Glenn Walters (right) of Design Workshop led a public input session for the Creative Corridors public art project last week at the Hanesbrands Theater in downtown Winston-Salem.
Community collaboration was the overarching theme of a public input session regarding the Creative Corridors project for downtown Winston-Salem held at the Hanesbrands Theater on Feb. 23.
Glenn Walters of Design Workshop, a national urban design company, led the session where input from the public was gathered via a slide show presentation. Audience members participated in the feedback session through electronic devices handed out at the start of the meeting. Walters explained that the Creative Corridors Coalition, or CCC, a local group formed with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, contracted Design Workshop to create a master plan and a set of design guidelines that will influence the design and engineering and construction of the project. Once the master plan is approved, Design Workshop will present it to the NC Department of Transportation.
“This thing has started with a great sense of partnership,” Walters said. “I personally have never seen anything like it in my experience — to think that a group of people decided to take action like this and to build the coalitions that are necessary to get this going. The level of effort is truly amazing.”
Carol Strohecker, director of the Center for Design Innovation, shed more light on the beginnings of the Creative Corridors Coalition. She said the initiative started with an e-mail announcement from the National Endowment for the Arts about grant opportunities for public art projects. The city’s public art committee had been aware for some time that the department of transportation had pledged $250 million for the planned renovation of Business 40 and the corresponding renovations of the bridges along the downtown stretch of highway. The committee had been considering the bridge renovations as opportunities for public art.
The Winston-Salem bridges and gateways cited for inclusion in the project include Business 40, US Highway 52, Martin Luther King Boulevard, Broad Street and the Salem Connector.
Strohecker said she passed on the grant information to Milton Rhodes, president and CEO of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Rhodes turned to Carol Croop to write a grant proposal for the National Endowment for the Arts and the city was successful in securing the $200,000 grant. The grant funding allowed the Creative Corridors Coalition to collaborate with Design Workshop to recommend guidelines for future developments in downtown Winston-Salem, Strohecker said.
The NEA grant is a matching award and the Center for Design Innovation, an interdisciplinary, multi-campus research center of the University of North Carolina system, is one of a number of local organizations that have pledge in-kind support to match the NEA award. CDI will offer webcasting of some of the upcoming public input sessions to facilitate the Design Workshop’s interaction with the community.
During last week’s session, Walters presented the audience with some basic principles his firm had already gleaned from its initial meetings with Winston-Salem citizens.
Boldly responding to Winston-Salem’s artful, resourceful, and innovative way of building and creating an economy while managing resources; acknowledging the past while promoting the future; creating a catalyst to repair disconnections while building new connections; achieving sustainability and bringing the “wow” factor to downtown Winston-Salem will serve as the unifying principles of the Creative Corridors project, said Walters.
During his slide presentation, Walters showed photographs of cities with iconic structures, and proposed the idea that Winston-Salem could create its own brand and identity with infrastructure that incorporates public art principles.
“Great cities have iconic structures and infrastructure that gives it an identity, gives it a powerful sense of place,” Walters said. “All you have to do is see a picture and you know the place and that is what this project is all about. As we work on these corridors together, we’re going to create something we hope that leaves the impression that those structures have on us today.”
Walters said the importance of public participation in the design process could not be overstated.
“It will be to our advantage to have a lot of public support for these guidelines and NCDOT will certainly recognize that support,” Walters said.
The goal of Design Workshop is to open up to the story of Winston-Salem and “create a really compelling story within the art of these corridors,” Walters said.
Jennifer Kiger, a spokesperson for the coalition, said after several more input sessions, Design Workshop will present its master plan at a public meeting on April 20. Final adjustments will be made and the firm will hand over a visionary master plan to NC DOT by Aug. 31.
“To date, this has not been done on this large of a scale,” Kiger said. “So we’re just really eager and looking forward to being the pioneers on this and then hopefully other cities will be able to use this process if it goes well.”
No comments:
Post a Comment