Two friends of mine in San Francisco are landscape designers. When, about this time last year, I was asked to oversee the installation of an educational garden at an underserved school I went to them first. They are at the top of their game, well-respected and well-connected, and were generous with their time and talents and their network. They not only worked for free but recruited a well-known local artist to paint a mural at the school and got them to work for free, too.
It was an exciting project. My friends put together an innovative design with several unique features, almost all of which never got off the drawing board. There was a permit that we had to sign, you see. It was over 20 pages and had very specific guidelines about what could and couldn't happen. Must of what we wanted fell into the "couldn't" category. The mural was one of these things. It wasn't exactly prohibited by the garden permit but was subject to it's own 10 page permit. This required the artist to, among other things, submit the proposed design to the Design Approval Committee for review and sign away all rights to their work while at the same time agreeing to maintain the mural if it was damaged.
They didn't sign it and I can't blame them. I wouldn't have signed it, either, though I did sign the other permit. The kids didn't get a mural but they did get the garden, even if it was a pale imitation of the original vision. The permitting process dragged on for months and was so dispiriting that one of my designer friends literally broke down in tears at one point.
What does this have to do with the DR, you ask? Well, despite having been here for less time than the aforementioned permitting process, my fellow volunteers and I have already completed a mural at the wall of a school. This was another project of my "advanced" Spanish class. Here's a picture of it:
I am (almost) not exagerrating when I say that we were able to complete this world map in less time than it took me to read the permits for the San Francisco project. The "permit" here was a simple conversation with the directora of the school. Instead of bureacratic obstructionism the process was marked by trust and flexibility. When the project was delayed (twice) by political actions and (once) by weather we had only to make a simple phone call to change plans.
In a previous entry of this blog, I used the phrase "Third World" when reflecting upon the Dominican Republic. A fellow volunteer has since told me that "developing nation" it a more accurate phrase. As I noted, it's not that the DR doesn't have the stuff of modernity it's just that it's not always evenly distributed or hasn't reached same height of complexity. In that vein, it's not that don't Dominicans have bureaucracy but it hasn't invaded all levels of society in the way it has in "developed" countries like my own.
Sometimes, this is a good thing.
It was an exciting project. My friends put together an innovative design with several unique features, almost all of which never got off the drawing board. There was a permit that we had to sign, you see. It was over 20 pages and had very specific guidelines about what could and couldn't happen. Must of what we wanted fell into the "couldn't" category. The mural was one of these things. It wasn't exactly prohibited by the garden permit but was subject to it's own 10 page permit. This required the artist to, among other things, submit the proposed design to the Design Approval Committee for review and sign away all rights to their work while at the same time agreeing to maintain the mural if it was damaged.
They didn't sign it and I can't blame them. I wouldn't have signed it, either, though I did sign the other permit. The kids didn't get a mural but they did get the garden, even if it was a pale imitation of the original vision. The permitting process dragged on for months and was so dispiriting that one of my designer friends literally broke down in tears at one point.
What does this have to do with the DR, you ask? Well, despite having been here for less time than the aforementioned permitting process, my fellow volunteers and I have already completed a mural at the wall of a school. This was another project of my "advanced" Spanish class. Here's a picture of it:
I am (almost) not exagerrating when I say that we were able to complete this world map in less time than it took me to read the permits for the San Francisco project. The "permit" here was a simple conversation with the directora of the school. Instead of bureacratic obstructionism the process was marked by trust and flexibility. When the project was delayed (twice) by political actions and (once) by weather we had only to make a simple phone call to change plans.
In a previous entry of this blog, I used the phrase "Third World" when reflecting upon the Dominican Republic. A fellow volunteer has since told me that "developing nation" it a more accurate phrase. As I noted, it's not that the DR doesn't have the stuff of modernity it's just that it's not always evenly distributed or hasn't reached same height of complexity. In that vein, it's not that don't Dominicans have bureaucracy but it hasn't invaded all levels of society in the way it has in "developed" countries like my own.
Sometimes, this is a good thing.
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