INTERVIEW ASSIGNMENT Due Monday, November 30

How has your neighborhood changed, and what influence have these changes had on the people in your neighborhood and your community?

STEP ONE: CHOOSE EITHER INTERVIEW OPTION ONE OR TWO:

INTERVIEW OPTION ONE:  One Person Interview and portrait

Choose someone you know fairly well, that you are pretty confident can talk to you about your neighborhood’s changes, and how those changes have influenced their life and the life of the community.  The longer this person has been in the neighborhood, the better (For example, Ezra has lived in Park Slope for 30 years).  This person can be a relative, a family friend, the owner of the local corner store, the pastor of a local church, or someone else you think will have good community stories.  While you are talking to that person DO YOUR RESEARCH so that your portrait of that person shows who they are,  (ala Ruddy Roye’s examples).

AFTER THE INTERVIEW:

Choose FIVE – SEVEN quotes you feel can answer the questions:  How has your neighborhood changed, and what influence have these changes had on the person you interviewed and the community?  You will transcribe those quotes and type them into a document with a specific format, heading, and including a summary of your interview that describes the interview, its information and implications, including 2 – 3 questions that were raised by this research.  Upload the portrait to Flickr, and email it to Mr. Salak: msalak15@gmail.com, who will print out an 8” x 10” image of the person for you.

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INTERVIEW OPTION TWO:  Several Person, Community Interview and portraits

Write/choose some questions that you would like to ask a number of people in the neighborhood.  Hit the street with your questions, a clipboard, a writing utensil, and your camera.  Stop people on the street, or go into stores and restaurants to see if they will agree to answer your questions and to be photographed.  DO YOUR RESEARCH so that your portraits of each person tell a story of who they are (ala Ruddy Roye’s examples). 

AFTER THE INTERVIEW:

You will choose FIVE people that you interviewed and choose 1 – 2 quotes from each person that you feel can answer the questions:  How has the community changed, and what influence have these changes had on the people in the community and the community itself? You will transcribe their quotes and type them up into a document with a specific format, heading, and including a summary of your interviews: Who you interviewed, when you did the interviews, what the interviews were about, what you learned about changes in the community, and including 2 - 3 questions that were raised by this research. Upload your images to Flickr and email them to Mr. Salak: msalak15@gmail.com, who will print out 5 3” x 5” portraits for you, and you will match the images to the quotes.

_____I choose Interview Option One_____I choose Interview Option Two

INTERVIEW OPTION ONE STEP-BY-STEP

Part One:  Due Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Step One was to choose this as your option.

STEP TWO: Thinking about who you can interview

Think about three people in your community that you could possibly interview.  REMEMBER:  The longer they have lived in the community the better (Ezra has lived in Park Slope for 30 years). 

Write these potential interviewees names here:

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

Rank them in order of who you think would make the best interview.  Put a #1 by who is your first choice, a #2 by your second choice, and a #3 by your third choice.

STEP THREE: Interview bio

Sketch out the details of your #1 choice’s life in the template below:

Person’s name: ____________________________________

Age (or approximate age): ____________________________

Where they were born: ______________________________

How long he/she has lived in your neighborhood: _____________________

What that person does or used to do for a living:_______________________

This person will make a good interviewee for this project because:   Answer below:

STEP FOUR: Generating Questions

Review the list of questions below.  Put a check mark by any you might want to use.  Fill in the blanks at the bottom with questions of your own.  REMEMBER:  You want to ask open-ended questions that don’t lead the interviewee to answer a particular way.  Guaranteed:  You will also think of questions as you go.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

WHEN DID YOU MOVE TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD?

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO NYC/THIS NEIGHBORHOOD?

CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS LIKE WHEN YOU ARRIVED?

CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS LIKE WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?

ARE THERE ANY MEMORABLE MOMENTS FROM THAT TIME?

HAS THE COMMUNITY CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?  HOW SO?

WHEN DID YOU BEGIN TO NOTICE THAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS CHANGING?

WHEN DID THE NEIGHBORHOOD FIRST BEGIN TO CHANGE?

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHANGE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD?

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CHANGES THAT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING/HAVE HAPPENED?

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU MISS FROM HOW IT USED TO BE?

HAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE COMMUNITY CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

ARE THERE ANY MEMORABLE CHARACTERS FROM BACK IN THE DAYS?

ANYTHING YOU USED TO DO THAT PEOPLE DON’T DO IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD ANY MORE?

Make up your own questions here (Think about your interviewee, what might you want to ask him or her based on what you know about him/her):

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

STEP FIVE: Make a date to interview your person

Contact your interviewee and find a time to sit down with him or her. 

