About us:
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design, and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. Our pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation, and serve common needs.
The internship program:
PPS’ Internship Program provides a rich learning environment for students from across the U.S. and abroad. We offer our interns an opportunity to not only gain invaluable experience, but also to contribute to the work PPS does in helping communities build vibrant, sustainable places.
During the internship, students are introduced to PPS’ Placemaking approach and core principles through staff presentations and by watching the William (Holly) Whyte video, The Urban Life of Small Urban Spaces. As part of the internship program, interns are expected to attend at least one community workshop in order to gain experience facilitating a community visioning process. Additionally, interns participate in onsite observational exercises where they get hands-on training. These exercises teach them how to apply PPS’ various tools and techniques in an effort to understand the elements that make a great public space.
Our interns also perform a place evaluation exercise at least once during their internship. For example, past interns have visited Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park to do Activity Mapping of park users and to use the Place Game to collect and analyze data. Through the lens of these tools and techniques, interns are able to evaluate these spaces, identify the good and bad qualities of the parks, and suggest both short- and long-term improvements themselves. The exercise also allows them to gain insights and develop their own ideas for the sites by looking at the parks from a user-oriented point of view.
PPS strives to make the internship a reciprocal process whereby interns not only learn from us, but we also learn from them. We therefore encourage our interns to work on special projects in areas that align with their particular interests as well as have them assist the staff on current projects. Interns are matched with a PPS staff mentor, who works with each intern to develop their workplan and identify learning objectives for the internship. At the end of the internships, interns give a final presentation to share with staff their research findings and project deliverables.
Length of time: 5-10 weeks (to be agreed)
Stipend: N/A
Project/Supervisor: To be discussed/General
Housing: N/A
Feel free to contact us with any questions
Internship Program contact: Juliet Kahne – [email protected]
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