WEEKEND ROUNDUP: #VALLEYWEDESIGN

24275_362329210564954_620271539_nSaturday morning the Valley community came together to envision ways to enhance the Valley Arts District, by using public space, and coming together exchanging ideas on how to make things better. I joined group 2 on the corner of Tompkins and Forest Streets. I was a little late to the conference. The larger group was split into 4 groups, and given a map of blocks to walk around and examine in the Valley. Groups were given a clip board for notes, stakes and signs to write messages about what we loved or wanted to improve about things we saw. The main attraction for the event was the use of social media addiction (ok, maybe only mine), instagram. Everyone was to log into the @ValleyWeDesign handle, and post things they saw and wrote about. It was great to see all of the ideas, and comments people had. It was very interesting for me, being that I am a Valley socialite (Molly’s words). I actually walked down blocks that I had never walked down before like down Nassau Street from Scotland Road. I noticed that residents decided to take matters into their own hands when it came to beautifying the Valley, they planted mulch and put out plants. It was beautiful. We had Pat Morrissy on our team who was able to give us an exclusive tour of the Berg Hat Factory, which happens to be right behind my house, pretty cool. The lofts in there will be amazing, and I can not wait to see them. Maybe I could live in one! Chalandrea, Oneil, and Kenrick, who I recruited at Hat City Kitchen the night before, really had great ideas. It was great to hear outsider’s views and perspectives from different types of professionals. Things I never think about like, safety matters.

Here are some of the ideas we came up with and scroll down more for some of the pictures! You can see more when you follow @valleywedesign on instagram!

PUBLIC ART

  • Train Station Underpasses can feature seasonal public art from local artists, or competitions for all over
  • Valley Maps or Directories can be designed by artists, and a great way to attract
  • Garbage Cans can be a way to engage the high school artists communities

SAFETY

  • Fences around the train station rails, this can also beautify the blocks, and Scotland Road
  • The sidewalks are horrible, and uneven. We should definitely get them fixed
  • More signs

DIRECTIONS TO THE VALLEY

  • In addition to the maps, we can have just arrows pointing the district from Scotland Road.

There were so many more ideas shared, you can come to the follow up meeting, Tuesday, September 24th. More details to follow. Visit http://www.handsinc.org for more information.

About these ads

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s