The Power of Place: Projects Making a Difference
Using Art to Transform Neighborhoods
The Show Way Project at Lockerman-Bundy Elementary, NDC 2008 Project of the Year, is one of a long line of community art projects that NDC assisted with over the past decade (including the 2003 Library Square project on the right). In 1999 the 
Neighborhood Design Center recognized the benefits that “art” could play in neighborhood revitalization and began a Youth Art initiative to foster involvement by young residents in community improvement projects. Led by NDC Program Manger Irene Poulsen, artists were paired with groups in neighborhoods to envision and create projects that fostered cooperation and a sense of accomplishment and pride. Some of these initiatives, through the dedication of artists and residents as well as through funding assistance and in-kind donations, evolved into significant focal points featuring community-based art and public gathering spots. In some cases, the projects spurred additional community revitalization actions. The projects featured are (click on the name to be taken directly to the project):
ABC Park Fieldhouse Murals
In the Spirit
And Still We Rise
Amazing Port Street
Sculpture garden in Mondawmin
Hunters Lot
Library Square
With assistance from NDC, new play structures, ball field improvements, and landscaping were installed in 1999 in this park in Southwest Baltimore (bounded by Ashton, Bentlou, and Catherine streets). In an attempt to supplement the new activities in the park, NDC began its first Youth Art initiative here. Artist Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen gave art lessons to young people attending the Samuel F. B. Morse Elementary School Recreation Program. After painting-to-music, individuals cut up their works and produced team collages. The artist then knitted the collages together into a continuous cohesive concept and outlined this on the four sides and overhanging porch ceiling of the park field house.
Youth painted over the course of the summer and autumn. This not only provided an ongoing positive activity in the park, but also drew others to the park to watch and to discuss the evolving artwork. Themes within the mural included sports, people, houses, dancing, animals, mountains, and rivers and the completed work provided an exuberant artistic focal point in the park.
View from the east Painting team
View from the south Collage
Secret visual game: when viewing the field house from the sprinker area, all of the images on the uprights of the porch will match up with the background image on the wall only by standing in one particular spot.
NDC Project Coordinator: Irene Poulsen
Funders: Governor Glendening’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention, Save a Neighborhood
The project site, near Monroe Street and Lauretta Avenue in Midtown Edmondson, is city parkland that in 1999 was surrounded on three sides by structures, providing an out-of-view haven for drug activity (right). After vacant structures were demolished on two sides, the property was opened to casual observation. Neighborhood residents decided then to reclaim this park-with-no-name as a unique artistic space for the community.
This Youth Art project was opened to adult residents, and participants attended a series of workshops with Artist Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen beginning in the summer of 2001. “Opening of Ideas” sessions included visiting the Maryland's African-American musician exhibit at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, sharing of neighborhood history and memories by longer-term residents, and discussions about spiritualism with a local pastor. Participants wrote, drew, and painted pictures (below) about their memories of the neighborhood, as well as their hopes for its future. They then worked in groups to create team collages.
This work enabled the artist to develop the theme and concept for a mural in the park and the general outlines were drawn on the wall of the house abutting the park’s east boundary. As over 150 community residents and volunteers took part in painting, the park was named In the Spirit, and would become a place of commemoration to those in the neighborhood whose lives had been adversely affected by the drug culture and economy.
As In the Sprit progressed, it became a three dimensional art installation. The centerpiece mural is 800 square feet, showcasing three primary themes (below left). The left side depicts the agony of death and burning and riots after the assassination of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., personal experiences of death within the community, and challenges for the neighborhood. A slave ship moves along a river to the central imagery of re-awakening. The final piece illustrates the community Drums not Guns parade, celebrations, and other elements of a positive and hopeful future. A colorful banner was created for each neighborhood street, and these were displayed across the top of the mural. A brick wall was designed and built on the western boundary of the park to feature ornamental ironwork created by artist Erin Thurston which echoes the imagery of the mural (below right).
