Water & Power Blitz - Pando Populus

WATER & POWER BLITZ brought community stakeholders together to build resilience in Los Angeles Council District 5 — focusing on water and power. We came away with a program that would change the game for family and youth education: Magenta House.

Like everything we do, Magenta House was conceived in our accelerator process — in this case, with three community events spread over seven months in 2018 involving brainstorming, small-bet prototyping, and brainstorming again. The Magenta House program for remaking homes into stand-out examples of water and power sustainability developed as a result.

*More than a dozen faith traditions came together to brainstorm new and inventive ways to engage their communities over critical issues of water and power conservation and efficiency.*

Buildings account for a whopping 40% of our overall carbon footprint. Tightening up your home with insulation and weather stripping is likely more important in decreasing your own contribution to global greenhouse gases than driving an electric vehicle.

On the water side, simple things like shorter showers, faucet aerators, or rain barrels can make an ocean of difference — all within the scope of what a family can do, hands-on.

So that’s why the Water and Power Blitz was held, to dream up a family-friendly DIY program that makes it as easy (and meaningful) as possible to do the right thing water- and power-wise at home — and signal a different kind of future.

How the Blitz created Magenta House

We began by networking among more than 60 stakeholder communities in Council District 5 (CD5) to identify 12 of their most creative changemakers — people with whom we could work 3-month period of brainstorming and prototyping. We targeted diverse communities of faith.

We then pulled this core team together for a series of three day-long Blitzes that aimed to develop new campaigns and communication/education strategies for building community resilience, focused on water and power conservation and efficiency.

Following each period of brainstorming, change-makers took the innovations we’d collectively dreamed-up back to their community “labs” to implement the ideas and put them to the test. We supported their work with materials, coaching, networking, and follow-through.

At the end of the process, we’d developed and field-tested an ingenious suite of projects for creating a water-wise and power-conscious future. We called the program, Magenta House. In 2020, we launched magentahouse.org.

Three-part Blitz

Our challenge was to bring stakeholder communities together to change the game on Los Angeles resiliency, with Council District 5 the test-case.

Water Deck

Jan–Feb 2018
The focus was water conservation and use.

Power Deck

Mar–April 2018
The focus was on power efficiency.

Water & Power Deck

Jun–Jul 2018
Water and Power ideas were assessed and unified.

Key Partners

Water and Power Blitz is a project of the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation and is made possible by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, produced in association with Los Angeles City Council member Paul Koretz (Council District 5).