ArtPlace application, final for City

1. One sentence description of the project:

Free State Boulevard: From the Studios to the Streets, led by the Lawrence Arts Center, the City of Lawrence, and a Creative Team, will revitalize six blocks of 9th Street that link the Warehouse Arts Area and Downtown Lawrence, creating multi-modal paths, upgraded amenities, and a new model of urban infrastructure that will enable local artists to engage our community in ways inspired by the revolutionary and counter-culture spirit of Lawrence and our favorite iconoclasts John Brown, Langston Hughes, and William S. Burroughs.

2. Please describe the location(s) of focus for your work. Why did you choose this location, place, or area for your work? What is the historic or current climate, challenge, opportunity, or issue (social, physical, and/or economic) that your work is addressing? (250/250 words maximum)

-Location: Lawrence, Kansas’s 9^th Street in the Lawrence Cultural District, a corridor lined with small businesses, homes, and artists’ studios in an underinvested neighborhood.  St. Luke’s A.M.E., Langston Hughes’s church; John Brown and William Burroughs sites; New York School, a neighborhood elementary school; and Turnhalle, a 19^th century German immigrant center now considered for artists’ studios also line these blocks. Over 300 artists work in studios along the corridor and are ready to integrate their work into community spaces.

- Neighbors have requested improved sidewalks, street lighting, and support for an artistic streetscape for decades, and alliances are finally in place to make this happen with ArtPlace support. Private interests and municipal and federal governments have invested in the Warehouse Arts Area to the East and Lawrence’s downtown to the West, while the six blocks in between lack lighting, sitting places, walkable and bike-able paths, and art.

- Processes of seeking and receiving NEA Our Town funding and ArtPlace finalist status (2013) caused Lawrence politicians, artists, neighborhood representatives, and businesses to address longstanding differences. Lawrence’s 2013 Cultural District Task Force was a diverse group that tackled questions about gentrification, preservation, development, and what creative placemaking means here. Now, the City Commission has approved the Task Force recommendations reflected in this proposal, and all stakeholders are ready to engage in next steps.

-This project will be a model for neighborhood change, showing how a city can embed artists with an Urban Designer and city engineers at the outset of infrastructure development.

3. Please describe the work you want to do for which you are seeking ArtPlace America support. (350/350 words maximum)

If we receive ArtPlace funding, the City will fund 9th Street renovation, making it an environmentally responsible Complete Street with lighting. ArtPlace will fund consultation, design, artists’ fees, and materials that will make this street a distinctive place with permanent artistic elements and technological capacity for more ephemeral expressions of place through visual and performing art:

-ArtPlace will fund a professional Urban Planner to lead Creative Team including Director of Public Works, a Civil Engineer, the Arts Center, and lead artists.  The Team will design the streetscape and a sustainable plan for permanent and ephemeral art and cultural events that will transform this segment of 9th Street into Free State Boulevard, an engaging passage from the Warehouse Arts Area to Downtown.  Artists will be at the forefront of planning.

-ArtPlace will also fund artist fees and permanent art for the design, with emphasis placed on the integration of artists, materials and crafts-based processes indigenous to the Cultural District.

ArtPlace and the City will fund electrical capacity (e.g., 40 amps/50 feet) and technological infrastructure to allow artists to continuously transform the Boulevard through video projections, multi-media performances, and installations that engage pedestrians; a dynamic and sustainable platform for Creative Placemaking.

-With this infrastructure, the project will be much more than a redesigned streetscape: it will become a platform for local artists and other community innovators to exhibit, connect, perform, and work. The Creative Team will collaborate with, and provide technical support for, local artists to create permanent and temporary installations funded in part by ArtPlace and designed to encourage engagement between people and place. ArtPlace funding will leverage and expand current Cultural District programming—including Final Fridays events, New York School and St. Luke’s A.M.E. events, and the NEA-sponsored annual Free State Festival, an Our Town project. 

-ArtPlace will fund measures designed by Gallup senior scientist Shane Lopez to demonstrate the value of ArtPlace investment.

-The Project will result in measurements and a replicable model of city planning: artists working with the City and local stakeholders to design and execute urban infrastructure that is environmentally and socially responsive to community needs. 

4. Please describe the larger portfolio of strategies--work being done to accomplish or further place-based change--within your community. Name the major partners in the development and execution of those strategies. (350/350 words maximum)

Our Project aligns with Lawrence’s arts-centered strategies to enhance livability and accelerate economic development and capitalizes on current momentum across three key areas.

