Introducing Make Place Happen & COLORoW

Make Place Happen preview
Make Place Happen preview

While we may be under an extended stay-at-home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Graham Projects is keeping busy with public art in the service of people and places. Springtime is usually when we are deep in community engagement and designing projects for installation in the summer and fall. Like many organizations, we’ve had to carefully retool our work while practicing social distancing.

Make Place Happen website

In lieu of public meetings we’ve been working the phones, online hangouts, video chats, and zooms. COVID won’t stop our creative action, so today we are proud to announce our new online placemaking toolkit, Make Place Happen. Use the resources at Make Place Happen for “Do-it-Yourself Urbanism” and/or participating with our current placemaking projects!

COLORoW online public art design drawing tool Whitelock example

Our new DIY Urbanism website was co-designed and built by the amazing artist-designers Tobey Albright and Mollie Edgar of Hour Studio. They took our ideas and colors, skillfully designed the website and brand, and helped us realize the most exciting part of Make Place Happen: the COLORoW online public art design tool. COLORoW is short for “COLOring the Right of Way”. It is a coloring book-like web app for drawing your own artistic crosswalk or pavement mural.

COLORoW online public art design drawing tool Whitelock example with artwork added

Residents are invited to use COLORoW to share their ideas with us for specific projects in their neighborhood. Participants can draw what they would like to see in their public space, download the drawing, and then share it with us along with text and other visual inspiration via an embedded upload form. 

COLORoW online drawing tool submission form

Using everyone’s drawings as inspiration we will develop our always exciting array of design options. Like with our face-to-face workshops, but online, Graham Projects will then shareback the community-based artwork for resident feedback and selection.

Check out the new Make Place Happen website, and stay tuned for added features to come; including a store for creative street stencils, a guide for making pavement art, and a local “how to” for kid-friendly play streets.

Draw it, share it, and we will Make Place Happen! makeplacehappen.com

PS: if you are a resident of Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill neighborhood be sure to share your own art ideas for the Whitelock Art Crosswalks project here! makeplacehappen.com/whitelock

NPS Five Points Denver

NPS Five Points Denver

NPS Five Points Denver

New Public Sites – Five Points Denver

Walking tours and map installation

Welton Wander: Wednesday, August 10, 11am-12:30pm

RiNo Drift: Thursday, August 11, 6-7:30pm

Meet at RedLine contemporary art center, 2350 Arapahoe St, Denver, CO 80205

Denver’s Five Points neighborhood is a hotbed of creativity and construction taking place among powerful sites of heritage. Learn how regular people have helped shape the history, design and current uses of public spaces around Five Points during two New Public Sites walking tours led by public artist Graham Coreil-Allen.

The New Public Sites (NPS) tours are free and open to the public as part of RedLine’s 48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art and Conversation summit. The first tour will take place on Wednesday, August 10 from 11am-12:30pm, and focus on sites of heritage and change around Welton Street. Stops will include Lawson Park, Cousins Plaza, speculative/construction sites, and the Five Points intersection itself. The second tour will take place on Thursday, August 11 from 6-7:30pm, and will investigate the positive and negative impacts of urban planning and development around the RiNo arts district. Sites will include Broadway’s triangular spaces, Sustainability Park, and The Temple.

During the tours, Coreil-Allen will recite poetic terms and definitions identifying specific types of public sites and experiences unique to Five Points. Along the way, he will also invite neighborhood experts, such as residents, workers and other stakeholders, to help identify, interpret, and activate their own public spaces. The tours will culminate with participants contributing found objects, wax rubbings and poetic writings to an immersive map installation at RedLine.

RedLine is a non-profit contemporary art center in Denver, Colorado. RedLine’s vision is to empower every person to create social change through art. Each year RedLine hosts “48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art & Conversation,” a creative summit addressing socially engaged art through talks, films, performances and participatory art. For more information about RedLine, please visit www.redlineart.org.

Click here to download the full press release.

Five Points Denver