For the annual Elijah E. Cummings Democracy and Freedom Festival, artists Graham Coreil-Allen and Rosy Sunshine Galván created Manifesting Civic Dreams: Baltimore, a large, interactive floor map for participants to reflect on their personal and collective challenges, neighborhood treasures, and visionary possibilities of Baltimore City. The installation featured a colorful, 12’ x 15’ printed floor map to which residents added their own stories, neighborhood assets, challenges, and ideas by writing and drawing on custom laser cut pop-up cardboard signs, placing them on the map, and then signing the map as civic artists.
Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute commissioned the interactive art map for their annual Elijah E. Cummings Democracy and Freedom Festival held on February 8th, 2024 at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. The theme for the 2024 festival was civic education. The event brought together scholars and practitioners from across the country with the Johns Hopkins and Baltimore communities in grappling with some of the most urgent challenges facing democracy, modeling civic engagement across divides, and celebrating democratic resilience and opportunity.
For The project Sunshine and Coreil-Allen created four posters inviting collaborators to share their ideas in response to four color-coded, thematic questions:
- Where do you go to learn about or meet others from your community?
- What do you want people to know about your community?
- What places or neighborhoods do you want to learn more about?
- What civic institutions would you transform?How?
Graham Projects organizers and artists Melvin Jadulang and JaVon Townsend served as co-facilitators during the event, supporting Coreil-Allen and Sunshine as they invited festival goers to share their experiences and places.
Project partner: Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute
Production Team: Graham Coreil-Allen, Rosy Sunshine Galván, Melvin Jadulang, JaVon Townsend
