Joline Blais

Joline is Associate Professor of New Media.  Her work explores digital narrative and digital design tools to support regenerative communities & ecosystems.  She teaches courses in Designing Humane Tech, Digital Narrative, Designing Websites for Community Partners, and Digital Photography & Storytelling.

She co-directs the Still Water lab, is a faculty advisor on the Terrell House Permaculture Project, and founded LongGreenHouse, a collaboration between the Wabanaki and university communities.

Joline is a co-founding partner of the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, a net-zero community whose design won the 2011 Green Project of the Year.

Her book At the Edge of Art (2006) investigates how new strategies of empowerment work in communities of new media artists, and how these practices reshape art and real world contexts.

Joline’s ongoing work with wild blueberry growers reflects her commitment to Maine’s ecologies and economies. She has enlisted New Media students in service learning projects to document wild blueberry growers, and to create the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center website.

As President of the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center board, she works with Island Institute and AmeriCorps VISA staff to develop this gateway to Downeast Maine at an iconic site in Columbia Falls. Her Still Water Ripple initiative, meanwhile, has garnered support from Maine’s Wild Blueberry Commission for a dozen websites for small blueberry growers and organizations developed by interns under her supervision. Other recent projects include a partnership with SYRA (Sustainable Year Round Agriculture, an MTI cluster)  called Mag App, an application to help Maine farmers aggregate sensor data for greenhouses to allow them to grow food all year round.

The Still Water Ripple Initiative builds on these student/community partnerships to invigorate learning and support thriving communities in Maine.

See Portfolio for more info.