Each year at our annual block party, Glass Street LIVE, great effort is made to bring in new entertainment, new partners, and new experiences that will make this community celebration unique and memorable year over year. 2021 is no exception as we plan to roll out details in the next few weeks!

What is also new this year that many won’t see is what is happening behind the scenes right now and in the months leading up to the big day. Chattanooga Neighborhoods Arts Partnership (ChattaNAP or CNAP) has partnered with us this year and we are thrilled to co-create this event with them. With the event planning process shifted to an all-volunteer and resident-led steering committee, the Glass House Collective staff are proud to stay involved in an active and supportive role while the committee guides the vision on everything from marketing and logistics to volunteer recruitment and booking entertainment and activities.

COVID-19 protocols are in place and we even have a health committee (s/o to Anthony Watkins) leading the efforts on working to provide a vaccine clinic at the event.

Making residents the backbone of Glass Street LIVE started in 2019 with the turn toward a structure of shared power and shared responsibility. We did not host Glass Street LIVE in 2020 due to COVID-19. We are excited to be back at it! This committee-led structure also creates opportunities for these emerging leaders and community organizers to get hands-on experience in the process of working collectively toward a shared goal. These same skills can be put to good use in so many other aspects of community mobilizing and organizing in the neighborhood throughout the year.

If you would like to volunteer, please fill in this form.

If you would like to be a  non-profit booth or vendor, please fill in this form.

Facebook event link here.

For more info, email info@glasshousecollective.org

The 2021 Glass Street LIVE Steering Committees:

Marketing Committee – This committee helps secure media spots, gets the word out on social media, and hands out event flyers. Pastor JaMichael Jordan, Justine Jones, Tina Stewart

Entertainment Committee: This committee is responsible for securing all the musical acts for the day such as poets, dancers, rappers, musical acts, and DJ. Serving on this committee are: Deborah Bledsoe,  Erika Roberts, Ric Morris

Activities Committee: This committee is responsible for securing all the activities throughout the day, especially the Kid’s Corner: Serving on this committee are:  Audrey McClure, Lynesha Lake, Daniel Gamble, Teal Thibaud, Anthony Watkins (health)

Logistics Committee: This committee is responsible for setting the event up and taking it back down. Street closures, what goes where, and who does what. Serving on this committee are: Rosalyn Stewart, Tina Stewart, Tara Poole, Daniel Gamble

Volunteer Committee: This committee works to recruit and schedule all the event volunteers who will be working in different capacities on the day of the block party. Serving on this committee are: Alan Shropshire, Joyce Watson, Daniel Gamble, Erika

Vendor Committee: This committee works to secure vendors in our market place include food vendors, pop-ups, and non-profit booths. Serving on this committee are: Mimi Dunigan

2021 Committee includes: Ricardo Morris, Tina Stewart, Rosalyn Stewart, Mimi Dunigan, Pastor JaMichael Jordan, Audrey McClure, Deborah Bledsoe
Ricardo Nache, Lynesha Lake, Rose Prince, Justine Jones, Katherlyn Geter, Wayne Brown, Myra Cook, Levar Wilson, Joe Lautigar, Ericka Holmes, C-Grimey
Anthony Watkins, Sasse, Bishop Freddie Hambrick, Gail McKeel, Terry Williams, Daniel Gamble, Tara Poole, Erika Roberts, Lynesha Lake, and Teal Thibaud

Shout out to our 2019 Committee:  Glenda Welcher, Belinda, Darrell Martin, Carmen Davis, Reggie Campbell, David Raley, Rocksand Martin, Joel Tippins, Tinica Caperton, Janette Richie, Dr. Holmes, Carlos Hampton, Alan Shropshire, Joyce Watson, Erika Roberts, Justine Jones, Deborah Bledsoe, Gail MckKeel, Joe Latiuger, and Greg Alford

We look forward to our Giving Tuesday restaurant tour every year and will miss seeing you all. Please join us in turning Giving Tuesday into #TakeoutTuesday and show up for the restaurants in town that need us now. Order takeout (menus linked below), stock up on gift cards, and of course, tip well. 

• Niedlov’s
• Heaven & Ale
• Southern Star
• Bitter Alibi
• Main Street Meats
• Gilman Grill 
• Southern Squeeze

And, yes, we are still accepting #givingtuesday donations. You can find the link to donate here.

Hope for the Inner City’s Grow Hope program started as a garden project during a summer camp, but it’s morphed into something bigger. Leaders are ramping up a small farm that will eventually be part of a workforce development program, which should begin hiring employees in February, Grow Hope Urban Farm director Joel Tippens said. The goal is to supply a farmers market and provide easy access to residents who can’t easily get to the grocery store.

