Together with Staten Island Arts, the Design Trust for Public Space is developing a cultural plan to promote equitable community growth, and they hope to put its design and programming theories to the test with public art pilots sometime this summer. We cooperate with the local community, including artists, cultural producers, civic activists, and small business owners, on a vision for the waterfront. We will inform both public and private decision-makers about our final plans, designs, and policy suggestions. Staten Island’s neighbourhoods, shoreline, and cultural institutions will be better connected to the rest of the borough and the rest of the city thanks to this plan’s efforts by civic organizations, landowners, developers, corporations, and public agencies. Let us look at the background of connecting Staten Island’s waterfront to its community in a time of rapid change.
Background
In 2014, a public RFP dubbed The Energetic City with the goal of breathing new life into the city by strengthening connections between its residents via a design that takes into account the wants and requirements of the local populace were held. An independent jury selected a proposal by Staten Island Arts to engage with the Design Trust in building a replicable model of inclusive development utilizing public art to unite the cultural treasures of Staten Island’s North Shore neighbourhoods.
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the potential of public and privately owned parks on Staten Island’s North Shore to benefit from the presence of artistic and cultural activities. The final product of this work will be a set of recommendations for preserving the social, ethnic, and economic variety of the community through sustainable neighbourhood development practices.
A Photo Urbanism Fellow was chosen through a jury process in February 2016 by the Design Trust in collaboration with the Alice Austen House and Staten Island Arts to record the artistic life of North Shore.
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An additional group of Fellows with backgrounds in interactive art, urban planning, politics, and graphic design were introduced in August 2016. A concept for integrating and engaging public space along Staten Island’s North Shore waterfront was developed through community-wide brainstorming and feedback meetings with local residents, government officials, and developers.
To keep the residents of St. George, Tompkinsville, and Stapleton informed about our work and to encourage feedback from them, we launched the Future Culture Newspaper in English, Spanish, Bengali, Sinhala, Tamil, and Urdu in December 2016.
The Design Trust and Staten Island Arts presented the Future Culture Initial Proposals for design and programming on March 28, 2017, and announced two public art pilots, Sonic Gates and Court Yard Fridays, to test those recommendations on July 13, 2017.
Throughout the waterfront, Bay Street, and Tappen Park, from St. George to Stapleton, a crew led by Staten Island-based composer, traveling performer, and media artist Volker Goetze will build a series of sound sculptures for Sonic Gates.
In the courtyard between Borough Hall and the old Supreme Court building, Kevin Washington, a native of Staten Island and a retired NYC Firefighter and community organizer; Homer Jackson, Director of the Philadelphia Jazz Project; and graphic designer Lynn Washington will host a series of weekend concerts called Court Yard Fridays.
These public art experiments are scheduled for the summer of 2018, and they’ll help implement some of Future Culture’s suggestions for bringing more attention to the Staten Island North Shore and revitalizing unused public places. The schedule for this summer’s activities will be released soon.
All of the major news outlets have been referring to Staten Island’s North Shore as the final gold coast. In a way, it makes Staten Island appear to be attracting a hip crowd. That’s the problem we’re up against; all the hipsters are already there. The question then becomes how to incorporate them into the planning of their community. We’re helping to envisage that process by including artists in the conversation. In 2014, we held a public RFP dubbed The Energetic City with the goal of breathing new life into the city by strengthening connections between its residents via a design that takes into account the wants and requirements of the local populace. An independent jury selected a proposal by Staten Island Arts to engage with the Design Trust in building a replicable model of inclusive development utilizing public art to unite the cultural treasures of Staten Island’s North Shore neighbourhoods for connecting Staten Island’s Waterfront to its community in a time of rapid change.
