Hi everyone,
My name is Meril Rasmussen. This is my first semester in MET and I’m excited to be in this course. I live in Rio de Janeiro, where I have been for the last 2 years. Earlier, I lived in New Delhi for 5 years and Johannesburg for 6. I’m originally from the northern tip of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
I’ve had the privilege, previously, of being a part of several start-ups, all of them not-for-profit, all of them adventures. In 2000, I helped found a community centre in my hometown in Cape Breton, transforming our former elementary school into a multi-use community space, which included public-access computers, adult education classes and a restaurant, among many other things. A few years later, in South Africa, I helped found Soweto Community Television, the first of its kind in South Africa. Both of these projects are still running.
I studied Interdisciplinary Fine Art at NSCAD in Halifax and filmmaking in South Africa and I’ve made small, independent documentaries in Africa and India. And for sure, every film is a bit of a venture, but, in India, I made one documentary in particular that was transformative for me, about a low-tech, math-education project, called Jodo Gyan, that is finding amazing success transforming the culture of math education in northern India.
That experience inspired me to further pursue education-based projects. I had an idea for an app that, unfortunately, stalled during development in India. These days, in Brazil, I’m hoping to pull together something bold and transformative. I’d like this next project to come with some kind of income, something my earlier ventures really didn’t. The fact that the Brazilian economy is crashing around me, as I write this, at once makes my proposition more difficult and also, perhaps, may offer unexpected opportunities.
I have a personal site and occasional blog at merilrasmussen.com and you can email me at merilx {at} gmail.