Glass House Collective hosts community meetings once a month, and leaders repeatedly hear that a top priority is to get healthy, affordable food in the area, Teal Thibaud, Glass House director, said. “They are tired of catching three buses to get fresh food,” she said. Glass House recently got a $3,000 grant from Tennessee Arts Commission to build a mobile farm stand, which is nearly complete, thanks to help from local architects Jared Hueter and Aaron Cole, who designed the unit.

The Grow Hope Urban Farm will supply the mobile market, and leaders said the unit is an initial move toward the bigger goal.

“It’s sort of like ‘one step at a time,’” Tippens said. “The Grow Hope farm stand is the result of this grant funding that Glass House had and the creative vision that Jared and those folks had. What the long-term goal is going to be is creating more backyard gardens and community gardens to develop more interest in sourcing fresh food.”

The mobile stand can be used for a variety of purposes, such as a farm stand or an art sale. It’s equipped with four tables so people can sit down, eat, talk or play chess.

“It needed to be mobile; that was a big challenge,” Hueter said. “The other thing is being flexible … We tried to design it to where they can have it for different kinds of uses.”

The mobile unit will be ready for the upcoming Glass Street Live event Oct. 29th.

Thibaud said:

Glass House Collective sees [itself] as a spark. We won’t be the entity that recruits a big-box grocery chain to Glass Street, but we can commission artist[s] and partner with a local farm to bring access to food to the neighborhood. With that, we hope that residents become more organized and advocate for a grocery in their own community. It’s more than just starting the conversation, it’s taking action—big or small—that transforms communities.

Nooga article can be found here.

I was invited to speak on the Creative Placemaking Panel facilitated by Jason Schupbach, Director of Design and Creative Placemaking at the National Endowment for the Arts. Jason Schupbach is the Director of Design Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversees all design and creative placemaking grants and partnerships, including Our Town and Design Art Works grants, the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, and the NEA’s Federal agency collaborations. Previous to his current position, Jason served Governor Patrick of Massachusetts as the Creative Economy Director, tasked with growing creative and tech businesses in the state. He formerly was the Director of ArtistLink, a Ford Foundation funded initiative to stabilize and revitalize communities through the creation of affordable space and innovative environments for creatives. He has also worked for the Mayor of Chicago and New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. He has written extensively on the role of arts and design in making better communities, and his writing has been featured as a Best Idea of the Day by the Aspen Institute.

Other panelists included Juanita Hardy, a Senior Visiting Fellow with Urban Land Institute and Liz Ogbu, Founder & Principal, Studio O along with Yours truly— Teal Thibaud.

The panel was about how many communities have begun to engage in a process known as “creative placemaking,” whereby artists, arts organizations, and community development practitioners intentionally integrate arts and culture into community revitalization work–placing arts at the table with land-use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, and public safety strategies. Presenters on this panel shared case studies and techniques from the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) “Our Town” grant program and the Urban Land Institute’s creative placemaking portfolio, and local practitioners talked about how to do such work effectively.  The session’s goal was illuminate a variety of approaches that seed innovation via creative placemaking and help foster better places across America.

It was an excellent experience and an engaging session. I was honored to be involved and thankful for the raw and honest conversation. Before and after the panel, I attended a few peer-led panels and workshops that included Dan Pitera, director of DCDC (Detroit Collaborative Design Center). I learned so much from him and would like to take the time to share a few of my takeaways with you all:

1) Engagement vs. Participation:

In previous communications, Glass House Collective has worked hard to “engage” our community in our day to day work. We realized at the Hometown Summit that there’s a difference between engagement and participation.

“engage in” – to spend time doing

“participate” – to be a part of something, to take part in something.

After realizing this, we feel comfortable sharing that Glass House Collective engages stakeholders (non profits, community associations, etc) in our work and enlists community participation in our design process, activation events, etc.

Dan explained several tools and mindsets needed for change:

• Intensive Community Participation

• Content for design vs. validating (post-rationalizing) the design – tools of the discipline and community engagement

• Cities should be concerned about the whole built environment and not just about building buildings.

2) Think of a cultural community like a Mosaic:

This metaphor Dan uses to explain the quality of urban fabric they hope to achieve speaks to our past, present, and ambitions in [hopefully] all cities: remembering the rich and diverse history of the cultures of our heritage, understanding new citizens are still arriving and adjusting to their place in the city, and moving forward in a way that celebrates differences in a cohesive manner.

3) Reversing the Design “Problem”:

While discussing the client interactions as a professional architect and client expectations, Dan works to  widen the dialog.  For example, when you need to design stairs, what do you think of?  A stair tread rising a story up or instead thinking of task a the design problem being about ascending/descending. If that latter,  It opens the vocabulary and understanding from a pre-conceived noun to a dynamic verb set, thus opening the box to outside, creative possibilities and solutions.