STEP SIX:  Record your interview

Make sure you have your recording device, a notebook and pen, a camera, and your list of questions.  REMEMBER: Do not let your interview go over 20 minutes.  You will be surprised at how much information you can get in that time.  REMEMBER:  Take your interviewees portrait before you leave.

STEP SEVEN:  Reviewing your interview

Listen to your interview and make note of interesting points in the interview and jot notes on topics of interest.

ONCE YOU HAVE COMPLETED THESE STEPS YOU WILL BEGIN WORK ON PART TWO: TRANSCRIBING YOUR INTERVIEW AND PUTTING THE PROJECT TOGETHER

Conjecture Assignment # 2: How have Robert Moses and his legacy changed your neighborhood? How have those changes influenced your neighborhood?

Due Monday, November 23rd

Task:

Using the information you have gathered about Robert Moses’ legacy, the data you gathered on your neighborhood walk, your block portrait and block overview, your neighborhood reading, the Brooklyn History timeline, and any outside research you have done, write a 1 – 2 page conjecture overview answering the question:  How have Robert Moses and his legacy changed your neighborhood?  How have those changes influenced your neighborhood?

In your overview consider and address the following topics:

1.      The physical characteristics of your neighborhood. 

·      Did Robert Moses build something that still exists in your neighborhood?

·      How was your neighborhood influenced by what was built by Robert Moses?

·      Do people in your neighborhood interact with what Robert Moses built? If so, how?

2.      Demographics of the neighborhood.

·      What is the current demographic make-up of your neighborhood? 

·      How was your current neighborhood demographic influenced by Robert Moses and his legacy?

3.      Shifting communities of the neighborhood over time between 1930 – today.

·      Who has moved in and out of your neighborhood?

·      How might who has moved in and out the neighborhood have been impacted by Robert Moses and his legacy?

TIPS:

1.      Review the list of ideas about Robert Moses’ legacy from the seminars

2.     Find the sentences in your neighborhood reading discussing your neighborhood’s changes between 1930 and 1960.  Try to connect that information to Robert Moses and his legacy.

3.     Consider the structures that exist in your neighborhood (Housing projects, highways, public parks, etc.)

ROBERT MOSES’ LEGACY (According to senior seminars):

·      Parks, pools, highways, bridges, public housing

·      Modern metropolis

·      Well-functioning city (long-lasting infrastructure)

·      Strong economy

·      City for the middle-class and the wealthy

·      Displaced communities

·      Cycle of poverty

·      Concentration of poverty

·      Permanent ghettos

·      Segregated city

REMEMBER:  ROBERT MOSES’ LEGACY IS INTERPRETED DIFFERENTLY AT DIFFERENT TIMES IN HISTORY

Block Overview Assignment

Model Overview

North Slope, Sixteenth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues[RK1] 

The block of 16^th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in Park Slope is very typical of the neighborhood’s character. [RK2]  Park Slope is a neighborhood of row-houses.[RK3]   Many of these, particularly in North Slope, are made of brownstone, with large stone stoops, detailed iron gates, and elaborate ornamentation on their facades.  Those brownstones were originally built to house the well-to-do, professionals such as lawyers, architects, professors, and businessmen who were drawn to the area’s proximity to Prospect Park and the easy commute by subway to Manhattan in the early 1900s, making the neighborhood a bedroom community. [RK4]  I chose to photograph the block on 16^th Street because its character depicts a more humble, but equally interesting history. [RK5]  The earliest buildings on the block were built in 1899 and 1901, are three stories, and originally housed workers who labored in the factories located in the nearby Gowanus neighborhood.  Like their neighbors to the north, these small houses are built in a row, and share attached walls with the buildings next to them.  On the north side of the street exist four-story structures, some built in the 1920s, while others were constructed as recently as 2007 and 2008.  The modern buildings were required to use the same width lot as the older homes, which accounts for why the attached apartments at 359, 361, and 363 have different addresses.  This row of buildings attempts to emulate the style of the block’s older structures.  The gray building at 349, however, is a renegade, breaking from tradition both in materials and design. [RK6]  The line of structures on this block visually indicate that the history of Park Slope is varied, unexpected and continually changing.

RECAP:

1. Introduce the location of your block.
2. Make a claim as to the character of your neighborhood.
3. Explain why you chose the particular block you photographed.
4. Describe how the block that you chose demonstrates the neighborhood’s character by giving background history as to why the structures were built when they were, and by providing details about how the buildings look.
5. Describe several particular buildings, connecting how they look to your claim about the neighborhood’s character.
6. Wrap-up with a conclusive statement.

TIP:  If you don’t feel like you know the history of your neighborhood well enough to explain why the structures in your neighborhood are there, do RESEARCH using the resources you have:

• Neighborhood reading
• Timeline
• PPT notes
• BK Bridge notes
• Other research

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