The large existing trees, providing a natural cathedral roof, became the “Strange Fruit” Grove, each one commemorating a painful event to be overcome, including slavery and September 11, 2001. To encourage the longevity and health of the trees, old broken asphalt was removed and replaced by woodchips, and additional garden plants were added. Wind chimes hanging in the branches of the grove were designed to respond to the spirit of the wind. A fence was installed to complete an enhanced eastern edge, featuring a mural depicting the ancestry of neighborhood residents and prose written by community youth that expressed frustration, fear and anger and the plea for change. Memorials naming over a hundred people who died in Midtown Edmondson over three decades from drug violence were featured in the garden at the community celebration and dedication in September of 2003.
Completion of In the Spirit was a turning point in the community as residents recognized the power of collaboration and the impact of public art on neighborhood revitalization. In response, Midtown Edmondson Avenue Improvement Association President John Hailey, OSI Community Fellow Schlossberg-Cohen, and NDC’s Irene Poulsen developed Rebuilding through Art Project (RAP) Inc., an art–based initiative focused on continuing resident involvement in their community’s sustainability.
NDC Project Coordinators: Irene Poulsen
Funders: Governor Glendening’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention; Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice; The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund; Annie E. Casey Foundation; James Piper III; Baltimore Community Foundation.
Donors: Civic Affairs Committee of the Baltimore Building Congress and Exchange--Kinsley Construction; Rick's Gradall; American Infrastructure; T.C. Simon; P. Flanigan; LaFarge Concrete; Masonry Institute; Banner Masonry; Glen Gary; Back River Supply; Henry J. Knott Masonry; Campitelli Masonry, Inc; L & L Supply; York Building Products; Lynn Ladder; Aggregate Transport; and York Specialties. Blanks Fabrics provided banner fabric at reduced cost and Groundcovers Unlimited donated garden plants.
Partners: Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks; Mayors Office of Neighborhoods, Civic Works, McLean Nurseries
The Harlem Park community, having witnessed overwhelming amounts of demolition of structures, wanted to transform two vacant lots at the corner of Stricker and Franklin streets into a community entranceway that led to historic Harlem Square. Completed in 2002, this art and landscape project involved two artists, an architect, numerous contractors, and community residents.
The backdrop mural--And Still We Rise, based on a Maya Angelou poem [“Out of the huts of history's shame--I rise, Up from a past that's rooted in pain--I rise”] was designed and painted by artist Gary Mullen. Mural illustrations reference the slave ship, the civil rights struggle, and professional aspirations expressed by neighborhood young people. Imagery developed through discussions with community residents are also reflected in the sculptural fence that encloses the space, created by artist Stewart Watson. NDC volunteer architect Toby Johnson designed the site layout.
Site plan The mural begins
And Still I Rise: "http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/still-i-rise/" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/still-i-rise/
NDC Project Coordinators: Eva Khoury and Irene Poulsen
Funders: Governor Glendening’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention; Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice; The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund; The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore Community Foundation.
In-kind donations through the Civic Affairs Committee of the Baltimore Building Congress and Exchange included: Whiting-Turner Construction, Pavestone of Hagerstown, Banner Masonry of Baltimore, Caretti, Inc. of Randallstown, Outside Unlimited of Hampstead, and Westminster Wholesale Nurseries
Partners: Baltimore Urban Horticulture Extension Service, Harlem Park Village Center
Residents of McElderry Park, in East Baltimore, were fed up with vacant structures lining Port Street that housed drug activity and blighted the area (right). NDC was instrumental in getting the Housing Department to visit the area and meet with residents, which led to the demolition of the buildings so that the community could begin their visionary plan for open space and community activities.
NDC volunteer landscape architect Madeline Rothe prepared a design for a labyrinth, and artist Barbara Read engaged youth in an art project that designed and painted upright totems. Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church and McElderry Park Community Association subsequently received additional funding from the TKF foundation and other local funders to complete the gardens and create a community green nursery.
