Duncan of the ARC, and Carlos Perez and Wesley Brooks of Perez Planning + Design.

Dr. Pearlie Dove, a long-time resident of Washington Park, gave a warm welcome and call to action, starting the meeting with a great quote from Henry Ford: “Coming together is the beginning, working together is progress, staying together will result in success.”

The Livable Centers Initiative comes out of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Community Choices program. The purpose of this meeting was to create a vision for the neighborhood with input from the residents. Once a report has been created, the group will identify strategies and sources for implementation.

ARC conducted an interactive survey using clicker remotes. Sample poll questions included: “What gives the community its character?”, “Why do you live in this community?”, “The community needs more…” etc. Following the survey, the attendees broke up into tables and discussed three questions:

1) What is it that you love about the neighborhood and do not want to see changed?

2) What is it that you do not like about the neighborhood that you would like to see changed?

3) What specific ideas and recommendations do you have about maintaining the things you love and/or changing the things you do not like?

The next meeting will report on the synthesis of the groups’ responses to the survey and discussion questions. It will take place on Monday, November 10th, 2015 at 6:30 pm at HAGAR Palace, located at 19 Joseph E. Lowey Blvd (the intersection of Lowery and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive).

 

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Africa Atlanta 2014 Initiative

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http://www.news.gatech.edu/2014/02/04/tech-launches-africa-atlanta-2014-initiative

Arts and culture, innovation, and entrepreneurship — these aren’t concepts that typically come to mind when Americans think of Africa.

Africa Atlanta

Click image to enlarge

The full schedule of Africa Atlanta 2014 events is available at www.africaatlanta.org.

But a Georgia Tech-led initiative has ambitious goals to recast narrow and negative perceptions about the continent and highlight Atlanta as a center for action.

The idea for Africa Atlanta 2014 grew out of a conversation over lunch one day when Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Dean Jacqueline Royster learned that the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, was closing for renovation and was willing to have pieces from its spectacular collection tour outside of Belgium.

She immediately set about finding partners and funding to bring to Atlanta an exhibition that was being curated for a U.S. tour, KONGO across the WATERS.

“From our start in 2012, we’ve found tremendous enthusiasm for this project,” Royster said. “The arts became our pebble in the pond.”

The ripple spread across universities, visual and performing arts organizations, African Diaspora heritage communities, governmental organizations and agencies (local, state, national, and international), nongovernmental organizations, business, and industry.

Taking a cue from the highly successful model for France-Atlanta, Royster chose a holistic approach and included activities spanning not only arts and culture, but education, business and innovation, and global affairs.

“The idea is to see the arts as a lens for understanding cultures more robustly within a global context,” she said. “We are thrilled to have one of the world’s foremost collections of African art to anchor this initiative. We are also thrilled to add many other amazing artistic and cultural activities.”

Campus sponsors include the Office of the Provost, Office for Institute Diversity, Office of International Education, College of Architecture, Scheller College of Business, Office of International Initiatives, College of Science, Institute of Paper Science and Technology, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the IAC School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and the IAC School of Modern Languages.

Events across the city are already underway. Upcoming campus events include the
following:

  • Mapping Place: Africa Beyond Paper (Feb. 28-May 17): An exhibition exploring the changing representation and projection of space that has shaped our approach to Africa at the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum. Admission is free.
  • Shuffle, Shake, and Shatter by Sanford Biggers (March 28): A multimedia film suite exploring the formation and dissolution of identity at the Ferst Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15 for the general public.
  • Africa Beyond Africa: The Future of Cultural, Social, and Scientific Research Conference (May 16-17): This event will focus on challenges museums face today including uses of science and technology for presentation and representation. See www.africaatlanta.org for registration fees and details.
  • KONGO across the WATERS (May 17-Sept. 21): Art and artifacts from the Royal Museum for Central Africa explore connections between the art and culture of the Kongo peoples and African-American art in the United States at Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. Tickets are $8.

View the full schedule of events here.

Related Links

Contact Information

Rebecca Keane
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts