Professor Tim Nohe: a Warnock Foundation social innovator

The Warnock Foundation is “committed to Baltimore, its people, and cultivating the great ideas that will help our city reach its full potential”. The Warnock Foundation believes in supporting social innovations by making direct philanthropic investments, and supporting community building among the people who seek to be positive change agents in Baltimore. This month the Foundation is celebrating the one year anniversary of The Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, and in doing so has recognised a number of social innovators who will receive a grant award and technical assistance from the Warnock Foundation to further support their incredible work in the Baltimore area.

Professor Tim Nohe is one of only 10 social innovators recognised by the Warnock Foundation this year for his work to create accessible online and smartphone delivered urban forest stewardship resources including for example, using GPS technology to create a highly precise inventory of the forest features of Springfield Woods in Northeast Baltimore. The information will be placed in a database and made accessible online to anyone with a computer or smartphone. As noted in the Warnock Foundation article online, “Nohe foresees countless possible ways to use that information, from a visitor identifying a bird’s song, to a neighborhood group learning how to take care of trees, to local children studying the history of their community”.

Professor Tim Nohe, Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), and founding Director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) at UMBC was a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar and a recipient of the 2011 Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant. In 2011 Tim’s project supported the development of an artists’ research and exchange network linking La Trobe University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Institutional collaboration was established between La Trobe University campuses both in Melbourne and rural Victoria, and UMBC in Baltimore. The network is dedicated to fostering artists exchanges and exhibitions, with a focus on sustainability practices. Tim is extremely well known and recognised as a leading artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places. His recent work has been realized in intermedia works, sound scores for dance, improvisational concert works, and art focused on sustainability.