4) Streetscape versus Public Realm

A Streetscape is made of things, but a Public Realm is made of people. GHC needs to stop using terms like “streetscape” because the neighborhood and stakeholders consider that process outcome driven by objects. Objects CAN be an outcome, but enlisting participation in the design process for the public realm at Dodson Ave and Glass Street can create more meaningful opportunities among neighbors.

In reflection, the conversations at the conference continue to inspire us to keep learning and growing. I want our work at GHC to be as transparent as possible, to be accountable to our community and organizational leadership, and to find methods for genuine participation by residents while remaining respectful and open.  We can’t rely on traditional methods of trying to recruit people into a building. Instead we will explore how to make it easier to participate: interrupting people’s lives as little as possible by going directly to them.

Date: Sunday, June 19th 2016
Time: 3:30-5:30 PM
Location: We will meet at Community of Christ Church, 2508 Glass Street at 2:30pm for continuos shuttle rides up to Sherman Reservation. We will also be giving guided tours up to the celebration on our new connector trail at the top of Campbell and Glass Street.

Dress comfortably.

There’s limited parking at Sherman Reservation.

Click here for more information.

May 12, 2016 (Chattanooga, TN): On Saturday, May 7th, Thirteen Glass Farm Residents became the founding members of the Glass Farm Block Leaders, a group of volunteers who will keep their residents informed and involved in neighborhood and city-wide activities; serve as liaisons between the residents and the neighborhood association; and as ambassadors for new residents on their block.

Glass Farm lies in the heart of the 37406 zip code and is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the City of Chattanooga. Blight along with high crime rates in recent years has created an environment where many residents do not feel safe but still have a strong love for their community. These residents are taking a stand to restore the beauty and the safety of their neighborhood block by block.

Dr. Everlena Holmes, a resident of Glenwood, established the Glenwood Block Leaders in 2008 and serves as the Coordinator of that group.  In 2015, she established the Avondale Block Leaders.

The Glass Farm Block Leaders will be promoting:

• Physical Revitalization of their block by reporting code violations including overgrowth and neighborhood cleanup events.
• Neighborhood Safety by reporting and monitoring vacant houses and suspicious activity.
• Social Revitalization by welcoming new residents and connecting neighbors to each other at block parties.
• Community Empowerment by informing residents of events, community meetings and organizing voices for area concerns.

Glass House Collective, a non-profit working to bring life back to Glass Street and Glass Street back to life through artist and resident led initiatives, serve as sponsors of the Glass Farm Block Leaders.

The founding members are just the beginning of the Glass Farm Block Leaders.  The founding members of the Glass Farm Block Leaders include: Maria Bradley, Frank Bryant, Melanie Esquire, Jeffrey Evans, Danna Forester, Audrey McClure, Thomas Miller, Amanda Mitchell, Timothy “TJ” Mitchell, Johnny Pattman, Janette Richie, Belinda Thronton, and Glenda Welcher.

Dr. Holmes, with the assistance of Good Neighbor Network, Habitat for Humanity, and Glass House Collective, hopes to get a block leader(s) from each of the 29 streets in the Glass Farm Neighborhood. This summer, groups will continue to canvas with local students and organizations to recruit more volunteer Block Leaders. If residents and other neighborhoods are interested in learning more about how to establish a Block Leaders group for their neighborhood, they can reach Dr. Everlena Holmes at emholmes@epbfi.com or calling 423-622-0974.

Trail Network: The trail network will provide access to 40-acres of State owned historic Civil War land connecting the our neighborhood National Park to Glass Street’s historic Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.  Construction of Phase One’s trial is set for a summer completion.

Active Trails Youth Programming: What’s more, this partnership also launched our Active Trails outdoor youth programming connecting urban East Chattanooga youth to the historical significance of their neighborhood and city as well as to healthy, skill building outdoor recreation activities at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park’s numerous parks and cultural events, especially Sherman Reservation.  Nicole Lewis, Community Engagement Coordinator at GHC and project leader for Active Trails, has hosted numerous excursions most recently taking 12 youth for a Night Under the Stars, their first overnight camping trip, at the Chickamauga Battlefield.  Please read our Camp Out With 12 Youth from Glass Street and A World Turned Upside Down blogposts to see the impact these experiences are having on our youth.

Sherman Reservation Partnership Collective: All this is being accomplished by a very strong network of partners each leveraging their resources together including National Parks Foundation, Outdoor Foundation, Lyndhurst Foundation, Sierra Club, Causeway, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Bessie Smith Cultural Center, City of Chattanooga Office of Multicultural Affairs, Outdoor Chattanooga, Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department, Causeway, Good Neighbor Network, Techme Community Consultants, Southeastern Conservation Corp, The Trust for Public Land, Friends of the Park, and Friends of Moccasin Bend.