With sites like Kiva and Kickstarter, microlending has become a term we are familiar with. It is a way of supporting people in poverty and cultural producers (respectively) on an incredibly small scale. Together, however, these small loans are able to make a difference in people's lives, for both the lender and the borrower, without the intervention of traditional funding and lending organizations. Read more
The Fundred Project aims to de-lead New Orleans by changing the exchange rate.
The Fundred Dollar Bill Project was started by artist Mel Chin when he visited New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Mel realized that the hurricane was only the latest disaster to hit the city, and he started talking with people about the grossly elevated levels of lead in the soil – levels that are doing serious damage to children every day. Read more
Creating a public park takes years of planning and work. Or, you could use a quarter.
Rebar, A San Francisco art collective, started converting parking spaces into temporary public parks back in 2005. They discovered a loophole in the San Francisco County legal code that leaves open the possibility of occupying a metered space with something other than a car.Read more
City worker strike in Ontario leads to a surprising new landscape.
Unforeseen circumstances often shift our perception. Landscape is a particularly under-recognized area of thought, as we tend to ignore the fact that lawns (except our own) are in need of maintenance. They just get cut, and our city parks continue to be useful to us, without most ever acknowledging that it is a city worker's job to push that mower. Read more
On tiles, a story of gentrification It’s been about 30 years since schoolchildren in Somerville created the artwork for a series of tiles - crudely drawn sailboats, rail cars, and clowns - that now adorn the Davis Square T station’s brick entrance wall. Read more
249 tiles in a Somerville subway stop tell the history of the city's residents.
In collaboration with the Think Tank that is yet to be named, The Action Mill launched a new website today. We started out exploring how a new public transit line might affect the city of Somerville, Massachusetts. Public art from the last time a new line was built there gave us an opportunity to collect personal histories of the residents who were here thirty years ago.Read more
Acorn is rolling out a campaign to connect local volunteers with people facing foreclosure.
This is what the internet is for:
The community organizing group Acorn unveiled the campaign with a spirited rally on Friday at a Brooklyn church and will roll it out in at least 22 other cities in the coming weeks. Through phone trees, Web pages and text-messaging networks, the effort will connect families facing eviction with volunteers who will stand at their side as officers arrive, even if it means risking arrest.Read more
The Fundred Dollar Bill Project was started by artist Mel Chin when he visited New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Mel realized that the hurricane was only the latest disaster to hit the city, and he started talking with people about the grossly elevated levels of lead in the soil – levels that are doing serious damage to children every day. 
On March 25, 1911, 