Painting and installing the totems
Completed site and community celebration (right)
NDC Project Coordinator: Eva Khoury
Funders: Governor Glendening’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention; Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice; The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Partners: Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks Urban Forest Division
In-kind donations: Civic Works
The Robert Coleman Community Organization wanted to enhance a neglected open space surrounded by approximately 50 row homes bounded by Walbrook and Clifton avenues and Smallwood and Bentalou streets, with the idea that making it into a more usable community commons would help strengthen their home- ownership strategy.
Artist Alex Silvis was interested in working with residents to create sculptures that could be featured in the new space. In 2002 he offered weekly art workshops for youth and interested adults that included exploration of sculptural forms and types. Through drawing exercises (below left), patterns and images were produced that the artist etched on two of the three free-standing sculptures created at his Fells Point studio (below right).
Two NDC Volunteers advised the community on the new space: Silvija Moess provided site design and planting ideas and Mark Thayer developed a site grading concept. A resident with landscaping experience was able to do the grading, and they hired a contractor to pour the patio concrete and install outdoor grills, picnic table and benches. Subsequently, hundreds of community resident hours were donated to planting the gardens.
Completed site and neighbors enjoying the new community space
NDC Project Coordinators: Eva Khoury and Irene Poulsen
Funders: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund, Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice; Baltimore Community Foundation.
An overgrown inner-block green area on Hunters Alley in the Greenmount West neighborhood was seen as an eyesore and used for little more than a shortcut. NDC volunteers with landscape, horticultural, art, and construction talents began assisting the neighborhood in 2004 to create a new community green space.
Adults and youth participated in a workshop to determine what uses they wanted to see on the site and what elements might enable this. NDC volunteer master gardener Reiko Matsua mapped existing vegetation and volunteer landscape architect Bill Simkins documented notable trees to be preserved. He also prepared a community commons plan that established pathways, added new plants, and included a management plan for the community garden team. With help from Villa Julie College students, residents spent a day pruning overgrowth and removing invasive plants.
To encourage further resident involvement, artists Emily Condon-Douglas and Paul Taylor oversaw the creation of entryways into the lot using found objects and decoration. Ms. Condon-Douglas worked with residents on a mural design for the main entry to the space, which provided a physical linkage to the community cultural center that the Greenmount West Community Association was promoting just south of the site. Additionally, Mr. Taylor helped design a gazebo that was constructed within the space for nearby residents to use for small gatherings.
Site prior to work Volunteers painting entryways
Completed site (above) and mural (right)
NDC Project Coordinator: Irene Poulsen
Funders: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund
Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Baltimore Community Foundation.
The Patterson Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library faces onto a unique triangular green space at Fayette and Kenwood streets in East Baltimore. With assistance from NDC, nearby residents formed the Neighbors of Library Square in 2003 to focus on enhancing this existing open space as a community social spot. Input from nearby community associations, churches, and cultural groups, as well as library staff and nearby residents helped NDC to develop a strategy plan of short-term and longer-term actions. In addition, a site design concept was prepared by NDC volunteers Laurie Clarendon-Lauffer and Tara Labosky.
With safety a concern, one of the first actions was pruning of trees to strengthen the lighting of the square. The next action was a community art project that engaged youth in improving the park. Artist Emily Condon-Douglas developed two hands-on projects near the main library entrance. One was the painting and installation of new colorful seats to replace broken benches. The other, in collaboration with Ms Clarendon-Lauffer and Ms Labosky, was the design of mulch patterns to replace worn earth patches. The volunteers worked with dozens of community members to install both hands-on projects.
Community work day New mulch paterns with seats
Tara Labosky subsequently became president of the Neighbors of Library Square. In 2006 they and the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation engaged TND Planning Group to help them develop a comprehensive master plan for the area.
NDC Project Coordinator: Irene Poulsen
Funders: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund
Partners: the Gemstone Urban Revitalization Team from the University of Maryland, Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks Urban Forest Division