1.) Municipal Cultural Planning:

-City leadership in cultural planning

- The City of Lawrence designated a 0.78 square mile Cultural District in 2012. 

- Mayor's Task Force developed “Recommendations for the Lawrence Cultural District,” now the City's official portfolio of strategies for creative placemaking. 

- The City Commission has appropriated funds for a Director of Art and Culture who will develop a cultural plan for Lawrence and coordinate local artists and cultural organizations beginning July 2014. This Director will work with the Lawrence Arts Center and other stakeholders on the implementation of the Free State Boulevard plan and to ensure its future viability.

- Capital investment in the Cultural District from 2012-2014 confirms city commitment to Creative Placemaking and includes a new $18,000,000 public library and $3,000,000 investment in the Warehouse Arts Area.  Three city lots, located just off of 9^th Street and appraised at $1,000,000, have been committed by the city to become an Arts Commons curated by the Lawrence Arts Center.

2.) Healthy Community:

- The Community Foundation's initiative Live Well Lawrence and the City's Multi-Modal Transportation Plan support Free State Boulevard’s emphasis on pedestrian and bike activity and community integration.

- The City and County have supported walking and biking path development around Lawrence. Free State Boulevard will establish a model for future planning involving art and artists in the creation of this system.

3.) Neighborhoods as Distinctive Places:

- After decades of threatened closures, neighborhood schools needing renovation were saved in 2012 by voters who see them as central to making the area distinctive. The New York School, the most economically disadvantaged of these schools, lies just off 9th Street.

- East Lawrence and Downtown, two neighborhoods comprising the Cultural District, unanimously support Free State Boulevard and will be engaged with artists in making work that illuminates the context of the place.

- Cross sector support has grown for walking apps, markers, and other ways to highlight the distinctive counter-cultural history of the District, especially along 9^th Street.

5. How will your proposed work affect the social, physical, and/or economic character of the location and interact with the larger portfolio of strategies? (249/250 words maximum) *

Physical: The City of Lawrence is committed to making Free State Boulevard an environmentally sustainable Complete Street, with new sidewalks, streetlights, and bike paths integrated into the design developed by the Urban Designer and the Creative Team.  The physical components of this new urban infrastructure will draw inspiration from a place-specific palette.  Ranging from trees felled to make way for new development to clay harvested from the nearby Kansas River, indigenous materials and local artisan processes will artfully comprise the hardscape of Free State Boulevard.

Social: In addition to innovative streetscaping, Free State Boulevard will create a dynamic social infrastructure that celebrates the transformative role an active street can play within an eclectic urban context.    As a platform designed to be continuously refreshed with new content by the people who live and work here, as well as visitors, Free State Boulevard will bring artists from their studios to the streets to create an ever-evolving space in which individuals and communities can engage with each other and this historically rich place.

Economic: Free State Boulevard will encourage new investment along 9^th street, including investments in real estate development, small businesses, and original art.  Specifically, Free State Boulevard will connect major “bookend” development investments, each emblematic of the diverse character of the Cultural District. In addition, by creating a streetscape that sparks the imagination and compels pedestrian interaction, Free State Boulevard will lead to new collaborations and innovative ideas with the potential to enrich the local and the national economy.  

6. How will you know if you have had this effect? (150/150 words maximum) *

Gallup Senior Scientist Shane Lopez will lead the project evaluation.

-Surveys of pedestrian activity on 9^th Street will be taken before construction on the new streetscape begins and after it is complete.  It is estimated that there will be an average 20% increase in pedestrian activity in the area during daylight hours and a 30% increase in pedestrian activity in the area during evening hours once the streetscape has been completed. 
-Analysis of yearly Gallup-Healthways Well-being data for the Lawrence community will track changes in local vitality and community pride and demonstrate how creative placemaking can transform how people feel in and about their community.
-An animated map, demonstrating the shift in businesses, cultural events, and social activities that takes place following the construction of the new streetscape, will be made available on the Lawrence Arts Center’s website and updated quarterly for five years following the completion of the project.

7. Why is now the right time for your particular set of activities? (99/100 words maximum)

-Community support is coalescing around arts and economic development now.

- Community Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, City, and neighborhood groups finally see art as central to what makes Lawrence distinctive.

-Artists and developers want the street as a platform for art and innovation.

 -The City designated a Cultural District and for the first time will include artists at the outset of a major project.

-Public and private investment in the Warehouse Arts Area, six blocks east of Downtown, motivated cross-sector support for connecting these two nodes of activity.

-NEA Our Town support established the Free State Festival along 9th Street in 2014.