Learning to design a decision — not just choose between two options.
Decisions are, at their best, meaningful actions. And when a decision is a meaningful action, it is because it was designed, not just chosen. In our work, personal and our small "p" political lives, we have lost the craft of "making" decisions. Instead we are often given two options to choose from (we call this decision-choosing), neither one meeting the actual needs of the moment. The Action Mill's Decision Making Game takes the aspects of decisions that are often invisible (authority, process, roles, responsibilities, deadlines and capacity) and makes them visible and tangible.Read more
The Reading Viaduct meadows are something wonderful to behold now
On a lovely almost-Autumn Thursday evening nearly two weeks ago, the Action Mill presented a project called Future Meadows in collaboration with landscape designer Margie Ruddick and her assistant Ashley Kalemjian at DesignPhiladelphia’s kick-off event.Read more
Lessons from my father's renewable energy company.
When I was little my father would return from his work trips with cool toys and great stories. He was a physicist who in the mid-70s started RE: The Renewal Energy Company. The logo was so cool and oh-so-70s: a beautifully drawn version of the ancient Egyptian sun god Re (or Ra). His trips took him to Tunisia, Panama, Europe and around the United States.Read more
Last year we created a toolbox prototype as part of a project for Manifesta 8.
The Action Mill designs objects, actions and systems that change the behavior of people who interact with them. We do this by offering new frameworks for making sense of the world around us. Part of our work depends upon building useful tools that facilitate meaningful change for individuals and communities. These tools allow people the opportunity and space to create the world they want to live in rather than describe it, and as such we constantly strive to move beyond the symbolic and toward the actual.Read more
Americans get their pick of backbreaking farm jobs.
The United Farm Workers, the organization famous for their successful grape boycotts and union drives in the 60's, '70's and 80's, have launched a campaign to set the record straight about migrant farm workers and their role in the US economy.Read more
On Thursday, April 22nd, Jethro Heiko, Strategic Organizing Director for the Action Mill spoke at the Academy of Natural Sciences on planning and development issues facing the Delaware Riverfront. Jethro spoke about the value of resident participation, community organizing and planning in the successful efforts to save Fenway Park and related these experiences to the ongoing efforts to defeat casinos proposed for Philadelphia's waterfront while advancing a sustainable, public waterfront for Philadelphia.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
Ministers of the Maldive Islands will hold a cabinet meeting under water on October 17th to demonstrate the threat that rising sea levels pose to their country. The cabinet is taking scuba lessons in preparation for the meeting, and will communicate with whiteboards and hand signals.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
Pieing is the act of pulling the king down to the jester's level, but it has gone stale.
Throwing a pie at a public figure nudges up against the outer edges of what we consider non-violent action (we believe in non-violence both for tactical and moral reasons) but we're fans of working on the edges, so when someone throws a pie, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt. Pieing was originally a staple of slapstick comedy, popularized by the Keystone Cops and Laurel & Hardy almost a century ago.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. 
Ministers of the Maldive Islands will hold a cabinet meeting under water on October 17th to demonstrate the threat that rising sea levels pose to their country. The cabinet is taking scuba lessons in preparation for the meeting, and will communicate with whiteboards and hand signals.
Throwing a pie at a public figure nudges up against the outer edges of what we consider non-violent action (we believe in non-violence both for tactical and moral reasons) but we're fans of working on the edges, so when someone throws a pie, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt. Pieing was originally a staple of slapstick comedy, popularized by the Keystone Cops and Laurel & Hardy almost a century ago.
