Syracuse, NY -- Central New York’s green efforts will get their close up next week when a crew shoots for an PBS series on “Building Healthy Communities” planned for broadcast next year. The filming schedule includes a bus tour of the area by 40 Upstate University medical students who will look at aspects of the region that are good,...
Goldfarb-FindlingThe filming schedule includes a bus tour of the area by 40 Upstate University medical students who will look at aspects of the region that are good, and bad, for the health of residents.
Dr. Richard Jackson is at the center of the five-part series. He’s done work with the Center for Disease Control and now at the University of California at Los Angeles on the health effects of communities. He considers things such as how easy it is to walk in a community and how heavily pollution, or illnesses are concentrated.
Jackson will joined the medical students to consider the “built environment” of the region and its effects on public health.
In the two years since work began on what will be a five-hour series, parts have already been filmed in Detroit, Oakland, Calif., New York City and Los Angles, said Harry Wiland, one of the producers.
But the challenges of making communities more livable aren’t just found in big cities, Wiland said, so one segment was filmed in Elgin, Ill., a city of about 100,000.
Syracuse became part of the planned five-hour series when Wiland had a discussion with Kathy Goldfarb-Findling, executive director of the Gifford Foundation. The Gifford Foundation had exhibited an earlier work of Wiland’s, “Philadelphia: The Holy Experiment.”
Goldfarb-Findling said response was overwhelming as representatives from different neighborhoods came together to watch the film about how people in Philadelphia were working to improve their city. “It was standing-room only,” she said.
She sent an e-mail to Wiland thanking him for letting her show the film without charge and telling him how well it was received and what efforts were under way locally. They continued to communicate and one day, she recalled Wiland asking, “Do you think Syracuse would be a good place to film?”
She said yes.
“If we could find some funding, we’ll do it there,” Wiland remembered saying.
Goldfarb-Findling found funding, including $20,000 from the Gifford Foundation, $20,000 from Syracuse University, $10,000 from St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, $10,000 from the John Ben Snow Foundation and $5,000 each from several other organizations and businesses.
Wiland said one focus of local filming will be “a tale of two lakes.” Skaneateles Lake and Onondaga Lake have been treated very differently, he said. One was a source of water for the city. The other, became a repository for waste. “We’re not pointing fingers,” he said. Instead, the show aims to highlight best practices.
So programs to make fresh produce available to those who might otherwise not have access to it will be part of what the crew will look at, as will the new sustainable buildings being built as part of the Near West Side Initiative and plans to add “green” features to St. Joseph’s.
Goldfarb-Findling said the attention to problems and solutions could be good for the region. “They’re very focused on the positive,” she said.
What underlies all the work, Wiland said, is this: “If you find a problem, you can fix it.”
Contact Charles McChesney at cmcchesney@syracuse.com.